Council and Committee Referral – November 30, 2018

18-0624-S1
CD 12
 Zelzah Avenue Improvements Project
To Council (tentatively scheduled for December 7, 2018)
Motion (Englander – Buscaino) – Relative to amending the Council action of September 18, 2018 to set in place the full amount of funding needed to complete the Zelzah Avenue Improvements Project.
18-1162
CD 4
 Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) proposed amendments
To Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee
Resolution (Ryu – Krekorian – Koretz) – Resolve that the City hereby states its position regarding the implementation of Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) proposed amendments and urges the FAA to engage in constructive dialogue with the City and its residents to achieve a safe, equitable, and environmentally reasoned alternative to the proposed procedures.
14-1635-S2  Short-term rental enforcement trust fund.
To Housing Committee
To Planning and Land Use Management Committee
City Attorney report R18-0365, dated November 30, 2018, relative to amending sections of the Los Angeles Municipal Code to establish regulations to the home sharing of primary residences and adding a new section to the Los Angeles Administrative Code to create a short-term rental enforcement trust fund.
14-1057-S7  Use of a vehicle as a dwelling on City streets
To Homelessness and Poverty Committee
Motion (Harris-Dawson – Bonin) – Request the City Attorney to prepare and present an Ordinance to extend Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 85.02, regulating the use of a vehicle as a dwelling on City streets, for six months.

Regulating Accessory Dwelling Units in accordance with State law

CPC- 2016- 4345- CA          ENV- 2016- 4346- CE   AT CITY PLANNING COMMISSION 11/29/2018    CONTINUED FROM 07/12/18, 10/11/18

Staff Report to City Planning Commission:  November 29, 2018

PROPOSED PROJECT : An ordinance amending Sections 12.03 and 12.22 and repealing portions of Section 12.24 of Chapter 1 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) for the purpose of regulating Accessory Dwelling Units in accordance with State law.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS: 1. Recommend that the City Council determine, based on the whole of the administrative record, that the Project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) pursuant to Public Resources Code 21080.17 and CEQA Guidelines Sections 15061(b)(3), 15301, 15302 and 15303, and there is no substantial evidence demonstrating that an exception to a categorical exemption pursuant to CEQA Guidelines, Section 15300.2 applies; 2. Pursuant to Section 12.32 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, approve the proposed ordinance and recommend its adoption by the City Council; 3. Adopt the staff report as the Commission’s report on the subject; and 4. Adopt the Findings.

Applicant: City of Los Angeles Staff: Matthew Glesne, City Planner matthew.glesne@lacity.org (213) 978- 2666

Article: The rise of the ‘meanwhile space’: how empty properties are finding second lives

A market at Les Grands Voisins in Paris, formerly the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital.
A market at Les Grands Voisins in Paris, formerly the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital. Photograph: –

Hospitals are rarely places of cheer and creativity, but the former Saint-Vincent-de-Paul hospital in Paris’s 14th district is one of the most exciting places on the left bank. Former ambulance bays and car parks now house allotments, a boules court, a makeshift football pitch and an urban campsite, and up to 1,000 visitors a day come to browse its market, eat at its cafes or catch a free live performance.

Renamed Les Grands Voisins, or The Great Neighbours, the site is a magnet for Parisians and tourists alike, its former treatment rooms, A&E building and wards now a hub of social and commercial enterprise. Alongside a hostel providing 600 beds for the homeless are artisan studios, pop-up shops and startups.

“It’s like a village, an inclusive space with social areas and job opportunities where different people can interact,” says William Dufourcq, director of Aurore, the charity that runs the homeless shelter. “We were overwhelmed with its success.”

Closed since 2011, the hospital is slated for redevelopment into a new neighbourhood with eco credentials, private and social housing, shops, commercial and public facilities and green space. Planning, clearance and construction on such a large scale takes time and, rather than leave the 3.4-hectare site empty for years, the developer, Paris Batignolles Aménagement, opened it to local organisations rent-free. The lease was scheduled to end this year, but has been extended until mid-2020 while construction begins on other parts of the site.

Parisians enjoy the sunshine at Les Grands Voisins.
Parisians enjoy the sunshine at Les Grands Voisins

Les Grands Voisins is an example of a “meanwhile space”: a disused site temporarily leased or loaned by developers or the public sector to local community groups, arts organisations, start-ups and charities. Calls for making use of such spaces in other crowded urban centres are getting louder. A report published in October by the thinktank Centre for London highlights both the need for and positive possibilities of utilising empty urban sites and how this could transform the landscape of cities around the globe.

“The aim was to show the value ‘meanwhile use’ can add in cities where there is pressure on space,” says Nicolas Bosetti, one of the report researchers. He says public and private operators in Paris are more ambitious than those in London in exploring the use of disused buildings from metro stations to former nightclubs for short-term use as charity and cultural venues.

Other meanwhile spaces in Paris include Exelmans, a former police residence repurposed as a shelter for the homeless and refugees, run by Aurore on a two-year lease, and the Parmentier electricity substation, where the art collective La Générale has operated since 2008.

The substation, which is soon to be redeveloped, was included in Paris Reinvented, an initiative from the mayor’s office currently in its second year. Disused public sites are put up for auction to developers and architects who compete with plans for their redevelopment. “Les Grands Voisins showed how something like this can change an area and help plan future urban projects,” says Marion Waller, adviser to Paris’s deputy mayor for urban planning. “We didn’t want to sell buildings to the highest bidder but to the most innovative solution.”

