WATCH: Lakewood 'burns', Rendon smiles
Speaker Rendon's attempt to buy off voters fails miserably.
Speaker Anthony Rendon’s shameless attempt to buy votes while his own city suffers from homelessness and crime utterly failed in a video produced by the Lakewood Populist.
Rendon, a Lakewood resident, and another local politician have been trying to get voters’ minds off all the everyday occurrences of crime, including many attacks by the homeless, by touting the 2021-2022 budget. For example, Speaker Rendon and state Senator Bob Archuleta, whose district encompasses half of Lakewood, took a picture Aug. 3 with longtime Lakewood Councilman Todd Rogers and a life-sized $2 million check for Lakewood.
There’s just one problem: those $2 million never were Rendon’s, Archuleta’s, nor even Roger’s, for them to give away. It was always TAXPAYER MONEY that always should had been given to Lakewood taxpayers in the form of government services. However, such logic appeared lost on Speaker Rendon and Senator Archuleta.
If that weren’t enough, Rendon actually posted a video July 12 on his Facebook page, bragging about nearly $400 million given towards his district in the new state budget. This included $200,000 for a Gateway Cities broadband plan and about $45 million for a southeast Los Angeles County cultural arts center along the Los Angeles River, among other things.
There’s just one problem - WHO CARES!?!
If little girls are being chased by homeless who have taken over intersections in Lakewood, this happened last summer near Pioneer Boulevard and Carson Street, and if residents are fleeing East Lakewood due to crime and homeless having sex in front of their kids (this happened as well), WHO CARES ABOUT A STINKING CULTURAL ARTS CENTER!?!
As a result, the Lakewood Populist produced a video of Rendon bragging about the $400 million towards his district while pictures of homeless and their encampments showed in the background. Also put in the video were pictures of all the illegal dumpsites that have resulted from the congested-housing mandates Rendon supports. (City officials keep the land vacant so as to use it later to fulfill low-income housing mandates. One resident actually tried to buy one of the vacant lots for a new home before being told it could only be used for low-income housing.)
Worst of all, along with the homeless and illegal dumping, HALF OF LAKEWOOD’S HOMICIDES post-2000 have occurred in the two areas City officials have zoned for low-income or apartment-styled housing.
The Lakewood Populist encouraged Lakewood residents on Facebook to ask Speaker Rendon to meet with East Lakewood residents and walk the streets of East Lakewood and other parts of the city badly effected by homelessness and crime while Speaker Rendon took a monthlong vacation in Lakewood. Instead, Speaker Rendon posted on Facebook pictures of him campaigning at various events as he took credit for things accomplished by taxpayer funds while not taking ONE DAY to walk the streets of HIS city with HIS neighbors.
The Lakewood Populist has produced a 4-part series of articles detailing the spikes in homelessness in Lakewood. The worst-effected part of the city is East Lakewood, which has recently suffered a dramatic increase in homelessness.
Click here to see the Lakewood Populist’s interactive homeless tracking map, newly updated.
This includes several new homeless encampments, and another tent at an already established encampment. Below are recent pictures of new homeless encampments.
In and adjacent to East Lakewood, there are about 15 homeless encampments between the 605 Freeway and Pioneer Boulevard, and there are likely more that this writer has yet to document. It’s no wonder that the Starbucks near Pioneer Boulevard and Del Amo Boulevard has been hit twice with a naked homeless person.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to nip this in the bud. Hopefully, the city and county, law enforcement, SPEAKER RENDON and Senator Archuleta finally do something.