So why is Hunter Biden moving from his $25,000 a month Venice digs?
In a pretty intriguing development, Joe Biden's son, Hunter, is moving from his tony Venice, California, digs.
According to the Daily Mail:
Hunter Biden appears to have moved out of the luxury $5.4million home he was renting in Venice Beach, California amid a crime and homelessness wave that has hit the beach-front Los Angeles city.
The son of President Joe Biden was reportedly paying $25,000 a month to rent the three-story property on the Venice canals - just a block away from the beach.
But on Monday, DailyMail.com spotted a moving truck outside the palatial home with furniture being loaded into it. Father-of-five Hunter, 51, moved into the stylish property with wife Melissa and their son Beau at the end of 2020.
The Daily Mail speculates that it's because of the homeless, who've taken over the rich-hippie enclave, reaching even the gates of Hunter's part, describing scenes like this:
Secret Service officers sitting outside of Hunter's home have had to contend with the stench from a small encampment on the other side of a parking lot.
The tent city itself has its dramas just like any other human settlement. Last month a 30-year-old woman from Virginia gave birth in one of the oceanfront camps, the Venice Current reported.
A homeless man was shot and injured on April 28. The gunman calmly walked away. The victim is not cooperating with police. Earlier the same week a tent was deliberately set on fire. One local woman talks of how she was chased by a man with a sword.
The place has been sporting scenes like this:
And the neighbors had welcomed him, not because they like his politics and celebrity status, but because of the Secret Service agents he brings in tow. Supposedly, the agents' presence helps keep the crime and squalor and panhandling associated with the homeless down.
As I wrote here when he moved in:
Hunter Biden's neighbors are happy to see him there, not because of his politics, which is a nothingburger over there, but because of his security.
They like him there because of the quasi police he has tagging around with him as he makes his rounds.
Here's the buried lede from the Daily Mail, taken from pure street reporting. Here are what three of the locals are saying, emphasis mine:
Ricky Otterstrom, senior vice president of Ryker Flint, a commercial real estate brokerage, has lived in Venice Beach for 15 years, tells DailyMail.com: 'I see Hunter Biden's secret service parked out front of his house every morning when I walk to the beach to surf.
'They are there 24/7 which is a plus for us here on the Venice Canals. We need the extra security considering the amount of crime we have. Interestingly the homeless people who were living up along the street he now lives on are gone.
'It could be a coincidence or the city had them removed because of Hunter. I think his presence will help clean up the area and I hope he gets involved with the community. It's a tight community with great people.'
So if the Daily Mail is right, that didn't work. The Secret Service was nothing compared to the homeless onslaught on Venice. The homeless reportedly are rolling in from Los Angeles's Skid Row, which is 19.9 miles away. And in that "community," there are 40,000 of them, with Google itself defining Skid Row as the "homeless capital of the country."
As for Venice, a small tony enclave of 28,000, they've got 2,000 of them at last count, quite possibly more now:, according to KTLA:
The numbers were already increasing before the pandemic: 2020 data showed a 57% increase in the number of homeless people in Venice over the previous year — far greater than the increase in the city as a whole, which was 16.1%.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen in 20 years,” Venice resident John Betz told KTLA.
The laws being applied are such that the city cannot remove them unless it can offer them housing accommodations. With Hunter himself paying a reported $25,000 a month for his housing, and the average per capita income of Venice residents at $94,000 a pop, rest assured, the housing offering would have to be luxury housing.
Now, the original Daily Mail report is speculative as to the homeless takeover is the actual reason why Hunter is moving. Hunter hasn't said anything. And the reasons he's leaving could be a bit more embarrassing.
Did the man of uncertain income but a taste for luxury skip out on his rent? It's true nobody's being evicted as a result of COVID in California, but who knows what the deal is at Hunter's lofty housing levels. The Mail reports his rent at $25,000 a month. Dirt, a celebrity real estate website, reports it at $17,500 a month. Hunter reportedly got a $2 million payout for a book almost nobody bought about his drug-fueled lifestyle, which kind of looked like a bribe. He also got a tony New York gallery showing of his blowpipe art, which also could be some kind of money-laundering. Did some of the money not come through? One wonders, now that Joe Biden is suddenly getting tough on China, one of Hunter's cash cows. Who knows? Someone will have to investigate.
