Why Does John Erickson Hate West Hollywood Homeowners?

West Hollywood City Councilmember John Erickson has a tell. Watch him long enough and you’ll see it. The minute a homeowner, especially the dreaded single-family homeowner, disagrees with him on housing issues, said homeowner stops being a constituent and manages to become a suspect. To hear Erickson tell it, owning property is a character flaw, worthy of his disdain and dismissal.

It happened again Monday night. City council was debating whether to table item C4 pending FPPC guidance on Councilmember Byers’ potential conflict of interest. Councilmember Meister’s position was simple and procedural: state law wasn’t requiring a vote that night, the FPPC typically responds in 21 business days, and the item could wait. That was it. A three-week pause. Erickson twisted her words to fit his NIMBY narrative into something else entirely. “It may not be crucial to you,” he said, “but to build more housing in this city, and to make sure that we’re doing all that we can to do that, to remove obstacles is critical. I know, as a homeowner who’s set up for the rest of her life, you might not have that burden, but people in this city want to make sure they’re good.” He took a procedural disagreement about a three-week window and twisted it into a verdict on her character. The selfish, money-grubbing homeowner doesn’t give a damn about anyone but herself. Oh, and that opinion you have? It counts for less. 

Set up for the rest of your life – because you carry a mortgage? Gimme a break.

That was the argument. Not the merits of the 21-day delay. Not the FPPC question itself. Her bank account, as he imagines it, disqualifies her opinion. And by extension, everyone else in this city who happens to own a home — all 20 percent of them.

It’s a hell of a flex. A junior, male colleague dressing down a woman who’s been serving this community since before he unpacked his first box — a West Hollywood resident and advocate for nearly two decades before she was even elected — because she owns her home. Seriously? That’s not an argument. It’s passive aggressive populism and lazy, cheap shot class-baiting. It’s the same Trumpian tactics Erickson is quick to call out in others, yet can’t manage to see in the mirror.

It would be interesting to be in the room when the councilmember and candidate stands in front of a Senate District 24 crowd — 45 percent of whom own their homes — and explains why their mortgage disqualifies their judgment. Pick your venue. Malibu. Beverly Hills. Santa Monica. Manhattan Beach. Torrance, maybe?  Tell them their property values make them part of the problem and see how that lead balloon lands.

There’s no debating that Erickson takes a lot of heat, online and off. Some of it unfair. Much of it though, I’m discovering, he brings on himself. I’ve only been closely following him for the past eight months, and I’m often stunned by his disdain and disrespect for anyone who disagrees with him, especially homeowners. It reeks of Trumpian pettiness that often leaves him looking like a bullying baby in a room full of adults. 

Part of what’s driving this, I think, is real and relatable. Lots of people can’t afford to buy in West Hollywood. I couldn’t either, for a long time. That’s a genuinely frustrating thing to sit with, especially when you’re showing up every day trying to solve a housing crisis in a city where you yourself can’t afford to put down roots. I get it. But at some point frustration stops being an explanation and starts being an excuse. At an April 6 council meeting on TODAP, Erickson said it himself: “I can’t afford to buy a house in West Hollywood because of its restrictive zoning.” Nonsense. He said that night that he’ll never be able to own a home here, and then framed TODAP supporters as people protecting their own property values at the expense of the next generation. More nonsense. Forgetting that plenty of residents who rent also want a TODAP and that owning a home isn’t a measure of your worth. At least not the kind of worth that matters. He said it to a room full of people who weren’t living on easy street — who is these days? It included renters of 39 years. Seniors on fixed incomes. People who’d spent decades saving for a modest place in the Norma Triangle.

Go back to the Fountain Avenue bike lane battle. Residents showed up to raise concerns about the redesign that will eliminate more than 60 percent of on-street parking. Erickson’s response was his tendency to once again dismiss with disrespect. “Frankly, a lot of the people coming to advocate against this… have single family homes, and driveways, and two car garages. I mean, I know where you live. It’s a small town, so don’t sit there and think that we don’t know that you don’t live on Fountain Avenue.” Same script, different day. Homeowner equals money-grubbing obstacle. That obstacle equals someone whose imagined success outweighs their right to be heard. It’s not a slip of the tongue. It’s a worldview, and he seems to keep reaching for it whenever a homeowner gets in his way.

A lot of the same homeowners Erickson casts as the enemy of progress are not landlords sitting on fat portfolios. They’re middle-class residents and retirees who bought decades ago. They’re folks who saved for years and maybe caught a break in the market. Last I checked, owning a home isn’t a character flaw. It means you worked hard, you saved and you sacrificed. It means nothing more, nothing less. When did that stop being enough? Or, in this case, too much?

In Meister’s closing comments Monday night, she dropped some interesting receipts.

West Hollywood’s homeownership rate is 20 percent. Senate District 24, the seat Erickson is running for, it’s 45 percent. Median property value here is $1.1 million. In SD-24, it’s $1.5 million. “At 20%, homeowners are not the problem,” she said.

Erickson’s asking voters in a district where homeownership runs more than double West Hollywood’s rate to send him to Sacramento. The people he keeps demonizing as the big, bad NIMBY boogeyman of the housing crisis are literally the same people he needs to win in November. You can’t spend years treating homeowners in your own city like the enemy and then show up in Malibu and Manhattan Beach asking for their vote.

Homeowners in West Hollywood are not the villains in today’s housing conversation and they never have been. Erickson would do well to remember that. It’s gonna be a hard sell in a district where 45 percent of the people he’s asking for a vote own their home – or more accurately – carry a mortgage.

The casual disrespect toward a female colleague who was fighting for this community before he ever unpacked a box in California won’t help him much either. Voters, and women in particular tend to notice that, even when cocky politicians don’t think they do. But what do I know. I’m just a homeowner.