A community graden at Les Grands Voisins.
The idea of loaning empty urban spaces to worthwhile causes is gaining ground elsewhere, with thriving projects in the Danish city of Aarhus and Philadelphia in the US, where it’s called “temporary urbanism”. However, in space-squeezed London, urban sites can remain empty for years, mainly because they have no obvious commercial potential or are waiting for permission to be developed.

The Centre for London found that an estimated 24,400 commercial properties in London are currently empty, with around half having been unused for more than two years. The total available vacant space, 6.5m sq metres, is equivalent to 27 times the footprint of Westfield London, Europe’s largest shopping centre. The majority of such places are owned by local authorities and developers. “Only one of 33 London borough councils publishes a database of vacant property and only one council keeps a list of groups interested in vacant spaces,” says Bosetti.

Bosetti thinks property owners could do more to match available sites with needy groups but says local authorities are afraid of squatters or allowing in destructive elements. “One of the main barriers to meanwhile use is the perception that hoarding a site is safer,” he says. “Often the opposite is true. Opening a site to a community and encouraging interaction with residents usually sees a reduction in antisocial activity.”

Squatting and vandalism are more likely if a building remains empty for too long, so one benefit of temporary tenants is the reduction in security costs. Another, according to Simon Hesketh, director of regeneration with the British developer U+I, is the connection a meanwhile space can forge with the community prior to redevelopment.

“We’ll try to organise events in temporary spaces for the widest cross-section of residents, to get their views and ask what they’d like and what works,” he says. “Not just to smooth the planning process, but because we can learn what we might include in our proposals.”

A former fire engine workshop on Lambeth High Street in London is temporarily hosting the Migration Museum and the Fire Brigade Museum.
 U+I, one of the sponsors of the Centre for London report, has already leased several sites awaiting redevelopment to small businesses and community organisations for temporary use. Hesketh acknowledges property owners worry about reclaiming the space when the tenancy ends but says everyone involved needs to be clear that the situation is temporary.

The Migration Museum in Lambeth is currently occupying part of the former engine workshop for the London fire service. “Having this site has been totally transformative for us,” says director Sophie Henderson. “It has allowed us to prove the concept of what we’re doing, while we look for a permanent home.”

The building is slated for redevelopment by U+I into a mixed-use scheme but is still going through the planning process. Until construction starts, the museum is one of several thriving community organisations granted the option to use it. “It’s been a tremendous gift,” says Henderson. “We couldn’t possibly have done what we have in the past year without it.”

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Council and Committee Referrals – November 21 2018

18-1128  Citywide capital project management system
To Budget and Finance Committee
Motion (Englander for Huizar – Bonin) – Instruct the City Administrative Officer, in consultation with various departments, to report on the feasibility of implementing a Citywide capital project management system.
16-1341-S1
CD 12
Porter Ranch Land Use/Transportation Specific Plan
To Planning and Land Use Management Committee
City Attorney report R18-0350, dated November 20, 2018, relative to a draft Ordinance amending the Porter Ranch Land Use/Transportation Specific Plan to permit signage otherwise not permitted within the specific plan.

Council and Committee Referrals – November 20, 2018

18-1118
CD 2
 City’s Interim Motel Conversion Ordinance and Permanent Supportive Housing
To Council (tentatively scheduled for November 27, 2018)
Motion (Krekorian – Koretz) – Authorize the City Attorney to accept the assistance to the City by the United Way in the form of a direct payment to the law firm of Remy, Moose, Manley for paralegal support to defend the City’s Interim Motel Conversion Ordinance and Permanent Supportive Housing Ordinance.

 

18-1114
CD 7, 14
 Comprehensive list of all hillside streets
To Public Works and Gang Reduction Committee
Motion (Huizar – Englander for Rodriguez – Ryu) – Instruct the Bureaus of Engineering and Street Services to report with a comprehensive list of all hillside streets which cannot be resurfaced because they require design and engineering intervention, the resources necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of these hillside streets and a work plan to address them.

 

17-0274  Expenditure of Linkage Fee revenue
To Housing Committee
To Personnel and Animal Welfare Committee
To Planning and Land Use Management Committee
City Administrative Officer report 0220-000540-1308, dated November 19, 2018, relative to the request to adopt guidelines for the Expenditure of Linkage Fee revenue.

Council and Committee Referral – November 16, 2018

18-1101
CD 5
 Westwood Village Specific Plan
To Planning and Land Use Management Committee
Motion (Koretz – Harris-Dawson) – Instruct the Planning Department to prepare a report in 90 days that identifies options for amending the Westwood Village Specific Plan to revise definitions of food related establishments; the restrictions on the types and number of such establishments; and parking requirements within the Plan.

Bi-Weekly Case Filings Web Map

Los Angeles City Planning has created a new feature:  (Select to see)

Also see SATT Version (Select to see)

Located on the ‘Case Reports’ link, the Bi-Weekly Entitlement Case Filings Web Map displays discretionary entitlement case filings that were received by the Department of City Planning within a specified two week reporting period. The information allows users to review discretionary entitlement cases filed during the course of the previous two months. Each entry contains a project address, description, and the type of entitlement request, along with other jurisdictional information such as corresponding Community Plan Area, Council District, and Neighborhood Council. The case number is linked to PDIS for additional information as well as related case information.

 

Bi-Weekly Case Filings Map

Multiple Approvals applications

CF 18-0807       AT CITY COUNCIL  11/21/2018

PLANNING AND LAND USE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE REPORT relative to clarifying jurisdictional procedures over all conditions of approval for entitlement applications that include multiple approvals.

Recommendation for Council action, pursuant to Motion (Huizar – Blumenfield):

INSTRUCT the Department of City Planning, in consultation with the City Attorney, to prepare and present an ordinance to submit for Council review and approval, an amendment to the Los Angeles Municipal Code in a manner that clarifies the authority of the Council in its prevailing jurisdiction over all conditions of approval for Multiple Approvals applications wherein legislative approval is required.

