Los Angeles has had a homeless shelter sitting empty for years

0:00I can't wait until I get home this afternoon because I'm doing steak for lunch and I'm doing steak on the sole layer. I buy these flat irons at lazy acres from first light farms and they're so perfect on the sole layer. I do two minutes on high on each side and then I do three minutes on low on each side and I rotate it so I get really nice cross hashing. I love this thing. It has got me grilling every week chicken, fish, shrimp. That's also fish veggies steak. It does it all sausages. I love my sole layer infrared grill. It is a game changer and it is so fun to use. So I want you to check it out for yourself. Maybe it's time that you upgrade to a sole layer infrared grill. Find out. See if it makes sense for you. Go to the website, check out all the sizes and all the information you need at besthotgrill.com slash Randy that's best hot grill dot com slash Randy.

1:01It is the news blitz with Randy Wang on talk radio 790 K a B C. Let's get right into today's California report at Randy Wang radio dot sub stack dot com. We start in Marina Del Rey at a Ramada in that in 2020 was converted into an emergency shelter through project room key. So far so good. Then we moved to 2022 where it was decided that this emergency shelter was going to be turned into a permanent supportive housing homeless shelter. And we had already spent I believe $10 million on this we decided we were going to spend another $10 million on turning the emergency shelter into a permanent supportive housing unit. That was in 2022 Matthew Seedorf checked on how the project is going today and it is still

2:02not done converting this shelter that was already a hotel into permanent supportive housing. Whatever that means has been a conundrum and a half and has caused way more money that was supposed to and has been sitting empty not housing anybody for many years now. The homeless nonprofit that got the contract people assisting the homeless path. You probably if you're ever on the 405 freeway in West LA you can see their giant building. Well, here we go. This is California's ineptitude at the homeless crisis on full display. We had a motel we decided to buy that turned into an emergency shelter not good enough. We decided to give a whole bunch of money to a nonprofit that did know what they were doing and the project is sitting completely empty. And how many of these are there dozens more?

3:05I'm sure if anyone's going to find out it's Fox 11's Matthew Seedorf you got to watch this story and you got to share that one because this is right here everything that's wrong. We're trying to solve the homeless problem in Los Angeles. And there was a new whistleblower complaint about the response to the eat and fire. You know, there's a lot of issues with the LA County Board of Supervisors and their Office of Emergency Management where you had the wrong emergency alerts going out to everybody for a certain fire in Woodland Hills and you also had no emergency alerts going out to a whole bunch of people in Altadena on the night of the fire. Well, a whistleblower is speaking out and saying that that office, the Office of Emergency Management has been completely understaffed for years. They were sounding the alarm that they were needing to be taken care of. They were needing in people to work in that office to make sure that they were staffed for an emergency.

4:07Well, I'm sure the County found other places to waste their money. Now in the Bay Area, I don't know if this is a waste of money and I'm going to choose to be optimistic, but San Francisco applied for a Prop 1 grant and they're getting $100 million in state funding and they're going to use it towards addiction and mental health services. This is, if this works, this is good. This is what the money should be going towards. There's already lots of shelter space, but what we need is beds to either get people to a point where they are no longer dependent on the drugs that have destroyed their lives or for mental illness, we got to get people the treatment that they need. And if there are people that are completely untreatable, we need to figure out a place for them as well. And I've been covering this story quite a bit, but NBC in the Bay has been doing a lot of stories on how neighborhoods in parts of San Jose are dealing with the construction

5:09of the light rail extension by the VTA. And we've told you how they, through eminent domain, took a trucking business and made them move, but they haven't actually done anything with the land. We told you about the shopping center that has lost almost all their customers because of all the construction. Well, it gets worse. The VTA light rail extension project has actually been damaging homes in the neighborhood. The vibrations from the equipment that they're using to pound the concrete, what have you. It's actually damaging the walls and the foundations of nearby homes. The homeowners are filing claims and VTA seems to be wanting to fight a lot of those. So look, if you need to build this extension, you need to build more public transit. You need to make sure you're making whole all the people whose lives you are disrupting. Now I didn't know this, but right now we're in the middle of a government shutdown, a

6:10partial government shutdown through the Department of Homeland Security. And that includes TSA agents. So TSA agents have not received a paycheck in quite some time. And that is why a lot of them are not showing up. A lot of them are calling out. And in a lot of airports, the lines have gotten really long and San Jose, the lines are getting really long and Oakland, the lines are getting really long. But at SFO, the lines are moving just as quickly as they always do because at SFO, their security, their TSA is actually a private contract. It's privatized. So they are not paid directly by the federal government. They are paid through a contract. And that means they get paid while the TSA agents and the other airports don't. Does it make sense to privatize the entire thing? Maybe. Does it make sense to take these very essential employees and stop holding them hostage every time there's a fight over who knows what in Washington, DC?

