Bid to put bamboo garden on billboard meets funding goal

Over the last seven weeks, artist Stephen Glassman asked people to think outside the billboard. Re-imagine them, he urged, as floating bamboo gardens.`

More than 1,500 people did just that, donating money to the project dubbed "Urban Air." By Tuesday afternoon, the entire $100,000 budget and more had been raised via Kickstarter, an online public funding platform.

"I feel a real kind of freedom in the world in a more powerful, creative way," Glassman said after learning that the project had met its financial goal. "It feels like a whole new territory. I mean the sky's the limit, literally. What's so great is this was a vote for something green and beautiful and ridiculous in the world."

Glassman, known for his free-form bamboo installations in the 1990s, had spent the day at his Topanga home nervously eyeing the Kickstarter website. If projects are not funded by the cutoff deadline, then all donations are forfeited.

Just a couple hours shy of the deadline, emails of congratulation began pouring in. Urban Air was fully funded.

"It was kind of amazing; you could just feel everybody looking at the screen and checking in," Glassman said. "There was a huge feeling of community. One woman wrote 'I'm so glad this happened. I know this is your project, but it felt like my project.' "

The total of $100,772 raised will go toward retrofitting the first billboard. Glassman sees it as a prototype that could be re-created around the world and reinterpreted with different plants and billboard shapes. He plans for this first one to be placed near a Los Angeles freeway or busy thoroughfare. The billboard garden would grow bamboo — chosen because it takes up relatively little root space but attains great height.

Summit Media has agreed to donate a billboard. As for permits, "there isn't a check-the-box building permit for putting bamboo trees on a billboard," said Alex Kouba, the founder of Summit. "There's a lot of controversy swirling around billboards, but I think if city leaders appreciate the cultural impact of this and look at it from an artistic angle they'll have the foresight to support it."

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety has said the agency would need to consult with the city attorney's office before approving a permit for the unprecedented project.

If things go as hoped, Glassman thinks Urban Air could be completed as early as February.

The hundreds of people who contributed to the campaign around the world are eager to see the project take root.

Casey Rocke, who donated $30, said she hopes updates are posted as the project gets underway. "I'd like to see … how they're making this happen and how other people can make something similar happen," she said.

The 25-year-old Miracle Mile resident has contributed to Kickstarter projects in the past, but said she feels a sense of ownership when it comes to Urban Air.

"It was a really cool idea — that nature is taking back urban spaces," she said.

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Herat Journal: Afghan Museum Recalls a Previous War

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

A groundskeeper at the Jihad Museum in Herat, Afghanistan, and a helicopter that was left behind from the Soviet Union’s occupation of the country.

HERAT, Afghanistan — For a country disfigured by decades of conflict, it seems fitting that Afghanistan should have a place set aside for reflecting on war.

The Jihad Museum on a forested hillside in the western provincial capital of Herat is many things: a temple to the mujahedeen heroes who battled the Soviets in the 1970s and ’80s, and a memorial for the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who were slaughtered or fled the fighting.

It is also, for many Afghans, a not-so-veiled portrayal of a likely future: they review the museum’s dioramas of historical violence with clenching knots in their stomachs, fearing that the scenes may play out again soon, after the end of the NATO combat mission here in 2014.

“I think the worst days are yet to come,” said Obaidullah Esar, 51, a former fighter, who was touring the museum one recent afternoon.

The museum is a blue, green and white rotunda covered on the outside with the names of hundreds of victims from the war, all set in a watered garden of flower beds and fountains.

It boasts captured Soviet weaponry like tanks, a MIG fighter jet and helicopters. It has a portrait hall of fame of mujahedeen commanders.

The star attraction is a graphic diorama showing models of Afghan villagers rising up in a hellish wartime landscape to cudgel the heads of Soviet oppressors, in a triumphant if rather rosy narrative arc: Soviets commit heinous acts against poor villagers, farmers besiege Soviet tanks with sticks, Soviet soldiers are throttled, Soviet soldiers are shot. At the end, the army of the mujahedeen marches home victorious.

