Inglewood Mayor Pulls Rent Control Ordinance

Inglewood Mayor James Butts was in a different kind of mood during today’s regular city council meeting.

Our affluent neighbors in Culver City passed a monumental rent FREEZE last night at nearly 1:00AM. During today’s meeting, Mayor Butts decided to pull his initiative for further consideration. Today we expected to hear the final reading.

2UrbanGirls isn’t sure whether Mayor Butts continues to read this blog, with his 3AM readings of news periodicals, but hopes he looks at what the more wealthy are doing to protect their most vulnerable residents in comparison to what he is offering Inglewood residents where 22% are living BELOW the federal poverty line.

Mayor Butts wants to create a tiered rent increase system citing 5% annual increases will result in 25% increases in five years. Mayor Butts cited the incoming stadium as way to create more jobs and also increase job training opportunities, however, there are many council meetings where a resident speaks on the lack of printers at an employment center directly across from City Hall.

She regularly asks for the council to help them pay for an updated printer, so those seeking employment can print resumes, despite the millions Jan Vogel brings into the South Bay Workforce Investment Board which operates One Stop and the Teen Center underneath the Inglewood Main Library.

The Forum was supposed to create jobs but it’s only hosting events about 5x a month. Residents were expected to get job training in construction but a USC report showed the organizations who received the job training money spent it on hospitality jobs.

Related: USC students shed light on why Blacks aren’t working in construction

Culver City residents earn roughly $30,000 more per year than Inglewood residents with rents averaging more than $700 of an Inglewood rental, but the Culver City Council members still passed a rent freeze to protect residents.

Culver City residents thanked their many supporters who worked on the rent freeze, including our own Uplift Inglewood coalition. Uplift Inglewood has never publicly asked Inglewood to freeze rents.

The current rent moratorium is still in effect for a few months but we will continue to keep our eyes peeled on further developments.

Lastly, the most overlooked item on today’s council agenda, which 2UrbanGirls intentionally left out of our last article, was item CS-1.

CS-1 was labeled as a closed session item related to “Significant exposure to litigation”. There was no accompanying case number. The last time an item like this was on the agenda, the city paid out a secret settlement of $8.6 million dollars to the family’s of Kisha Michael and Marquintin Sandlin.

Related: Inglewood Shooting Settlement Shrouded in Secrecy

Earlier this month, one of the supervisors involved in the deaths of Michael and Sandlin was on the agenda, under closed session, and listed as LASC Case No.: 19TRCV00433 Islas v City of Inglewood. Is today’s mysterious closed session item related to her case?

Mayor Butts if the good folks in Culver City can implement a one year rent freeze for their residents, Inglewood residents should have the same.

This author is fully aware the city of Inglewood has a court date tomorrow, at the Inglewood Courthouse, to evict a resident from the building you publicly chided this author for sharing that the city owned it. Not only does the city own it but is aware it is infested with bed bugs, has wall sockets randomly catching on fire and people with the SAME skin color as you live in there. They have no choice but to withhold rent because the CITY won’t address the issues.

You whine in Eye on Inglewood that Black people aren’t supporting you, and letting racists get in our head, yet look at how the city is treating Black people in a CITY OWNED building led by an all minority council!

I’m watching Councilman Ralph Franklin posing for photos with dead chickens he’s picking up off the street while abstaining on votes last week related to city residents who can’t pay their rent?

Something is really wrong with this picture and the moral compass of this council if you watch the wealthy freeze rent and you give investors a pass to keep putting minorities in the street.