Fiscal Impact Statement: Neither the City Administrative Officer nor the Chief Legislative Analyst has completed a financial analysis of this report.

Community Impact Statement: None submitted.


Click on the green highlight to view official documents and reports.

  • 11/16/2018 City Clerk scheduled item for Council on November 21, 2018 .  Report from PLUM (October 16, 2018)
  • 10/16/2018 Planning and Land Use Management Committee approved item(s)  Motion (August 22, 2018)
  • 10/12/2018 Planning and Land Use Management Committee scheduled item for committee meeting on October 16, 2018.  Motion (August 22, 2018)
  • 09/07/2018 Los Angeles City Planning Commission report, dated August 30, 2018, moved to correct Council file number 18-0066.
  • 08/22/2018 Motion document(s) referred to Planning and Land Use Management Committee.   Motion (August 22, 2018)

Article: America Really Is a Nation of Suburbs

Children play in a spray park in Rockville Town Square in suburban Rockville, Maryland.

New data shows that the majority of Americans describe their neighborhoods as suburban. Yet we still lack an official government definition of suburban areas.

The geography of America is shifting. Population and job growth are happening faster in suburbs than in urban neighborhoods. At the same time, crowded urban neighborhoods are getting richer and their housing is getting more expensive. There are clear statistical differences among Americans living in urban, suburban, and rural parts of America when it comes to voting patterns, attitudes on social issues, labor and economic outcomes, and health outcomes.  The distinction between urban and rural matters to the federal government, and there is an abundance of official federal definitions of urban and rural. And yet among these definitions, none includes a third category: suburban.

The lack of an official federal definition of suburban means that government data are not reported separately for suburban areas. That makes it hard to measure the reach and impact of federal programs and to produce vital statistics about Americans and their communities.

Much of America looks suburban, with neighborhoods of single-family homes connected by roads to retail centers and low-rise office buildings. For the first time, government data confirm this. According to the newly released 2017 American Housing Survey (of nearly 76,000 households nationwide), about 52 percent of people in the United States describe their neighborhood as suburban, while about 27 percent describe their neighborhood as urban, and 21 percent as rural.

These results echo those from a 2015 survey in which one of us (Jed Kolko) and colleagues at Trulia asked more than 2,000 people around the nation the same question. We found then that 53 percent of survey respondents described their neighborhood as suburban, 26 percent as urban, and 21 percent as rural.

Because there is no official definition of “suburban,” asking people to describe their neighborhood is the first step in formalizing a definition. Kolko showed that household density and other neighborhood characteristics are strongly associated with how people describe their neighborhoods. Others have used those density cutoffs in geographic analyses, including of the midterm elections.

Official geographic definitions should catch up with how Americans describe their neighborhoods. These definitions do a good job at distinguishing rural neighborhoods from the overwhelmingly non-rural majority of the population, but fare poorly at differentiating urban from suburban neighborhoods.

Finding the suburban in urban data

We wondered: Do existing government definitions of urbanization reveal that more than half of Americans live in the suburbs? We compare each AHS respondent’s answer to the neighborhood question with how their address is classified by two main federal definitions of urbanization: the Census Bureau’s Urban Areas and the Office of Management and Budget’s Core-Based Statistical Areas, which include Metropolitan Statistical Areas and Micropolitan Statistical Areas.

We draw two conclusions from these results pertaining to Urban Areas. First, the good news: if Urban Areas are understood to mean urban and suburban neighborhoods, they do well at distinguishing rural neighborhoods from the urban-plus-suburban majority of America. Our analysis reveals that over 95 percent of households living in Urbanized Areas (that is, Urban Areas with more than 50,000 people) consider their neighborhood to be either urban or suburban, while 79 percent of households living in Census Rural Areas (any area outside of an Urbanized Area or Urban Cluster) consider their neighborhood to be rural.

But here’s the hitch: Urbanized Areas, as currently defined, are mostly suburban. Nearly twice as many households in Urbanized Areas describe their neighborhood as suburban (63 percent) compared to urban (32 percent). Also, residents of Urban Clusters—Urban Areas with fewer than 50,000 people—are almost as likely to describe their neighborhood as rural as they are urban.

How respondents described their neighborhood, by 2010 Urban Area category (Census Bureau)

“Urban” “Suburban” “Rural”*
Urbanized Area 33% 63% 5%
Urban Cluster 28% 45% 26%
Rural 5% 16% 79%

*Rows may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.

The story is much the same when looking at Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Metropolitan Statistical Areas do well at distinguishing urban and suburban neighborhoods from rural neighborhoods, although not quite as well as Census Urban Areas do. Our analysis reveals that 86 percent of households living in the 382 Metropolitan Statistical Areas consider their neighborhood to be either urban or suburban, while 72 percent of households living outside of Metropolitan or Micropolitan Statistical Areas consider their neighborhood to be rural.

 Still, Metropolitan Statistical Areas, as currently defined, are predominantly suburban. Nearly twice as many households in Metropolitan Statistical Areas consider their neighborhood to be suburban (57 percent) versus urban (29 percent).

Even central cities—the most urban part of Metropolitan Statistical Areas—are quite suburban. The slight majority of households (51 percent) living within the central city of a Metropolitan Statistical Area describe their neighborhood as urban, while 47 percent describe their neighborhood as suburban. Outside of central cities, but within a Metropolitan Statistical Area, the majority (64 percent) describe their neighborhood as suburban.