There are other possibilities, too -- did Hunter violate some term of the lease, such as not using drugs and creating a ruckus? Based on New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan's observations, he seems to be still in denial on his "habit.' Could he have been causing problems for the neighbors? With Hunter, let's just say that he's not too far removed from the same world of social disintegration he's purportedly leaving.
According to Los Angeles magazine:
Biden—who recounts spending time “living in $59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself” in his new addiction memoir, Beautiful Things—has upgraded his accommodations.
According to celebrity real estate news site Dirt, Biden’s 3,800-square-foot rental was purchased by Sweetgreen co-founder Jonathan Neman and Leora Kadisha, daughter of Omninet Capital billionaire Neil Kadisha, for $4.85 million in 2017 and they’ve been trying to rent or sell it for the last few years.
Listed by Halton Pardee + Partners as a “bespoke atelier,” Biden’s villa is a long way from the fly-specked plasterboard and sticky linoleum hideouts of his literary debut, with its marble floors beneath 25-foot acoustic ceilings, combined kitchen and dining space—where the utilitarian elements are hidden behind fine wooden cabinets—and canal views from an attached balcony.
Another clue is where he's taking his gypsy camp next. Is it to fancier digs, onward and upward, as his Venice move from the Hollywood Hills (rent there only $12,000 a month) late last year, or else is it a red-state haven from leftist crime and taxes, as normal Californians are doing? Is it a gated community for the superrich where tabloid reporters can't shout questions to him and bums can't spare change him or wave knives? It probably makes a difference. With old pop president, it's quite possible his "earnings" have gone up, so where he goes will probably tell us the most about why he's doing it.
In any case, Hunter's gone, the Secret Service detail is gone, and now the residents of Venice have one less measure of protection as the homeless continue to roll in. If the homeless were what drove Hunter out, it signals that the rich have their privileges and don't put up with leftist squalor the way ordinary rich leftists do. Bidens know how to take care of their own, so Venice is out.
Image: Screen shot from video by Peter Santenello, posted on shareable YouTube.
L.A. County Sheriff: Homicides Up 95% over 2020; Will Issue More Conceal Carry Permits
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva revealed Wednesday that homicides were up 95% this year over the same period in 2020, and said his department would issue more concealed carry permits to let citizens to defend themselves.
In an Instagram Live post, Villanueva revealed the grim numbers, as the region joined America’s ongoing crime wave:
The county ended 2020 with a 36% increase overall in violent crime, Villanueva said, making the increase in violent crimes thus far in 2021 all the more striking. “All huge numbers, all very, very troublesome.” He said that the rise in crime was an “existential threat,” along with homelessness and the passage of poorly conceived criminal justice reform.
He said the crime was worst in African American and Latino communities, and criticized the county’s Board of Supervisors for failing to address the issue.
Recognizing that the threat of crime to residents was increasing, Villanueva said, the department would accelerate the issuing of “carry a concealed weapon” (CCW) permits.
The Biden administration, when asked about the nationwide crime wave, has cited guns as the problem. But to Villanueva, at least, guns among law-abiding citizens maybe part of the solution, providing protection police cannot.
Villanueva has been a consistent opponent of efforts by Democrats to “defund the police,” and noted the LASD had been forced to cut 1310 positions in the past year, after being cut by $145 million, with $143 million more in cuts coming.
He spoke out against the Board’s support for “Measure J,” a referendum that passed in 2020 to provide “alternatives to incarceration” and fight “racial injustice” through 10% of the country’s budget.
Villanueva also disagreed with local leaders’ attempts to spend more money on housing for the homeless, saying it would attract more homeless from other states.
The sheriff has signed a recall petition aimed at George Soros-backed, left-wing L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón, who has pursued criminal justice reforms, over prosecutors’ objections, even as crime has soared in the county.
He also said Wednesday that L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti needed to explain why he had failed to “regulate public space” to stop homelessness, saying it was a question he needed to answer before leaving for “India,” where he is rumored to be the next U.S. ambassador.
He also criticized City Council member Mike Bonin for attempting to interfere with policing homelessness. Bonin is proposing to use beach parking facilities to house the homeless, a proposal residents oppose.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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