Still, if its view is more triumphal than strictly historical, it is one of the few accounts of the era that is easily accessible here.

“Since most Afghans are uneducated and we don’t have good historians to write our histories, our children don’t know who the Russians were, why the Afghans fought against them and what was the result of their resistance,” said Sayed Wahid Qattali, a prosperous 28-year-old politician and businessman who is the son of a former jihadi commander. Mr. Qattali’s father established the museum with the help of Ismail Khan, a mujahedeen warlord and former governor of Herat.

Mr. Qattali says one of the motivations for building the museum is the reluctance of the country’s official history books to address the painful events of the past four decades. In an attempt to depoliticize the history of a country pulled in so many different ways by ethnic tensions, school textbooks tell Afghanistan’s history in depth only up until about the 1970s, skipping over major events since then like the Soviet invasion, civil war, the Taliban’s reign and the American-led invasion and military presence.

Mr. Qattali wants the museum to fill that void, in particular telling his version of the mujahedeen’s exploits — before time moves on and the next chapter of history is inevitably written.

His family has profited during the relative calm of the past 10 years, with interests from chicken farms to a security firm that guards NATO fuel convoys, and he runs his own television station.

Recently, he toured the garden of the museum, showing off the mujahedeen’s trophies, like the MIG jet.

“Afghans have very bad memories of this,” he said, shaking his head, before strolling past an 82-millimeter light-rocket launcher perched in the grass. Near a Soviet helicopter, behind some bushes, Mr. Qattali hunched his shoulders and grew even more morose. “A lot of people were killed by this kind of helicopter,” he said. “We lost a lot of relatives and loved ones. Of course, we fought to the end.”

Inside the hushed museum, shoeless feet — visitors are required to remove their shoes — shuffled past glass cabinets of centuries-old rifles seized from British soldiers in earlier conflicts. The British were repelled, too, and the guns were used against the Soviets, showing an Afghan knack for taking whatever weapons invaders bring and turning them to their advantage.

A museum visitor might reflect that the arsenal of weaponry currently being supplied to Afghanistan by the American-led coalition could one day be piled here, too.

After the guns, a long corridor is lined with more than 60 iconic portraits of mujahedeen commanders who made their names during the fighting against the Soviets and, later, the Taliban: men like Ahmed Shah Massoud and Abdul Haq.

Though they share a hallway, the warlords hardly were united.

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Hugh Hefner's Engagement Ring to Crystal Harris Revealed

By Mike Fleeman

12/11/2012 at 07:00 PM EST

The wedding's back on – though it may be a good idea to save that gift receipt.

Hugh Hefner, 86, officially confirms that he is once again engaged to Crystal Harris, 26, telling his Twitter followers, "I've given Crystal Harris a ring. I love the girl."

And to prove it, Harris posted photos of the big diamond sparkler, calling it "my beautiful ring."

Neither announced a wedding date, though sources tell PEOPLE they're planning to tie the knot at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve.

Whether that still happens remains to be seen.

This is the plan they had in 2011 – a wedding at the mansion – except that Harris called it off just days before the nuptials were scheduled to happen in front of 300 invited guests.

Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris

David Livingston / Getty

The onetime Playmate of the Month then ripped Hef's bedroom skills, calling him a two-second man, to which Hefner replied, "I missed a bullet" by not marrying her.

A year later, Hefner's "runaway bunny" bounded back to him.

• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA

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DA investigating Texas' troubled $3B cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.

No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.

That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.

"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.

Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.

His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."

Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.

Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.

Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.

"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.

Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.

Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.

Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.

The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.

"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.

Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.

Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.

Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.

Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.

"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.

Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.

___

Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

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At this Hanukkah party, a special zest for life

The dancing broke out spontaneously.

One moment, a guitarist was performing before more than 200 elderly Jewish people, most of whom looked content to remain in their seats and let the latkes settle. The next, the onlookers were on their feet, clapping to traditional Yiddish songs and forming a human chain that whipped around the tables.

An elderly woman in a sparkling black dress swung her hips in the corner of the room. Eyes closed, she was doing the polka, no partner required. Canes were left hooked on the backs of chairs, and walkers were pushed aside along the wall.