How respondents described their neighborhood, by 2013 Core-Based Statistical Area category (OMB)

“Urban” “Suburban” “Rural”*
Metropolitan Statistical Area 29 57 14
     Inside of central city 51 47 2
     Outside of central city 14 64 22
Micropolitan Statistical Area 20 29 52
Outside of Metropolitan or Micropolitan Statistical Area 12 17 72

*Rows may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.

So, looking at a national level, we find Census Urbanized Areas and OMB’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas are predominantly suburban, and even the central cities of Metropolitan Statistical Areas are quite suburban. It turns out these findings are generally true when we look individually at the 15 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the U.S. All of these are more suburban than urban. Some of the faster-growing areas, such as Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and Phoenix, are more than 60 percent suburban.

Even though central cities are the most urban parts of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, many central-city residents consider their neighborhoods to be suburban. In five of the 15 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas, most residents describe their neighborhood as suburban. The central cities of the Riverside–San Bernardino and Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Areas are the most suburban; these, like many other large Sunbelt cities, are lower-density than older cities in the Northeast and Midwest. The central cities of the New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Boston Metropolitan Statistical Areas are more than two-thirds urban.

How respondents described their neighborhood in the 15 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (OMB)

Within the Metropolitan Statistical Area Within just the central cities
“Urban” “Suburban” “Urban” “Suburban”*
New York 47 49 83 18
Los Angeles 45 54 55 45
Chicago 34 61 74 26
Dallas/Fort Worth 30 61 46 54
Houston 29 63 51 49
Philadelphia 29 63 87 13
Washington, D.C. 30 62 69 32
Miami 35 64 47 53
Atlanta 20 69 66 34
Boston 34 57 70 30
San Francisco/Oakland 42 56 62 38
Phoenix 24 68 35 65
Riverside 14 74 22 78
Detroit 22 68 47 54
Seattle 29 63 55 45

*Due to disclosure rules, the suburban category also includes a small number of respondents who described their neighborhood as rural. Adding rural to suburban does not cause the suburban category to become the majority category in any of the 15 metropolitan areas.

We believe there are two conclusions to be drawn from our initial review of the 2017 AHS neighborhood question results. First, we feel there is enough evidence to promote the statement “America is majority suburban” from anecdote, or stylized fact, to fact. Second, existing federal definitions of urban and rural obscure the fact that most Americans describe their neighborhood as suburban, and this is true when looking nationally or at specific Metropolitan Statistical Areas or Census Urbanized Areas.

As producers and consumers of data products, it is clear to us that there is a demand for an official definition of suburban, so we think it is time to make the suburbs official. An official definition of suburban, distinct from urban and rural, could bring consistency to suburban measures of homeownership, transit usage, population growth, poverty, and many other topics. And we believe it is feasible.

With insights from the 2017 AHS neighborhood description data, the smallest geographic building blocks could be classified as suburban or urban using the process the Census Bureau already uses to delineate urban areas from rural America. We would at last be able to better understand the places where more than half of Americans live.

About the Author

Shawn Bucholtz

Shawn Bucholtz is director of the Housing and Demographic Analysis Division at the Department for Housing and Urban Development.

Jed Kolko

Jed Kolko is chief economist at Indeed.

Article: Why Cities Must Tackle Single-Family Zoning

By  Benjamin Schneider

In my neighborhood in San Francisco (or, more accurately, my parents’ neighborhood) there’s a plan afoot to build 42 units of new housing in two parking lots, just steps from a light rail line. Thanks to the city’s inclusionary zoning laws, 18 to 20 percent of those units must be offered at below market rates, on streets lined with single-family homes worth around $1.5 million, and renting for around $5,000 per month, according to Zillow.

Construction could still be years away, due to the city’s byzantine approval process. But the neighbors are already buzzing about the plan, expressing fears that the development won’t fit the neighborhood and preparing demands to scale the project down. It’s Bay Area NIMBYism-as-usual—except that my neighbors are progressive enough to blanch at that now-loaded term. They’re still YIMBYs, as one writer on our local listserv insisted—just the kind whose “yes” to new housing is a bit more qualified.

Such is the state of housing politics in late 2018, on the bleeding edge of a land-use revolution. Booming, expensive cities need more housing, especially the affordable kind. The question is, where will it go? Downtowns are sprouting with cranes, but land values are such that all market-rate development is uber-expensive. And there’s lots of housing, both market rate and affordable, going up in once-low-income neighborhoods that are now gentrifying. Meanwhile, neighborhoods like my own—full of single-family homes—remain virtually untouched by new development.

Convincing—or forcing—the homeowners who rule these neighborhoods to accept new housing that is not consonant with the existing fabric of million-dollar homes is an oft-overlooked front in America’s housing wars, and one that could have a huge structural impact. Adding dense or below-market-rate apartments in high-income neighborhoods close to job centers allows more people to live and commute in an environmentally friendly manner, increases economic mobility, and counters the shameful legacy of segregation.

In Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America, San Francisco tenant activist Randy Shaw paints a picture of a nation beginning to wake up to its housing crisis, but unsure of what to do about it. For years, the discussion around housing affordability in big cities has focused on gentrifying neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission District and Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. But according to Shaw, not enough attention is being paid to the wealthier, usually single family home neighborhoods that have effectively walled themselves off from all new housing construction, creating a sort of spatial class privilege that is rampant in America’s most progressive cities. “These high-opportunity neighborhoods must serve more economically diverse residents,” he said in a recent interview in CityLab. “[C]ities that claim to promote inclusion cannot just relegate the non-rich to economically segregated parts of town.”

