Supportive Housing

Re: Tom Petruno's column: "Obama bad for stocks? It's not that simple," March 7: Memo to Wall Street: Barack Obama is not George W. Bush. That fact may seem obvious, but not to the asset manager quoted in Petruno's column who worries when President Obama talks about something like healthcare rather than the banking crisis. The previous occupant of the White House seemed unable to focus on more than one topic at a time.

The GOP-led House is expected to push through a payroll tax cut package Tuesday that is dead on arrival in the Senate as Congress races a year-end deadline to keep the tax break for 160 million American workers that expires at the end of the year. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) appears poised to win over reluctant rank-and-file Republicans who have opposed keeping the payroll tax break, which gives workers an additional $1,000 on average. To attract votes, the package was sweetened with GOP priorities -- key among them, a provision to advance the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The Thousand Oaks Planning Commission voted to recommend that the city allow 69 houses to be built on 41 acres near Sunset Hills Boulevard and Avenida Amaranto. Last May the commission rejected the project by General Procurement Co. because the stability of the site was questioned. Monday night, the developer presented a revised tract design that passed 4 to 1. Commissioner Marilyn Carpenter opposed the project. The project now goes to the City Council for final review.

"People talk of change in the House of Lords," the 2nd Baron Denham said, "but the remarkable thing is how much it has remained the same." Denham, the senior Conservative Party peer, was talking with a reporter the other day amid the clutter of his cramped office, and although he was referring specifically to his four decades in the upper chamber of Parliament, many would agree that his assessment also applies to the past 700 years.

City officials announced an ambitious 10-year plan Wednesday aimed at one of the nation's most intractable homelessness problems, saying they hope to "abolish chronic homelessness" by replacing emergency shelters with permanent housing that includes supportive services.

The White House on Thursday claimed "growing support" in the House for a new Republican plan to aid the Nicaraguan Contras but indicated a willingness to compromise with Democratic leaders who were trying to put down a liberal rebellion against their own proposal. "I think that, on a bipartisan basis, everybody wants to work out an acceptable plan that can be passed, and I think that's probably the course it's going to take," White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

In an unusual alliance, environmentalists and homeowners Thursday endorsed a developer's plan to build 550 houses, a church and a shopping center in a mountainous area of Calabasas, part of which is officially designated a sensitive ecological area. After more than four years of debate that led to major concessions by developer Jim Baldwin, the formerly antagonistic factions declared a truce before members of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission.

With the dedication of Villa Calleguas this month, the mental health community celebrated a milestone in the effort to meet the housing needs of the mentally ill in Ventura County. The Villa Calleguas complex in Camarillo provides 23 new one-bedroom apartments for the mentally ill. The Ventura County Behavioral Health Department provides the necessary support services on-site to help residents live as independently as possible.

Paving the way for an urban village of hundreds of apartments and shops next to North Hollywood's subway station, an MTA committee unanimously recommended on Thursday that the agency enter into an exclusive deal with an Orange County development team. The proposed project, the second for the last northern stop on the Red Line, would create a $90-million pedestrian-friendly, multistory complex of up to 534 residential units and 28,000 feet of retail space.

A key House committee voted Wednesday to renew an ambitious and politically contentious program to rescue the sickly Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California's main watershed. But the committee also put the state on notice to greatly reduce its use of Colorado River water or face a draconian cutback. Rep. James V. Hansen (R-Utah) added a last-minute amendment to a bill sponsored by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Riverside) and Rep. Calvin M.