Such was the scene near the end of the Cafe Europa Hanukkah party on Tuesday afternoon. It was a jubilant two hours, full of hugs and kisses between longtime friends. There was next to no mention of what they had in common: They are all Holocaust survivors.

"Every day is a holiday if we are still here," said Sophie Hamburger, 93, after unrolling her sleeve to show the number 74428 tattooed on her left arm.

Officials with the Jewish Family Service and party volunteers said they are in awe of the survivors' zest for life. The service organization's Cafe Europa program serves as a social support group for survivors, who get together monthly for plays, outings, dinner or educational sessions. They usually meet in two groups, but on Tuesday, all members congregated at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills. They had a kosher lunch, saw a children's musical performance and danced.

"Holidays are a great time to celebrate life, and these are the people who know how," said Susie Forer-Dehrey, chief operating officer of the organization. "Many of them grew up without parents. Many lost children. The fact that they can come together and celebrate Hanukkah is truly a miracle, and Hanukkah is about miracles."

Though many of the survivors said they prefer to think about the present, the future was not lost on Dorothy Greenstein, 82. She said at least two of her friends have died recently. When one survivor passes away, the person never gets replaced, Greenstein said. Each passing holiday, she added, is one to relish.

"We are an endangered species," Greenstein said, then demanded more fried jelly doughnuts for her table.

Though the party was no place to dig up old, horrific memories, some remain etched in the mind: Eva Brettler, a child survivor, now 76, still remembers the smell of her grandmother's bread, which wafted in the air before the first loud knock at the door. She remembers being separated from her mother, then hearing gunshots. She still sees the "mountain of corpses" she witnessed when she was about 8 years old.

She went for a hike Monday morning, and to the gym hours before the party. She applauded loudly for the singing children and swayed to the music in her seat.

Then, like so many of her fellow survivors, she stood up and danced.

She finished, beaming. "Wasn't that fun?" she said.

matt.stevens@latimes.com

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Libyan Reluctance Hobbles Benghazi Assault Investigation

WASHINGTON — An unarmed American military surveillance drone now flies virtually every day over Benghazi, gathering information and poised to respond at a moment’s notice if any of the suspects believed to be behind the attacks last Sept. 11 on the American Mission in the Libyan city are located.

But three months after the assault that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the investigation into the attacks has been hobbled by the reluctance of the Libyan authorities to move against Islamist extremist suspects who belong to powerful militias, officials briefed on the investigation said. While the F.B.I. has identified several suspects, none have been arrested and some have fled Benghazi.

In an effort to generate as many leads as possible, the F.B.I. issued a global appeal last month asking anyone with information about the assailants to send tips in an e-mail, a text message or a post on a bureau Facebook page.

Even as frustration builds over the inquiry’s sputtering progress, American officials insist that at least for now they intend to fulfill President Obama’s vow to bring the killers to justice by working with the Libyan authorities, though that means sorting through delicate issues like sovereignty and the weakness of the Libyan government. For now, a decision whether to try suspected assailants in Libyan or American courts has not been made, officials said.

“This case is surrounded and intertwined with sensitivities — it is a process of doing business there and respecting their sovereignty,” said one American official who has been briefed on the investigation and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing.

Under increasing pressure from the Obama administration, there have been some halting steps forward in recent weeks.

Since first visiting Benghazi in early October, F.B.I. agents have returned to the city at least twice, accompanied by small United States military and Libyan security teams, to interview witnesses and collect other information related to the attack. Libyan witnesses have identified suspects caught on surveillance cameras at the mission and in photos taken during the attacks, American officials said.

Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the military’s Africa Command, said in an interview that investigators now believed that they had identified some but not all of the major actors in the attack on the diplomatic mission and the nearby C.I.A. annex, but “we don’t yet have sufficient information to indict anyone. They’re still collecting and building information.”

“The Libyans clearly accept responsibility” for investigating the attack, General Ham said, but “I have expressed to the Libyans that it hasn’t proceeded as quickly as any of us would have liked.”