Generation Priced Out makes the case that providing a wider variety of housing options in these neighborhoods is the missing policy intervention for addressing America’s housing crisis. In his detailed descriptions of successful and not-so-successful housing strategies from around the country, Shaw demonstrates that cities are starting to create a policy playbook that addresses both housing supply and affordability. But as cities exhaust more and more of the housing interventions that are available to them, single-family-home zoning will loom ever larger, until it becomes too egregious to ignore.

***

Shaw is a unique breed of housing activist; as the director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, he’s long fought for tenants’ rights and affordable housing, but he’s also a strong advocate for building enough market rate housing to keep up with job growth. For decades, and to this day, American cities have not done enough to address either issue, he contends, but some have done a better job than others with particular strategies.

While Shaw calls San Francisco “a cautionary tale of unaffordability,” he also says it “does the best job of every major city in protecting tenants and its rental housing stock.” Of course, he would say that: Shaw is the architect of many of those policies. But it is true that the city has significant tenant protections, including very low rent increase caps for rent control tenants and strong restrictions against the demolition or combination of existing affordable units. The city has also pioneered innovative policies, like its free legal representation program for tenants facing eviction, and a small sites acquisition fund that purchases properties occupied by at-risk tenants and removes them from the speculative market.

San Francisco has not done nearly as well on the supply side, however, adding just one unit of housing for every 12 jobs between 2010 and 2015. Seattle, by contrast, added one unit for every three jobs over this period. Shaw points to Seattle and Denver as cities whose rates of housing construction have made a serious impact on affordability. In January 2018, Seattle saw its biggest month-over-month decrease in median rents in a decade. Between the third and fourth quarters of 2017, Denver saw its biggest decrease in median rents in 36 years, and rents continued to fall the last two quarters of 2017.

But Seattle and Denver are stymied in their efforts to protect existing tenants by state policies and preemptions. Both Washington State and Colorado (along with the majority of states) bar cities from enacting rent control. In California, too, rent control remains limited by a state law, as voters failed to pass Proposition 10, which would have allowed the state’s cities to expand rent limits. In Washington, just cause eviction laws are also hampered by preemption, and in California, the notorious Ellis Act results in thousands of evictions every year.

In the face of these obstacles, and the lack of financial support for housing from state and federal governments, cities are trying to make the most of the tools they have. Portland, San Francisco, and Alameda County (which contains Oakland and Berkeley) have all passed affordable housing bonds in recent years, and Austin and California just passed housing bonds this election.

In addition to building more housing themselves, the biggest thing cities can do to improve housing affordability is change zoning laws. Inclusionary zoning, which requires developers to reserve a certain percentage of new units as affordable, has become more popular in recent years (although some states, like Colorado, also preempt it). But not all inclusionary zoning is created equal: New York’s 2016 law only applies to projects that request zoning variances, even though 35 percent of the city’s land area, including many low-income areas, had recently been rezoned. Inclusionary zoning in D.C. and San Francisco applies to all projects of a certain size.

In concert, increased supply of affordable and market-rate housing, along with strong tenant protections, can stabilize gentrifying communities. Evictions in San Francisco decreased by 21 percent between 2016 and 2017, and another 12 percent between 2017 and 2018. And in the Mission District, the Latino population actually increased by 1,500 between 2011 and 2016, following years of declines. Shaw attributes this trend to an increase in both nonprofit affordable housing and inclusionary units—and, somewhat more controversially, to the “by any means necessary” tactics employed by anti-gentrification activists. By protesting and threatening to hold projects up in court, activists in neighborhoods like the Mission and Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights have negotiated for more affordable units in many projects, and likely discouraged speculators.

These tactics are productive because their practitioners are still pro-housing: They want to maximize the amount of affordable housing in their neighborhoods. But in single-family-home neighborhoods, residents tend to be against any kind of new housing, especially if it’s affordable. In San Francisco’s affluent Forest Hill neighborhood, residents successfully killed a 150-unit development for low-income seniors, a stone’s throw away from a subway station, arguing that it would attract mentally ill and drug-addicted people. Shaw’s book is full of similar examples from around the country of homeowner groups opposing new housing on baldly elitist grounds.

The other tactic frequently employed by homeowners—saving “neighborhood character”’—is often a means to the same end. “Character” must be understood as not only visual, but also demographic. In cities like San Francisco, preserving the status quo for a single-family-home neighborhood often “means maintaining it as a neighborhood where future residents must be rich,” Shaw writes. Another critique levied by those who do not want their neighborhoods to change is that new housing construction in expensive urban markets is inevitably luxury housing. But this argument falls flat when nearly all existing homes are already luxury housing: According to a recent Trulia study, a staggering 81 percent of homes in the San Francisco metro and 70 percent of homes in the San Jose metro are worth more than $1 million. Conveniently, single-family-home zoning also functionally prevents the construction of nonprofit affordable housing, or the below-market-rate units that are generated by inclusionary zoning.

Those who love historic houses are joined in the 21st century by most politicians, planners, and real estate types. Doing away with single-family zoning will not resurrect Robert Moses and unleash him on our neighborhoods. Many cities have demolition controls that prevent sound housing from being arbitrarily destroyed, and these laws could be easily strengthened. Every neighborhood can make room for more neighbors without losing older homes, whether by building units in basements, backyards, and parking lots, or by repurposing nondescript commercial buildings. Besides, San Francisco’s charming Victorian neighborhoods and LA’s rows of bungalows are already peppered with contemporary buildings that interrupt neighborhood character—except that most of these buildings are 5,000 square-foot single-family homes.

