I don’t know if they are crooks, but they are assholes.
Criminalizing homelessness, pretty much every sittable surface in the city is partitioned to discourage people from lying down, information about where to go for support is nearly non existant, you’d just have to know about the homeless center that’s far far outside the city in the industrial section. Abusing eminient domain laws to out longstanding businesses. A corner market that existed for decades was razed to make a single house, Antique dealers were kicked out of their shops and forced to band together in one location to stay alive while their old locations remained vacant for more “affluent” businesses.
I bet the amount of money done to gentrify this city to make it more like Orange County is ridiculous.