Key Los Angeles City Council committees on Tuesday approved a sweeping rezoning plan that would concentrate new market-rate and affordable housing along commercial streets and existing residential areas.
The initiative is in response to state housing regulations aimed at easing the housing crisis by requiring cities to find land to build an additional 255,000 homes and come up with plans by mid-February.
During several hours of public comment, members of the Planning and Land Use Control Commission spoke to Angeleno residents who want to preserve the single-family residential district and open the area to further development to reduce economic and racial segregation. We listened to the voices of residents who wanted to do so.
“We need affordable housing everywhere, in every neighborhood,” said Maria Patiño Gutierrez, policy director for the nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.
Patricia Carroll, a resident of St. Andrews Square in downtown Los Angeles, told the committee that although she lives in an apartment complex, she likes to walk through neighborhoods with single-family homes, lawns, and trees. he said.
“If this were to go away… L.A. would be a very sad place to live,” Carroll said.
Ultimately, the commission voted 4-0 to approve the City Planning Commission’s recommendation to largely leave the zone reserved for single-family homes.
The proposal is still subject to amendment by the full City Council, and some council members who are not members of the PLUM committee have expressed interest in changing course when it comes to single-family residential zones.
“By opening up some of these neighborhoods to some new housing, we are reducing the racial segregation in the city that policymakers have often imposed on this city,” City Councilor Nitya Raman told the committee. “It will be a step towards reversing the pattern.”
As currently written, the proposed citywide housing incentive program would allow developers to build more housing than is currently allowed in commercial zones and residential areas where apartments are already allowed. It will be possible to construct. To do so, developers must include a certain percentage of affordable properties, and those properties must be near transit or on major thoroughfares close to work or good schools.
100% affordable projects are eligible for the city’s extensive incentives.
The incentives apply to single-family residential areas only if the properties are owned by a public agency or faith-based organization, which represents only a small portion of the city’s single-family lots.
Some tenant advocates worried that opening up existing multifamily areas to large new developments would lead to the demolition of existing buildings and a wave of evictions.
These advocates are calling for further restrictions on demolition, which the Planning Department says could significantly reduce new housing construction, including those mandated to be affordable to low-income households. He said that there is a sex.
The PLUM Committee did not adopt these additional restrictions, but recommended requiring a report to study them.
In a letter to city officials, the California Department of Housing and Community Development warned that these additional restrictions could prevent cities from complying with state housing laws.
However, the PLUM committee made some changes despite such warnings.
The commission passed an amendment that would reduce the number of homes per lot that faith-based organizations can build under the program.
The Western Regional Council of Carpenters, along with some council members, will allow faith-based organizations that build homes to take advantage of city incentive programs that do not require union-level wages instead of taking advantage of new state laws that: He expressed concern that he might choose to do so. If nonprofit universities and faith-based organizations pay such wages, they can build incentives.
“We cannot solve the housing crisis by pushing construction workers into poverty,” carpenter Nicolas Reyes told the committee.
Brooke Wilshafter, community organizing director for the Jewish congregation IKAR, told the committee that IKAR is considering building as many as 78 units of affordable housing.
He urged the city to keep the faith-based proposal as originally proposed. That would “increase opportunities for congregations to build housing, especially in resource-rich areas.”
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