'Catastrophe' or 'new era'? Mail shake-up at L.A. public housing complex alarms residents

[TomCADem]

Some on the extreme right have argued that if people receive any type of public benefits, they should forfeit their right to vote. Well, it looks like Trump is taking unilateral action to implement this. This is why it may not matter if Biden/Harris are leading in the polls if Trump is sabotaging the mail and sending militia and law enforcement to the polls to suppress the vote.

Go to the courts you say? Sorry, the Roberts court will be happy to get to it sometime in 2021.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-20/mail-delivery-mar-vista-gardens

Renters at the Mar Vista Gardens public housing complex were skeptical as Roderick Strong laid out the plan: Instead of getting mail delivered to their doors, residents would pick it up at new, centralized spots around the 43-acre community in Del Rey, a Los Angeles neighborhood west of Culver City.

Strong, the Culver City Post Office postmaster, called the new system “the launch of a new era.” He said the shift was being considered to ensure the safety of mail carriers who had been menaced by dog bites and other threats.

Few tenants seemed swayed, however, as they listened by phone and the web during a remote meeting on a recent weekday. Daisy Vega, president of the resident advisory council, asked Strong why such a change was being planned for their housing complex and not for “the other side of town.”

“They’re only doing it in an area for the poor,” Ground Game L.A. organizer José Estrada, who works with tenants at the complex, said in Spanish during a later interview, complaining that there had been no public analysis of the proposed change or consultation with the community. “And why now? Is it because the elections are coming?”

[Hoyt]

1. To be fair, almost everywhere I have lived -- including my current house -- had community mailboxes.

In fact, I think most new neighborhoods have gone community mailboxes.

[aquamarina]

2. Down here in Orange County nearly every complex -

apartment, condo, townhouse and single family homes have cluster mail boxes. It's much easier for the mail delivery person to use these instead of having to go house to house. I've lived in California for 25+ years and I've never had mail delivered to my house unless it was a box that didn't fit in the cluster mail box.

[Hestia]

3. Dallas apt complexes does it this way too. If too big, you had to go to the office to p/u pkg

Doesn't Canada (or at least Ottawa) deliver the mail this way also?

[Doreen]

4. My friend lives in a well off neighborhood and has always had to walk a few blocks to her mailbox.

If they are "actually" doing it for the mailpersons safety and better management of time for their routes it makes sense. However, at this time that is not the reason. You have to also remember that most apartment complexes have community mailboxes and at some you have a ways to go to get there.