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Housing Plan Goes to City Council
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| A recommendation in a document known as the Housing Element would alter an ordinance that allows developers to buy "unused" air rights over the Convention Center (foreground) to make their projects taller. Some want the money generated to be dedicated to the city's affordable housing trust fund. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
Dissent Could Be a Warm-up for Larger Debate
by Anna Scott
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - The City Council this week is expected to vote on a controversial plan intended to lay the groundwork for future development in Los Angeles. It is particularly relevant to Downtown, currently a hub for new construction.
On Wednesday, Aug. 13, a cluster of recommendations on meeting the city's housing needs over the next six years is expected to go before the Council for approval. The document, known as the Housing Element, is periodically updated and is part of the city's General Plan. Some of the strategies outlined in the latest draft of the Housing Element were hotly contested last month during a joint meeting of the council's Planning and Land Use Management and Housing, Community and Economic Development committees.
More than 60 developers, business leaders, residents and housing advocates turned up at City Hall on July 29 to weigh the proposal, with many of the sticking points potentially impacting Downtown.
One of the most intensely debated issues was a recommendation to impose an affordable housing requirement on adaptive reuse projects. While many of the low-income housing advocacy groups that turned out - including the Downtown-based Acorn and the Los Angeles Community Action Network - supported the concept, others argued that it would hamstring Downtown's ongoing revitalization.
"The easy adaptive reuse buildings have already been done," said Russell Brown, executive director of the Historic Downtown L.A. Business Improvement District after the meeting. "If you're imposing a mandatory affordable housing component on top of that, it could effectively kill any effort to revive any of the buildings on Broadway."
Fourteenth District City Councilman Jos/ Huizar, who is spearheading the Bringing Back Broadway initiative, an effort to revitalize the historic corridor, asked planning staff to soften the recommendation to say that the city should "explore" affordability requirements on adaptive reuse projects. The staff complied.
Another controversial recommendation called for channeling all money collected from the so-called air rights ordinance (also known as TFAR, which allows developers to purchase "unused" space above the Convention Center to build taller projects) into the city's affordable housing trust fund. Currently, the money can go toward any number of causes that benefit the community. After objections, that stipulation was altered to say only that the city should consider allocating some of the money into the trust fund.
Despite the last-minute changes, the debate may continue when the Housing Element goes before the full Council. Some affordable housing advocates expressed regret that the recommendations were toned down.
"I think we'll definitely keep pushing for the stronger language," said Becky Dennison, co-director of LACAN. "We would like to see the adaptive reuse and TFAR language go back to the way it was. But we're certainly glad that things didn't get taken out or stricken altogether."
Lisa Payne, policy director for the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, said, "Of course we're a little disappointed that the TFAR and adaptive reuse language was softened," but added that "overall, what the committees did was positive."
Some in the business community also have lingering concerns, but for different reasons.
"Adaptive reuse and TFAR changes should not be included as part of the Housing Element," said Veronica Perez-Becker, vice president of legislative affairs for the Central City Association. "These were ordinances that were adopted with a lot of thought and analysis and stakeholder input, and to revisit them now is undermining the process that already occurred."
Warming Up
The debate over the Housing Element could be a precursor to a larger battle likely to ignite when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa rolls out a plan, currently in the works, to create a citywide affordable housing requirement.
Working with Council members Herb Wesson, Ed Reyes and Eric Garcetti, Villaraigosa recently ramped up efforts to introduce a proposal, known as the Mixed-Income Ordinance, that would establish an affordable housing requirement for privately funded projects throughout the city (currently only developments that receive public money are required to include low-income residences). Though the city's Housing Element has long recommended doing so, several past efforts to create an affordable housing ordinance have been met with stiff resistance from the business community and ultimately failed. The most recent effort, the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, was shot down about three years ago.
Housing advocates say such a measure is especially needed in areas like Downtown.
"The homeless population is so big Downtown, but I also think that there's a lot of service sector jobs - hotels, office buildings, restaurants - and a lot of the workforce is priced out," said Payne. "For Downtown, we'd like to see some really concrete implementation of the general language that was passed in the Housing Element, something that preserves affordable housing and rent control, and also creates new affordable housing."
Developers, however, warn that any mandate must be balanced with cost-effective incentives. Many fear that with rising material prices and an already challenged housing market, any new restrictions could have a chilling effect on construction.
"In order for any Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance or Mixed-Income Ordinance to be successful and broadly embraced by both developers and the community, it needs to be one that creates incentives that help compensate builders for providing units at a below-market basis," said Patrick Spillane, senior vice president of IDS Real Estate Group, which is developing the multi-phased Metropolis project, slated to bring more than 800 new residential units to an area north of Staples Center. Otherwise, "coupled with the obvious existing realities of the housing and mortgage crises, anything that makes it more expensive and difficult to build housing will result in no housing being built."
Sources familiar with the effort suspect that Villaraigosa will debut a proposed ordinance in time for the Los Angeles Business Council's Mayoral Housing Summit on Sept. 5. The mayor publicly introduced the idea during last year's summit.
Villaraigosa spokeswoman Janelle Erickson recently said that details of the plan have not been finalized.
Some observers predict that if properly balanced with incentives, the affordable housing mandate could have a fighting chance this time around and could even benefit developers in the long run.
"It's been done in many jurisdictions throughout the country," said Tim O'Connell, senior director of programs and policy for the nonprofit Century Housing, which helps affordable housing developers, including several Downtown, gain financing. "The uncertainty of being open to project-by-project rules is what drives the cost of everything up."