7:15These shutdown fights are getting really, really ridiculous. And if you want to change policy, okay, don't do it on the backs of the employees, especially the ones that we need that are essential. But yeah, maybe the work around for that is we privatize all of them. And this story is interesting. AI is starting to freak a lot of people out in all different kinds of industries. Notably, people in the tech industry have started to realize they're the jobs that are going to be going first. A lot of coding jobs, a lot of, a lot of jobs to create all of this. Those are all going to be gobbled up by AI quicker than a lot of other jobs. And that is why you were seeing people who already have successful careers in tech enrolling in colleges like community colleges in certain vocational programs like auto repair mechanics just so they have a backup skill in case AI takes away their livelihood. And I think that's really, really smart.

8:16I think, no matter what line of work you're in, we don't know what the future holds. And it definitely helps to have some other skill set that you can fall back on that you could definitely make a living app. Before I got into radio, I worked in restaurants and I could definitely do that again if I had to. I could go work it in an out burger. I could be a waiter. I was a great waiter. Old enough now, I could probably be a decent bartender. So I have a few things I can fall back on because there's going to be an issue when AI takes so many jobs, only some of you are going to be able to make a living on only fans taking a picture of your feet. That's not going to be for everybody. So having a backup skill set is not necessarily a terrible idea. Here's something else that's not necessarily a terrible idea. Door dash is started a new pilot program in a half moon bay. They're calling it the loop service. And part of this is trying to eliminate all the waste that comes from to go ordering

9:21when it comes to to go containers. So they have figured out a reusable container that the door dasher brings to you. And then whenever you have the time, you bring those empty, dirty containers to a box in front of the restaurant that you ordered it from. This sounds like a decent idea. Maybe? I always thought compostable was the easier idea, like the paper to go boxes. It's interesting how we have all this plastic wear and we have even the paper straws that we have suck. Hawaii doesn't allow a lot of plastic and their compostable spoons and forks are fine. Their compostable straws are pretty great as well. But okay, let's say we're going into reusable plastic containers. I'm not totally opposed to that. Though I will say the places that give you deli containers is your takeout, I look forward to that because those are the best reusable containers you can have for your own life.

10:27We kind of a rule in this house, whenever somebody gets sick, the first thing we do is order fah because it is the magical soup that makes you feel better, especially when you add lots of sriracha, a little bit of hoisin, a little lime, but that ginger, beef broth, it is magical. But what's nice about at least the fah place that we order from and I do a little trick. This is my fah hack. I don't know if everywhere does this. One, I don't really care for the actual meat that's in the fah. I care about the meat broth and the rice noodles, but that's what I need to really cure me. So the cheap pieces of tendon, I don't really care about that. So I get just the plain broth with the noodles and then I order an extra broth, which you can do. And for like the price of one full meat special, I feel like I get two fuzz worth of everything that I could possibly want. But when you do that, they bring you two full-size deli soup containers and I reuse those

11:27all the time. They're the simplest ones, but I'm telling you, talk to any professional that does meal prep. They really are the best. So maybe that's the way to go is just when you get take out, you reuse your own Tupperware. But hey, I am all for less waste and zero waste. Now there's been a lot of talk about gas prices in the last week because of the war in Iran and spiking gas prices that were feeling especially hard in California because California is so dependent on foreign oil. And this has certain dealerships up and down the state of California seeing a spike in interest in fuel efficiency and electric cars. Because yeah, gas prices can be pretty unpredictable in this very unpredictable world. And there is a little bit of certainty knowing that it's not going to hurt as bad if you have a hybrid or a plug-in hybrid or a full-on EV.

