Letters

Jay also was described in your piece as “socially inept” and as a manager who did not “know how to deal with employees.” In my experience, the opposite captures the truth. Throughout the paper and not just in the editorial department, Jay hired a fascinating, diverse, creative and innovative group of employees, whom he managed with respect even if he did not always agree with ‰ their points of view. Jay was seen by me and by most others as a man of exceptional honesty and integrity, someone who cared about his staff, who protected them when possible, who was tolerant, open-minded, and who nurtured aspiring, talented young people in a variety of vocations. And when the Weeklywas sold, Jay gave the employees a bonus out of his own money.

Jay, like all of us, has his weaknesses as well as strengths and has made his share of errors. However, in summary, your article inexplicably and weirdly denigrates his accomplishment at running a complex, paradoxical but viable business.

Best wishes for continued success.

—Karen L. Fund
Beverly Hills

WEHO’S WOES

Your article on West Hollywood’s strong rent-control laws, “Founding Fathers and Renters: Why West Hollywood still matters” [December 12–18], states that the city of West Hollywood is a “progressive government at work,” but the reality of what 20 years of strong rent-control laws has left us with is quite different.

Twenty years later, we now know that we are left with crumbling and deteriorating apartment buildings that landlords and owners refuse to properly maintain due to the low rents the city forces them to charge. We’re also left with virtually no new fair-market apartments built in the city of West Hollywood. Developers would have to be crazy to invest and build in such a hostile climate.

Additionally, rent control has trapped people living in West Hollywood in their crumbling apartments until they die. It has also basically forced landlords and tenants to treat each other with incredible hostility. We are left with an overcrowded situation, with many poor people living here who cannot afford to patronize our own businesses, and those that do want to come here and shop have no place to park.

It would also be useful to know that the people who wrote West Hollywood’s strong rent-control laws didn’t do it out of any “progressive higher mission,” but rather for their own selfish reasons of paying undermarket rent. Decades later, many of the original rent-control supporters are still living in their undermarket rent-controlled apartments, and yes, many of them are millionaires. Is it any wonder that no other community that I know of has modeled its cities on West Hollywood’s experiment and model of failure?

—James Fuhrman
West Hollywood

WE STAND CORRECTED

Marc Cooper [“The Killing Years,” December 12–18] misidentifies one of the “Jesuit martyrs” (the six priests massacred at Central American University in San Salvador in November 1989). Mr. Cooper refers to “Juan Ramon Medrano.” The priest’s name was Juan Ramon Moreno Pardo.

—Carlos Colorado
Downey

In our interview with author Alexandro Jodorowsky in the Comics issue [“In the Heart of the Universe,” January 2–8], Jodorowsky was cited as an almost-85-year-old when in fact he is an almost-70-year-old. (Oh, to be young again.)