A senior F.B.I. official is leading a team of what the American official described as “handpicked counterterrorism agents experienced in working overseas.” Many agents are from the F.B.I.’s New York office, the official said. The F.B.I.’s legal attaché from the United States Embassy in Cairo has also been involved with the investigation.

The official said that in contrast to a typical investigation in the United States, which is focused on making a case in a courtroom, the F.B.I. agents in Libya are primarily focused on establishing what occurred before and during the attacks.

“This is an intelligence-driven investigation, the goal is to establish the facts,” the official said. “Like this and other cases abroad, we have to be very sensitive. Every country is different when there is investigating on their turf.”

Among the obstacles the F.B.I. has encountered in Libya has been a reluctance by some police and government officials there to target members of Ansar al-Shariah, a local Islamist group whose fighters joined the attack, according to witnesses.

Government officials in Benghazi have said it would be impossible for their weak, lightly armed forces to arrest militia members. Leaders of Benghazi’s most powerful militias, some of whom fought with Ansar al-Shariah members during the Libyan uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, say they would be hesitant to act against suspects unless they were presented with conclusive proof of their involvement.

One witness in Libya said in an interview that the F.B.I. tried to question him in front of other Libyans, making the witness nervous that the Libyans could reveal his identity. Other witnesses have said they fear that the F.B.I. will not protect them if they cooperate with the investigation.

Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Benghazi, Libya.

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The Wii U uses less than half the power of the Xbox 360 and the PS3

Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii prided itself for being a super energy-efficient console that ran nearly silent and sipped very little electricity. And although Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 was originally a loud monster with a penchant for Red-Ring-of-Death-ing itself, the amount of power it consumed was never as much as Sony’s (SNE) launch PlayStation 3, which used more power than a refrigerator. Eurogamer took it upon itself to pit the Wii U against the Xbox 360 S and new super slim PS3 and concluded that Nintendo’s new console “draws so little power in comparison to its rivals that its tiny casing still feels cool to the touch during intense gaming.” Most impressive is that the Wii U maintains its low-wattage while fitting in a chassis that’s smaller than both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

According to Eurogamer’s tests, the Wii U draws only 32 watts of power during gameplay of games that are as graphically intensive as the 360 and PS3, with both consoles using 118% and 139$ % more power, respectively.

To achieve such “green” levels, Nintendo clocks the Wii U’s CPU to 1.24GHz and “uses far fewer transistors than the competition.” While there are still some mysteries as to how the hardware remains cool, Eurogamer also discovered that the AMD-built GPU increases performance by “40 per cent per square millimetre of silicon – another big leap in efficiency.”

Most disappointing in Eurogamer’s analysis is that they weren’t able to get the Wii U’s wattage to spike more than 33 watts, suggesting that the console can’t be over-clocked in the future to pump out more polygons.

If you’re still on the fence on which console you should buy or play games on, the Wii U looks to be the one that’ll keep your electric bill nice and low.

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hayden Panettiere Splits with Scotty McKnight

12/10/2012 at 07:50 PM EST

Hayden Panettiere and Scotty McKnight

Splash News Online

Is there a tear in her beer?

Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has broken up with her boyfriend of more than a year, New York Jets wide receiver Scotty McKnight, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

But the split doesn't appear to be the stuff of a sad country song. The actress, 23, is still friends with McKnight, 24, and one source tells TMZ that their pals wouldn't be surprised if they got back together.

This is Panettiere's second go at a relationship with an athlete. Before dating McKnight she was with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko for about two years.
– Julie Jordan

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Surprise: New insurance fee in health overhaul law

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It's a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a "sleeper issue" with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

"Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it," said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.

The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines.

Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.

The program "is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all," the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to "contributions" without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.

Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.

The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama's expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.

But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don't provide coverage.

"This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount," said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.

Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.

America's Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group for health insurers, says the fund is an important program that will help stabilize the market and mitigate cost increases for consumers as the changes in Obama's law take effect.

