Dear Editor – A Lament: On Losing My Hometown

Dear Editor, 

I’ve heard it said many times these past few years, “People who work in Culver City should be able to live here also.” But that should go for the rich as well as the not-so-rich.

Sometime after the turn of this century, when an earlier city council members greeted the large tech firms like Apple, Google and Facebook with open arms, they (unknowingly?) set into motion what we are experiencing today.

Tech executives are paid very well by their companies. Many of them can afford to pay well over $2.0M for a parcel or home. It fits within their life style and personal finances.

Apple has announced that they will be bringing in 3,000 more employees to our city over the next few years. Most of these workers will be able to afford to pay $2.0M or more for local properties, if they want to live close to where they work. Long-time homeowners would have to be sentimentally foolish to pass up such offers on their properties.

Don’t kid yourself, home prices are not going anywhere but up. The average selling price in Culver City will steadily increase over the next few years and stabilize at a price well over $2.0M. Just look what happened up in the San Francisco area and around Silicon Valley. It will happen here too.

Now that big Tech has moved into our little city, no city council, whether conservative or progressive will be able to control local housing prices. It will be controlled-as it always has been-by supply and demand and the well-paid tech workers will purchase and/or build prestigious homes that reflect their values and status.

We are now witnessing the slow death of the small town that I grew up in. The path was set years ago. It will never be the same, ever again.

There will be such a change in our city’s feel over the next decade it will look just like an extension of Los Angeles. You won’t be able to tell where Culver City begins and the City of Los Angeles ends—except by the color of the street signs.

George Laase

Topsy Turvy at The Actors' Gang 9/26-11/16

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