Opinion/Poll: Strong Schools and Redevelopment Go Together

A great city’s success depends on the strength and vitality of its neighborhoods. Education should be a top priority, but building a world-class city also requires good jobs, affordable housing and thriving neighborhoods.

This need for a balanced approach makes unfortunate and short-sighted the efforts of those who would desperately dismantle redevelopment to redirect local resources to their own purposes. 

Every year, project areas run by Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Agency directly send $44 million in property tax revenues to our schools. Those project areas cover just 8 percent of the city, but their contributions help students across the city. 

Redevelopment is not “gravy” for rich developers but a critical investment in building better, stronger communities, and schools.  In the past two fiscal years, CRA/LA-backed projects created more than 27,000 construction and permanent jobs and thousands of units of housing. Those projects help build a better city.

What are the prospects for education if all the other priorities that redevelopment supports are starved or eliminated?

If Los Angeles children don’t live in healthy, safe neighborhoods, their education will suffer.  If their families can’t find affordable housing, their education will suffer.  If their parents can’t find good-paying jobs, their education will suffer.  Without redevelopment’s many contributions, it won’t matter how good our teachers are, or how well funded their classrooms, our children’s education will suffer.

CRA/LA initiatives create the context for successful education.  Defunding the city’s most effective economic-development tool would undermine our recovery and hobble education for decades to come.