They're turning me into a NIMBY

If you've been reading RoundSeventeen with any kind of regularity or even if you're new to these pages and have only been reading for a week, it should be self-evident that I like a good fight.

I've been fighting the stupidity, greed and even more stupidity of the advertising agency world, ever since I made my departure from it in 2004. 

I've been fighting the con artists and fraudsters of the world ever since I received my first email from a Nigerian prince who magically selected me to help him extrude $12 million from his humble abode in Lagos.

And I've been hellbent for leather -- do people still say that? -- fighting that maggot-infested maltpie who pretended to be president of our once great nation during his Reign of Fatuity. Though in the past week it seems his self-destructive tendencies have relieved me of my duties.

But now I find myself locking horns in a new battle. 

It seems the do-gooders and sageburners of Culver City have worked themselves up into a tizzy about the lack of affordable housing in our fair city. This is by no means a new rant against an unfair world. Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's my wife and I also bemoaned the exorbitant price of home ownership.

We spent a month of Sundays, away from NFL football I might add, lookie-looing into open houses all across West LA. And each week we scratched a new neighborhood off our list of possibilities:

Cheviot Hills -- No way

Pacific Palisades -- Uh-uh

Mar Vista -- Too pricey

Santa Monica, even South Santa Monica - No can do

Marina del Rey -- Yeah right

It wasn't until we found the shittiest house in dumpy, frumpy Culver City (this was before all the overdevelopment) that we had decided if we pool our scant savings together, eat ketchup sandwiches for a year, paint and repair and pour sweat equity into the home, that we might be able to make this happen.

But apparently that's not the path others want to take. 

They would like to up zone our quiet, modest neighborhood and take huge swaths of R-1 homes, that others like myself sacrificed for, and turn them into R-4 zones, allowing developers to swoop in and put in high-density housing, if they promise to make a certain allotment for low income earners.

One need only read the shady dealings of one Donald J. Trump and his coldhearted father, land developers in NYC, to see how those promises can be skirted and exploited for cash.

Well I'm not having it. Because, if successful, this will eat into my stay-out-of-a-dirty-nursing home retirement money. It will lower the value of my property. 

As you might imagine, I've already tangled with a few of these nudniks who want to mess with the most valuable asset I and my family own. And though I am not unsympathetic to young families who would like to own a home in Culver City, particularly teachers, firemen, and other public service workers, I would provide them a map of our fair city. 

And instruct them to look into more affordable homes in the surrounding areas:

Inglewood

Westechester

Ladera Heights

Hawthorne

Lawndale

That's how things work. Always have and always will.

Also, ketchup packets are free at almost any fast food restaurant.