But employers already offering coverage to their workers don't see why they have to pony up for the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

"It just adds on to everything else that is expected to increase health care costs," said economist Paul Fronstin of the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The fee will be assessed on all "major medical" insurance plans, including those provided by employers and those purchased individually by consumers. Large employers will owe the fee directly. That's because major companies usually pay upfront for most of the health care costs of their employees. It may not be apparent to workers, but the insurance company they deal with is basically an agent administering the plan for their employer.

The fee will total $12 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $5 billion in 2016. That means the per-head assessment would be smaller each year, around $40 in 2015 instead of $63.

It will phase out completely in 2017 — unless Congress, with lawmakers searching everywhere for revenue to reduce federal deficits — decides to extend it.

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L.A. panel backs new rules for boardinghouses, group homes

A key Los Angeles City Council committee unanimously backed new regulations for boardinghouses and group homes Monday, one week after four people were shot to death in an unlicensed boardinghouse in Northridge.

Known as the Community Care Facilities Ordinance, the proposal would crack down on unlicensed group and boarding homes in neighborhoods with single-family homes throughout the city. If passed by the full council, the ordinance would increase oversight of licensed group homes serving seven or more people and change the city code's definition of a "boardinghouse" to include any home with more than three renters — requiring them to obtain a license.

The measure would not affect licensed facilities serving six or fewer people, which state law prohibits the city from regulating.

The ordinance, sponsored by Councilman Mitchell Englander, aims to enable police and code enforcement officers to rid single-family neighborhoods of unlicensed boardinghouses, in which dozens of people are sometimes crammed into a few bedrooms and that in some cases become havens for crime and drugs.

Praised by more than 40 community groups and neighborhood associations, the ordinance has come under fire from anti-poverty advocates and those who oversee group homes for those recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.

"This ordinance limits options at a time when people need options," said Fernando Gaytan, of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, in his statement to the committee.

Englander and many of the speakers in favor of the ordinance cited last week's shooting of four people at what police believe to be an unlicensed boardinghouse in Northridge where as many as 17 people were living in a single-family home.

"This does come on the heels of a heinous tragedy in Devonshire," Englander said, noting that now is the time to update "out of touch" and "antiquated" sections of the city's municipal code that prevent authorities from adequately monitoring boardinghouses.

By requiring a license to be obtained by homes serving seven or more people or where residents are living under more than three leases, Englander said city officials will be able to conduct routine inspections and shut down problem houses that are unlicensed. Leaders of various homeowners associations addressed the committee, pleading for the ordinance's passage, citing overcrowded homes in their neighborhoods.

But critics of the ordinance say that it could force group homes that service the drug-addicted, disabled, parolees and the chronically homeless to shut their doors and send residents out onto the streets. They say they would be required to get a state license and that would formally define them as "boardinghouses." That would mean they could not operate in areas that are zoned for "single-family housing."

Opponents say that by forcing all homes with more than three leases to register as boardinghouses it will force group homes now operating in neighborhoods not zoned for boardinghouses to relocate or close their doors.

"If it has too many leases, it becomes a boardinghouse, regardless of whether it provides acute care," said Greg Spiegel, of the Inner City Law Center, after the ordinance was passed by the committee. "That means that 85% of residentially zoned land in L.A. is off limits to people who need to or prefer to share housing, a disproportionate number of who are people with disabilities."

"No one supports 20 or 30 people in a single-family house," said Michael Arnold, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. "L.A. is a city with a critical shortage of affordable housing. This ordinance will violate fair housing laws."

Before voting unanimously to pass the ordinance on to the full council, the committee broadened its language with respect to leases. Though a previous proposal would have required any home with more than one lease to apply for a license, Englander amended it with wording to allow up to three leases before requiring a license. He also instructed the city attorney to research the effect the ordinance could have on domestic violence shelters and provide a possible exemption for them.

"We've taken a lot from all sides of this to try to craft good public policy," Englander said. "It's not my intent, nor will this ordinance have the effect, to push out those in need."

Englander also added to the ordinance a provision that would automatically reopen public comment on the matter one year after its implementation — a provision he said was suggested by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to hear out any unintended consequences.

The council is expected to vote on the ordinance in January.

wesley.lowrey@latimes.com

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