The irony is that the communities most vehemently opposed to new apartment buildings—cities like Portland, Oregon, and Cambridge, Massachusetts—are among the most politically and socially progressive in the nation. They are “trapped in the framework of past urban renewal fights,” Shaw writes, when historic, low-income neighborhoods were demolished willy-nilly, and suburban-style urban development was viewed by many as a more environmentally friendly style of living. And so are land use regulations, which responded to citizen outcry in the ‘60s and ‘70s by downzoning many neighborhoods, which prevents new apartment buildings (but permits modest single-family homes to be converted to McMansions). Today, 42 percent of Portland, 57 percent of Seattle, and 78 percent of Los Angeles are zoned exclusively for single-family homes.

Times have, in fact, changed since the 1970s, but getting liberal urban Boomers to understand that will be a massive undertaking. As Shaw’s title suggests, this is nothing short of a generational project that should engage YIMBYs, anti-gentrification activists, and progressives of all stripes who recognize how intersectionally damaging single-family-home zoning is.

To bolster this progressive stance, upzoning should always be accompanied by inclusionary zoning. But a more radical approach, and one that would really give coastal liberals pause, would to be to upzone only neighborhoods above a certain median income threshold, or those that have historically excluded people of color. Upzoning these areas to allow more mixed-use, mixed-income development “opens up middle-class housing opportunities in these otherwise off-limits communities without any risk of displacing low-income residents,” Shaw writes. Good luck arguing against that, my silver-haired comrades.

About the Author

Benjamin Schneider
Benjamin Schneider

Benjamin Schneider is freelance writer and former editorial fellow at CityLab.

Article: Dark Store Fight is Spreading

Discount center: As the “retail apocalypse” rolls on, many cities are struggling to make up for the lost tax revenue they’ve come to expect from brick-and-mortar businesses. As it turns out, some surviving big-box retailers—like Walmart and Target—have found a way to trim their own expenses in a way that only amplifies cities’ budgetary pain. And they are focusing their efforts on a forum that few residents might notice: property tax assessments.

It’s called “dark store theory,” and it’s essentially a novel argument that bustling big boxes should be taxed more like vacant “dark” stores. That means tax assessments value these open, functioning outlets as it they were the shuttered “ghost boxes” that have become increasingly common on the fringes of towns and suburbs. With appeal after appeal, retail giants are succeeding in persuading tax assessors and judges to accept these lower valuations.

(Madison McVeigh/CityLab)

CityLab’s Laura Bliss went to the epicenter of this theory, Wisconsin, to meet the mayors, assessors, and lawyers dueling over dark stores. Since 2015, the Badger State has seen 230 appeal cases in 34 counties, many as repeat appeals on the same properties. These appeals can add up to millions in tax refunds across towns. In the wake of yesterday’s Amazon HQ2 news, here’s a different story about the shifting fortunes of the retail landscape, the creative ways big companies avoid taxes, and the handouts towns keep offering to lure them in. Read Laura’s report: After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown

Andrew Small

Article: Can Los Angeles become a tech capital?

Google’s new Playa Vista officesPhoto by Connie Zhou, courtesy of Google

Amazon’s much-hyped expansion—the company will place 25,000 new jobs each in New York City and Arlington, Virginia—highlights how insular the tech industry can be when it comes to real estate. Tech companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, and New York City have taken up more than 25 million square feet of new office space outside of their primary markets over the past five years, according to a recent CBRE report. A good chunk of that is within those same four markets.

In conversations about tech capitals, Los Angeles rarely comes up, a distant second in its home state to the dominant Bay Area, which vacuumed up $26.5 billion in venture capital funding last year. But LA’s position in the tech ecosystem may be shifting.

While nobody believes that dynamic will change, LA has begun to come into its own. Homegrown successes, and the recent opening of large satellite offices by big players including Google, shows how tech is evolving here. The Bay Area isn’t suddenly moving to Silicon Beach. But it is benefiting from the changing nature of what we consider tech.

“We’re going through a renaissance at the moment because of the growth of entertainment and content,” says CBRE vice chairman Jeff Pion. “There’s a merging of tech and entertainment, and content is king at the moment. The potential from harnessing the existing entertainment workforce in LA immediately is incredible.”

Silicon Beach—a nickname for the areas of Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Playa Vista and El Segundo where tech companies are congregating—is expanding, with companies such as Spotify setting up shop in the Arts District near downtown, and aerospace firms clustering in South Bay and Long Beach. The city’s tech employment increased 14.6 percent between 2016 and 2017, with many of the biggest names in technology—Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and SpaceX—having opened or announced plan to open new offices. The 100 largest tech companies in the city saw a 24 percent increase in hiring last year, according to data from the Annenberg Foundation.

That growth has put pressure on the region’s housing stock and local office rents, which grew 15.8 percent between the second quarter of 2016 and 2018.

According to Eric Pakravan, a vice president with Venice-based venture capital firm Amplify, the city has always led the nation in out-of-town VC investment—a nice benefit of being an hour plane ride from Silicon Valley—but even as more investment pours into LA tech firms, VC firms are setting up shop in Southern California (the number doubled from 2016 to 2017). In 2016, LA and Orange County startups raised $5 billion collectively, and LA is on track to set a record for VC investment in 2018.

“Five years ago, a founder who wanted to keep their company in LA would get a lot of questions,” he says. “Today, it’s like, why do I need to be anywhere else?”

Netflix’s office in Hollywood. ,
Shutterstock

Everything is tech, and tech is everywhere

As every industry embraces tech, a more economically diverse city like LA becomes more valuable. In the capital of remakes and reboots, old industries have become new again.