12:28And I will say as a proud owner of an electric car, a realistic electric car because I have a single family home where I can charge it, it's pretty nice that I haven't had to go to the gas station this entire time when gas prices are getting out of control again. It's pretty nice. I only charge at night and I don't really see that much of a spike in my electric bill. I only have to charge my car about once a week. But electric cars have realistic limits. I use it for commuting and that's it. We have tried road tripping with it. It is tough. Depending on where you go, it's doable, especially if you know you're going to a hotel that's within your range and you know they have a charger, we did that once with Tori Pines. It was fine. But I can't tell you the stress from the time we took my electric car to wine country where there's a whole scatter shot of different charger companies and they all require an internet connection to activate and a lot of the Senniness Valley does not have good internet.

13:28So that was a mess. Honestly, if you had the option right now, plug in hybrid might be the way to go. My mother-in-law has one. She's got the Volvo X60 E60, I don't know. It has a plug in electric battery that goes for about 40 miles. But it also has a gas tank, so it can be used for anything. And if you're just doing you around the city driving, you will almost never, ever use the gas. So what she learned is don't fill the tank up all the way because she went so long without using the gas she got an old fuel in the tank warning in the car. But look, I like electric cars. I think the infrastructure has to change dramatically before they're practical for everyone. But one of the nice things is not having to worry about all these spikes with gasoline. The future is upon us everybody and I got two different stories here that are exciting

14:29and also frightening because there is a company called Jobi that is clearing the way with FAA commercial approval to be the first commercial grade air taxi. This thing can seat four people, it flies pretty low, so it's not as regulated as the actual aircraft. But the flying cars are coming, the flying cars are going to be here and I love the potential of it because wouldn't that eliminate so many traffic problems if now you're driving in 3D instead of just going left and right and up and down, you're also going vertical. Yes, that is true. But also considering the way people drive and having things in the air that can crash, that can scare me. But having it where it's a taxi or it's a professional flyer, I'm not opposed to that.

15:29It's one of those things where it's going to be scary until you do it and then you're like, wow. But the future is coming everyone, whether it's AI or the flying taxi or the straight-up flying car. Now the straight-up flying car which takes off vertically and lands vertically, very interesting. It currently only has a range of about 20 minutes. So the technology needs to emerge quite a bit, but it is coming. Get ready. In Oakland, the long, arduous process of searching for a new police chief has begun. Takes like a year every single time and then the police chief lasts about a year. It's just this repeating cycle over and over and over again. They've had like 12 chiefs in the last 10 years. And this is a silly story, but there's a whole lot of mania right now about the gold medalist figure skater, Alyssa Lou. And they had a big celebration for in Oakland. And apparently the Alyssa Lou mania is getting so crazy that a different woman who's also

16:31named Alyssa Lou who lives in the Bay area got banned from Instagram because someone thought she was trying to impersonate the figure skater. No, she just also happens to have that name. And when we go to Sacramento news, the fight has emerged once again between California and the federal government over Gavin Newsom's EV mandate. I just told you, I'm a big fan of electric cars. What I am not a fan of is Gavin Newsom's EV mandate. It should be the consumer's choice. And if it is ultimately a better and cheaper product like the ones that we won't import from China that are less than $10,000, but they're all over Europe and South America, then people might just automatically switch. But having this artificial date without any surety about what we do in the transition has been a disaster. Does California have the right to do so? Well, we'll find out when it heads to the Supreme Court. And speaking of technology, in the city of Tracy in San Joaquin, they have had some

17:36huge reductions in crime, thanks to something that a lot of cities we're seeing are having now, these real-time response centers where they can track all kinds of camera activity. It's almost like we have a bat cave at all of these police departments and they're tracking everything that goes on. It is quickening response times. It is making it so the police are able to catch someone when they're doing something is, you know, in and out is a burglary. So love seeing that. And in Sacramento, once again, in the fight over, how do we get more housing? The conversation begins of what we need to do is ban Airbnb's. And maybe that helps with a few homes here and there. But I don't know if that is the big fix that a lot of cities that it is because any city that has banned Airbnb's, well, they still have a whole bunch of problems when it comes to the cost of housing. That being said, last time I'd stayed at an Airbnb, I did not like it. We were in Puerto Rico and we were on the west side where all the beaches are and it

