The accompanying map shows the counties with the highest levels of child obesity, poverty, children, and people of color, and the fewest acres of parks per thousand residents. AB 31 targets Prop 84 funds where parks and recreation are needed most — to alleviate the ravages of obesity, asthma, poverty, unemployment, and youth crime, and [...]

Audit says City must make affordable housing a top priority
Calling the shortage of affordable housing a crisis, City Controller Laura Chick released the first of several audits of the Los Angeles Housing Department.
“The median price of a single-family home in Los Angeles is over half a million dollars. How can we expect those in [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/nyregion/09recreation.html?ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print
New York Times
July 9, 2007
Difficult Choices for the Old Rec Center
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
For almost 40 years, the La Guardia recreation center, known in its Lower East Side neighborhood as the Whitehouse, has sat vacant — abandoned in the middle of a densely populated high-rise public housing complex.
The Parks Department said it has no plans to [...]

Channel 7 reports on the closed Olympic size pool at the new $168 million Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in park-poor Central L.A. because neither the City nor the school district have paid for lifeguards. Lifeguards make $13.08 per hour and the City has 700 lifeguards. We agree with the Downtown News editorial: “Find [...]

Free the Pool!
Warren Olney’s Which Way L.A.? podcast covers opening the Olympic pool at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex so children and the community can swim and play at the public school downtown during the long hot summer, with guests City Controller Laura Chick, LAUSD Facilities Chief Guy Mehula, and The City Project’s Robert García [...]

Editorial
Downtown News
July 2, 2007
Open the Miguel Contreras Pool
It is a travesty that the Olympic-sized pool at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex is closed to the public because of a budget battle. City officials need to get on this right away and find the funds to make the state-of-the-art facility accessible to an amenity-starved community. This [...]

Summer Bummer
Downtown News
June 25, 2007
Cost of Lifeguards at Miguel Contreras School Keeps Olympic-Sized Pool Off Limits to the Community
by Evan George
Nine months ago city and Los Angeles Unified School District officials cheered the opening of the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, touting the City West project as a state-of-the-art campus that would not only benefit students, [...]