Unlike San Francisco, LA has a ready-made wellspring of talent in the entertainment and advertising industries—the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation estimates the region’s entertainment and content industries generate $55.9 billion annually, and a recent study said the city’s film and digital media industries generated 265,200 jobs—and a larger, more diverse population and economy. That’s led expanding entertainment giants, such as Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube, who collectively plan to spend billions on original content annually, to sign massive leases for new offices and production facilities. A study by research firm Beacon Economics predicts LA county will add 16,500 digital media and film-related jobs in the next three years.

LA’s employee base is unique, says CBRE’s Pion, with has no shortage of tech, design, and film talent coming from schools such as Parsons, USC, UCLA, and Chapman.

“It may not be equal to Silicon Valley, but the startup community down here is pretty robust,” says Pion.

With the expansion of direct-to-consumer marketing and brands, the ease of setting up e-commerce on improved sales platforms, and the tech industry’s push into a wider array of industries, Los Angeles has become much more desirable for startups. The city has birthed new consumer brands such as Honest Co. and Dollar Shave Club, which was bought by Unilever in 2016 for $1 billion. Last year, 23 percent of LA’s tech funding deals were for consumer products, and another 23 percent were for media.

These startups can cluster in neighborhoods already home to companies within their industries. Music and fashion companies may cluster around downtown and the Arts District, and the next generation of media companies are in West Hollywood.

“It’s not as much that it’s strictly tech, it’s these hybrid companies in very tangible industries,” Pion says. “An financial tech firm may take over a big office in Sherman Oaks to be near the traditional center of accounting. You’re now seeing venture-funded tech startups expand all over the city. There’s no one area that dominates.”

An old slide used by Stephen Basham of CoStar when discussing office leases. Some of the deals are rumored, and the square footage often includes production space.
CoStar

Further south, in Long Beach and the South Bay, Elon Musk has tapped into Southern California’s aerospace heritage with SpaceX, a private space startup. The company recently received approval to build its Big Falcon Rocket at a 19-acre plot in the Port of Los Angeles, a development that has already supercharged South Bay real estate.

Along with Tesla and Hyperloop, which plans on opening a test tunnel in Hawthorne, Musk has helped generate another LA tech cluster. In addition to raising funds—SpaceX and Hyperloop raised $450 and $135 million last year, respectively—it’s already spurred on the construction of new offices and apartment complexes, and added more excitement to nearby redevelopment plans, such as the Port of San Pedro renovation.

According to CBRE’s Pion, the move south, to an area once dominated by defense contractors, is attracting aerospace and space companies, and, increasingly, other tech firms seeking space in a supply-constrained market.

Jesse Gundersheim covers the San Francisco office market for CoStar. He says a lot of the growth in LA is spillover effect, companies that would like to be near the Bay, but due to space and price constraints, simply can’t afford it. He finds companies that do move from the Bay Area tend to head to West Coast cities such as Austin, Denver, Portland, and Sacramento, where space is cheaper. And if they have the choice, he says, they’d rather pick LA than Austin due to the lifestyle benefits.

A former Snap office in Venice Beach from 2017.
AFP/Getty Images

Changing real estate currents in Silicon Beach

This activity and talent base explains why nearly every tech giant has a significant presence in Los Angeles: Apple is leasing a space being built in Culver City near a new Amazon Studios office; Netflix continues to grow in Hollywood, leasing a new 13-story tower on Sunset to match its existing 14-story office; Google just opened a massive space in the cavernous Hughes Company airplane hangar that will, after renovations, contain 525,000 square feet of office space and expanded production facilities for YouTube; and Facebook is looking for 260,000 square feet of space in Playa Vista.

With those new companies and offices come more tech workers, who will continue to make an impact on local real estate. According to Stephanie Younger, who sells homes for Compass in Silicon Beach neighborhoods such as Venice, Playa Vista, and Marina del Rey, 65 percent of her buyers under contract are in the tech industry.

The number of techies and tech workers buying in Westside neighborhoods has driven up prices in an already-expensive area. While it hasn’t caused quite the same level of backlash as tech’s real estate takeover of San Francisco—the decentralized nature of LA, and the existing high prices, means the industry’s impact hasn’t been as concentrated—it has altered the homebuying market. For years, developers have been tearing down old bungalows on Venice side streets and replacing them with expensive, modernist boxes, or rehabbing with up-to-the-minute styles to appeal to 25- to 35-year-old buyers, says Younger. The growth of high, and higher-end, retail on Abbot-Kinney and Rose Avenue speak to the rising cost of living in Venice.

“Retail is probably one of the biggest indicators of what’s happened to this area,” she says.

The biggest catalyst in the emergence of Venice was the 2013 arrival of Snapchat, which decided to purchase an array of smaller spaces, including a beachfront bungalow, and gradually built a decentralized network of office spaces near the beach.

“Prior to Snapchat’s arrival, it wasn’t viewed as an office hub, it was a quirky beach town,” says Steve Basham, a senior market analyst at CoStar. “Over the last few years, it’s changed the character of the area, and there’s been lots of local resistance to the takeover. Snap [the parent company of Snapchat] took virtually all the available office space in Venice.”

In April, when Snap announced it was relocating much of its workforce, abandoning half its office space and moving workers into a traditional, centralized office in Santa Monica, it opened up 200,000 square feet of rental space — and a discussion of the future of the Venice office market.

More than six months later, it’s clear Venice isn’t going anywhere. Basham said nearly 40 new leases have been signed in the last half year, nearly double the pace of the previous three years. It’s expected that a vacuum of that size would lead to lots of new deals, but it also shows the premium new startups place on being located on the Westside.

“There’s so much opportunity to get into Venice right now,” says Michael Springer, another local analyst at Halton Pardee + Partners. “You can spend all day looking at new spaces.”