18:36was beautiful. And we stayed at this beach house and we were right on the water and it had little paddleboards and everything. But boy, the power kept going out and the guy who's supposed to manage the house wasn't around to turn on the generator and it got real hot and real humid, real fast. The second half of the trip, we spent in San Juan and guess what? We had a hotel and air conditioning and it was great. In San Diego, police are having a really hard time making arrests and filing cases when it comes to the organizers and the attendees of these illegal teen party houses where teenagers find a home that's for sale that's vacant, say we're going to have a party there, charge $10 at the cover and decide to destroy everything. And also in San Diego, an assembly member is looking to author a bill that would make it a lot harder for utilities to just straight up get a 10% return rate on all of their investments,

19:37which currently PG&E, SoCal Edison, SDG&E have and an audit of where their wildfire spending is actually going. And I love this story. In San Diego, high schoolers are starting to learn personal finance which will now be a required course for graduating high school. I love that. If you like, if I had that, I may not have ran up $20,000 in credit card debt by the time I was 22. And I probably still would have. That's today's California report, everybody. It's the news blitz with Randy Wang on K A B C I can't wait until I get home this afternoon because I'm doing steak for lunch and I'm doing steak on the sole layer. I buy these flat irons at lazy acres from first light farms and they're so perfect on the sole layer. I do two minutes on high on each side and then I do three minutes on low on each side and I rotate it so I get really nice cross hashing. I love this thing. It has got me grilling every week chicken, fish shrimp.

20:38That's also fish veggies steak. It does it all sausages. I love my solar infrared grill. It is a game changer and it is so fun to use. So I want you to check it out for yourself. Maybe it's time that you upgrade to a solar infrared grill. Find out. See if it makes sense for you. Go to the website, check out all the sizes and all the information you need at besthotgrill.com slash Randy. That's besthotgrill.com slash Randy. Every day excessive delays and denials from big insurance keep patients from accessing the care they need and when care is urgent these delays can be disastrous. These practices cost billions in wasteful spending driving up costs for American families but while big insurance put up barriers America's hospitals and health systems are in your corner navigating endless reviews and appeals to get you the care you need when you need it most. It's time to curb these harmful practices and put the focus back on patients. Talk to you by the coalition to strengthen America's health care.

21:40It's the news blitz with Randy Wang on K A B C and do I have something exciting for you a 790 K A B C welcomes Tyler Henry the Hollywood medium and evening of hope and healing at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center September 13th. Tickets are on sale now at AXS dot com, but right now call it number nine at one eight eight seven ninety five two two two gets a pair of tickets to the show tickets furnished by the canyon where music meets the soul good luck dialing now it's another short show for me today because the big 10 tournament continues UCLA won yesterday and they're going to be playing Michigan State right after this so enjoy have a great weekend if you watch the Oscars I'll be watching because I like Conan O'Brien enjoy that we'll see on Monday it's Randy Wang here the news blitz with Randy Wang weekdays from five to six on top radio seven ninety K A B C I can't wait until I get home this afternoon because I'm doing steak for lunch and I'm doing steak on the sole layer I buy these flood irons

22:44at lazy acres from first like farms and they're so perfect on the sole layer. I do two minutes on high on each side and then I do three minutes on low on each side and I rotate it so I get really nice cross hashing I love this thing it has got me grilling every week chicken fish shrimp that's also fish veggies steak it does it all sausages I love my solar infrared grill it is a game changer and it is so fun to use so I want you to check it out for yourself maybe it's time that you upgrade to a solar infrared grill find out see if it makes sense for you go to the website check out all the sizes and all the information you need at best hot grill dot com slash Randy that's best hot grill dot com slash Randy hey Adam divine here looking for a way to make a big change for all kids in your community just look for the balloon when you see the children's miracle

23:44that would balloon at your local store restaurant or gas station your donation provides crucial funds for local children's hospitals hospitals that provide life changing care for all kids children's miracle network hospitals partners programs and donors like you learn more at cmn dot org I can't wait until I get home this afternoon because I'm doing steak for lunch and I'm doing steak on the sole layer I buy these flat irons at lazy acres from first light farms and they're so perfect on the sole layer I do two minutes on high on each side and then I do three minutes on low on each side and I rotate it so I get really nice cross hashing I love this thing it has got me grilling every week chicken fish shrimp that's also fish veggies steak it does it all sausages I love my sole layer infrared grill it is a game changer and it is so fun to use so I want you to check it out for yourself

24:47maybe it's time that you upgrade to a sole layer infrared grill find out see if it makes sense for you go to the website check out all the sizes and all the information you need at best hot grill dot com slash randy that's best hot grill dot com slash randy