However, O'Connell - who worked on the most recent update of the Housing Element - also said that the approach will have to be different from past efforts in order to work. "I'm reminded of the old aphorism that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes," he said. "Let's take the Element, get it adopted, and then let's do the work necessary to actually implement these things."
Contact Anna Scott at anna@downtownnews.com.
page 3, 8/11/2008
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
On Wednesday, Aug. 13, a cluster of recommendations on meeting the city's housing needs over the next six years is expected to go before the Council for approval. The document, known as the Housing Element, is periodically updated and is part of the city's General Plan. Some of the strategies outlined in the latest draft of the Housing Element were hotly contested last month during a joint meeting of the council's Planning and Land Use Management and Housing, Community and Economic Development committees.
More than 60 developers, business leaders, residents and housing advocates turned up at City Hall on July 29 to weigh the proposal, with many of the sticking points potentially impacting Downtown.
One of the most intensely debated issues was a recommendation to impose an affordable housing requirement on adaptive reuse projects. While many of the low-income housing advocacy groups that turned out - including the Downtown-based Acorn and the Los Angeles Community Action Network - supported the concept, others argued that it would hamstring Downtown's ongoing revitalization.
"The easy adaptive reuse buildings have already been done," said Russell Brown, executive director of the Historic Downtown L.A. Business Improvement District after the meeting. "If you're imposing a mandatory affordable housing component on top of that, it could effectively kill any effort to revive any of the buildings on Broadway."
Fourteenth District City Councilman Jos/ Huizar, who is spearheading the Bringing Back Broadway initiative, an effort to revitalize the historic corridor, asked planning staff to soften the recommendation to say that the city should "explore" affordability requirements on adaptive reuse projects. The staff complied.
Another controversial recommendation called for channeling all money collected from the so-called air rights ordinance (also known as TFAR, which allows developers to purchase "unused" space above the Convention Center to build taller projects) into the city's affordable housing trust fund. Currently, the money can go toward any number of causes that benefit the community. After objections, that stipulation was altered to say only that the city should consider allocating some of the money into the trust fund.
Despite the last-minute changes, the debate may continue when the Housing Element goes before the full Council. Some affordable housing advocates expressed regret that the recommendations were toned down.
"I think we'll definitely keep pushing for the stronger language," said Becky Dennison, co-director of LACAN. "We would like to see the adaptive reuse and TFAR language go back to the way it was. But we're certainly glad that things didn't get taken out or stricken altogether."
Lisa Payne, policy director for the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, said, "Of course we're a little disappointed that the TFAR and adaptive reuse language was softened," but added that "overall, what the committees did was positive."
Some in the business community also have lingering concerns, but for different reasons.
"Adaptive reuse and TFAR changes should not be included as part of the Housing Element," said Veronica Perez-Becker, vice president of legislative affairs for the Central City Association. "These were ordinances that were adopted with a lot of thought and analysis and stakeholder input, and to revisit them now is undermining the process that already occurred."
The debate over the Housing Element could be a precursor to a larger battle likely to ignite when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa rolls out a plan, currently in the works, to create a citywide affordable housing requirement.
Working with Council members Herb Wesson, Ed Reyes and Eric Garcetti, Villaraigosa recently ramped up efforts to introduce a proposal, known as the Mixed-Income Ordinance, that would establish an affordable housing requirement for privately funded projects throughout the city (currently only developments that receive public money are required to include low-income residences). Though the city's Housing Element has long recommended doing so, several past efforts to create an affordable housing ordinance have been met with stiff resistance from the business community and ultimately failed. The most recent effort, the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, was shot down about three years ago.
Housing advocates say such a measure is especially needed in areas like Downtown.
"The homeless population is so big Downtown, but I also think that there's a lot of service sector jobs - hotels, office buildings, restaurants - and a lot of the workforce is priced out," said Payne. "For Downtown, we'd like to see some really concrete implementation of the general language that was passed in the Housing Element, something that preserves affordable housing and rent control, and also creates new affordable housing."
Developers, however, warn that any mandate must be balanced with cost-effective incentives. Many fear that with rising material prices and an already challenged housing market, any new restrictions could have a chilling effect on construction.
"In order for any Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance or Mixed-Income Ordinance to be successful and broadly embraced by both developers and the community, it needs to be one that creates incentives that help compensate builders for providing units at a below-market basis," said Patrick Spillane, senior vice president of IDS Real Estate Group, which is developing the multi-phased Metropolis project, slated to bring more than 800 new residential units to an area north of Staples Center. Otherwise, "coupled with the obvious existing realities of the housing and mortgage crises, anything that makes it more expensive and difficult to build housing will result in no housing being built."
Sources familiar with the effort suspect that Villaraigosa will debut a proposed ordinance in time for the Los Angeles Business Council's Mayoral Housing Summit on Sept. 5. The mayor publicly introduced the idea during last year's summit.
Villaraigosa spokeswoman Janelle Erickson recently said that details of the plan have not been finalized.
Some observers predict that if properly balanced with incentives, the affordable housing mandate could have a fighting chance this time around and could even benefit developers in the long run.
"It's been done in many jurisdictions throughout the country," said Tim O'Connell, senior director of programs and policy for the nonprofit Century Housing, which helps affordable housing developers, including several Downtown, gain financing. "The uncertainty of being open to project-by-project rules is what drives the cost of everything up."
However, O'Connell - who worked on the most recent update of the Housing Element - also said that the approach will have to be different from past efforts in order to work. "I'm reminded of the old aphorism that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes," he said. "Let's take the Element, get it adopted, and then let's do the work necessary to actually implement these things."
Contact Anna Scott at anna@downtownnews.com.
page 3, 8/11/2008
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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