As the city’s tech scene grows, that decentralized nature is one of its biggest drawbacks. According to a Boston Consulting Group study released this spring that looks at LA’s potential, “Stars Aligning: How Southern California Could Be the Next Great Tech Ecosystem,” the city’s sprawl constricts growth opportunities, making it harder to create the critical mass of companies and employees typically required for successful innovation. The upcoming 2028 Olympics, which promises a region-wide transportation upgrade, as well as an increasing number of homegrown successes, can hopefully alleviate that problem and help build larger clusters of like-minded businesses.

Still, according to the report, Silicon Beach, where tech giants keep expanding their footprints, shows one vision of a tech-driven future economy. It may be why Venice is now attracting scores of smaller startups, says Springer. It makes sense if you follow the money; many of the city’s VC firms, including Amplify, are clustered near Santa Monica and Venice. There may be more than a few looking to capture some of the Snap magic.

Patrick Sisson’s wife works as a designer for Google. Any Curbed editorial covering Google, including this piece, is planned, reported, and edited without her involvement.

 

City of Los Angeles CEQA Update

Notice of Open House and Public Hearing California Environmental Quality Act and Transportation Update

You are invited to an Informational Open House and a Public Hearing regarding updates by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning and Department of Transportation to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process.

The City of Los Angeles is updating the Transportation Section of the Los Angeles CEQA Thresholds Guide to comply with State legislation (Senate Bill 743). State guidelines require all cities to update their transportation impact analysis metrics to vehicle miles traveled (VMT) before July 1, 2020. This approach prioritizes the safety and access of all street users. The State is also proposing a comprehensive update to the CEQA Guidelines. Accordingly, the Department of City Planning is updating its CEQA significance thresholds as part of the State’s 2019 update to CEQA.

The Open House events are intended to allow the community to learn more about and review these updates , provide public comment, and to ask questions of Department of City Planning and Department of Transportation staff. There will be public hearings at each Open House, where oral testimony will be recorded.


Click on the green highlight to view official documents and reports.

Notice of Open House and Public Hearing (November 28, 2018)

California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and Transportation Update

DCP CEQA Update

Housing Progress Report Q3 2018

See Housing Progress Report (Quarterly Report: July – September 2018)

“In July, the City Planning Department released the first issue of the Housing Progress Report, which focused largely on the housing outcomes of Measure JJJ and the Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) Incentive Program through June 30, 2018.

In an effort to increase data transparency and analysis around policy outcomes, the Department has expanded the report to also include Density Bonus, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), and Unapproved Dwelling Units (UDUs). Collectively, these programs identify how the City is advancing a more diverse mix of housing types, including units set aside as affordable.

Moving forward, these quarterly reports will provide regular updates on housing and related development trends. They will inform future policy considerations — ensuring that zoning and planning regulations accommodate the City’s housing needs, while balancing those with the needs of its neighborhoods.”

Mobile Mapping Applications (Apps) / Impact to Neighborhood City Streets / Reduce Hazards / Feasibility Report

CF 18-0304     AT CITY COUNCIL 11/06/2018

TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE REPORT relative to the impact of mobile mapping applications on City streets, and the feasibility of implementing steps to reduce the volume of cut-through vehicle traffic diverted to residential streets.

Recommendations for Council action, as initiated by Motion (Krekorian – Koretz):

DESIGNATE the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) as the lead agency to negotiate a data sharing agreement with navigation application companies.

INSTRUCT the LADOT to report back in 90 days relative to:
Recommended criteria for Impacted Street Segments, including consideration of safety and collision data, Mobility Plan 2035 street designations and traffic thresholds, special events, emergencies and engineering judgment.
The status of the negotiations with navigation application companies.

RECEIVE and FILE the LADOT report dated October 16, 2018 relative to this matter.
Fiscal Impact Statement: The LADOT reports that this action will not impact the General Fund.

Community Impact Statement: None submitted


Click on the green highlight to view official documents and reports.

  • 10/30/2018 City Clerk scheduled item for Council on November 6, 2018 .  Report from Transportation Committee (October 30, 2018), Report from Department of Transportation (October 16, 2018), Motion (April 10, 2018)
  • 10/24/2018 Transportation Committee approved as amended to designate the Los Angeles Department of Transportation as the lead agency to negotiate a data sharing agreement with app navigation companies, and to report back on related matters concerning street safety.  Report from Department of Transportation (October 16, 2018), Motion (April 10, 2018)
  • 10/19/2018 Transportation Committee scheduled item for committee meeting on October 24, 2018.  Report from Department of Transportation (October 16, 2018), Motion (April 10, 2018)
  • 10/18/2018 Department of Transportation document(s) referred to Transportation Committee. Report from Department of Transportation (October 16, 2018)
  • 10/17/2018 Document(s) submitted by Department of Transportation, as follows:  Report from Department of Transportation (October 16, 2018)

Department of Transportation report, dated October 16, 2018, relative to the relationship between the City and mobile mapping application makers.

  • 04/10/2018 Motion document(s) referred to Transportation Committee.  Motion (April 10, 2018)

Council and Committee Referrals – October 31, 2018

16-0422  Status of the department’s Community Plan program
To Planning and Land Use Management Committee
Department of City Planning report, dated October 25, 2018, relative to an update on the status of the department’s Community Plan program.

 

12-0460-S4  ReCode: Reorganize the administrative provisions of the Zoning Code
To Planning and Land Use Management Committee
Los Angeles City Planning Commission report, dated October 26, 2018, relative to a proposed Ordinance amending the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) to comprehensively reorganize the administrative provisions of the Zoning Code and establish a new Article and Chapter of the LAMC.