COUNCIL DISTRICT 5 ZONING AND LAND USE — CENTER FOR PACIFIC URBANISM

Executive Summary

Problem Definition

Los Angeles has a housing affordability crisis due in large part to a lack of supply that is five to six decades in the making.

70% of all households in Los Angeles are cost burdened, compared to 29% nationally.

Over 50% of LA tenants spend more than half of their household income on rent.

The root causes in Los Angeles include suppressed housing supply rates due to inequitable urban planning and exclusionary zoning, such as downzoning, inadequate policies or enforcement, rising construction and development costs, a financial structure favoring nonresidential development, and insufficient funding for subsidized low income housing.

Targets and Supply

Today, housing production overall in the City of LA is eight times less than what it ought to be in order to bridge the housing shortage. In CD 5, average net production relative to a fair share of the 2029 RHNA target is 1 to 1,703 in Bel Air - Beverly Crest, 24: 1,939 in Westwood, and 125: 2,309 in West Los Angeles.

By 2029, over 259,000 net new units that are affordable to Median, Low, and Very Low Income households are required in the City of Los Angeles, an average of above 32,000 net new affordable units per year.

By contrast, the average supply rate of affordable units in the City of Los Angeles from 2014 to 2018 was 1,500 units per year, a 22nd of the necessary supply rate.

While affordable housing production is less than a twentieth of the necessary supply rate to make up for over half a century of inequitable housing policies, fiscal resources are being expended at unsustainable rates.

Consequences

The consequences of these policies range from constraints on housing production and to price inflation, inequitable distribution of households by income near employment and services, increased VMT and traffic congestion, deteriorated air quality, unequal access to quality schools, constraints on the labor pool, and deteriorated social capital. As the cost of housing continues to rise, the number of households falling into homelessness continues to increase.

Now, different and perhaps better research methods, policies, and public-private partnerships are necessary to 1) formulate the problem definition adequately, 2) develop practicable, sustainable, and financially feasible solutions, and 3) to implement solutions and monitor progress.

Research Topics, Methods, and Results

A synthesis of best practices from a review of academic and policy literature identifies the following five categories to mitigate the housing crisis: 1) Policy Reform, 2) Supply Chain capacity development, 3) Financing, 4) Preservation, and a 5) Paradigmatic Shift in the industry.

In relation to these best practices, this publication highlights five of our main research topics:

Affordable Housing Inventory (full report)
Homeless Off Street Sanctuary (full report)
ADU
Commercial Conversion
Rezoning program to meet the 2029 RHNA Target (full report)

Affordable Housing Inventory

In 2015, the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing (SCANPH) began a database of affordable housing units in Los Angeles, categorized by funding source.

In 2018, Pacific Urbanism built upon the database and prepared a more complete inventory of all subsidized low income housing units in LA County, and illustrated the disparities per capita by neighborhood, Community Plan Area, Council Districts, and cities.

Our 2021 updated report is the most recent inventory published regarding affordable housing units in Los Angeles.

Results by Quadrant:

Using the quadrant rubric by Dr. Greg Morrow, the Westside’s share of affordable housing units, approximately 4,100 units, is 5% that of the Eastside quadrant’s 71,000. Per capita, the Westside quadrant provides 0.7 subsidized low income units per 100 persons, whereas the Eastside quadrant provides 3.5 units per 100 persons.

City of Los Angeles Council District (CD 5)

District 5 ranks 15 out of 15 with 608 of the total 92,127 affordable units in the City and a 0.2 unit per 100 person rate.

Community Plan Area (CPA) Results

The five CPAs with the lowest share of affordable units per capita in the City are in the Westside quadrant: West Los Angeles, Bel Air - Beverly Crest, Westwood, Encino - Tarzana, and Brentwood - Pacific Palisades (CD 11). Four out of five are in CD 5.

Homeless Off Street Sanctuary

In 2020, as consultants to outside counsel for the LA Alliance for Human Rights in their suit against the City and County of LA, where they sought to establish objectives and a timeline to provide emergency shelters for the growing unhoused population, Pacific Urbanism used public data sources, ESRI spatial analysis tools, and a decentralized approach at locating suitable, government owned sites to place emergency off street shelters.

The main points of the plan are as follows:

Identification and ranking of potentially suitable sites;
Programmatically associate a hub and spoke arrangement of six (6) sites each with no more than (20) individuals for a total of (120) individuals per network, served by a mother hub site with services and supporting facilities;
Six (6) month duration of temporary housing;
Local labor, materials, and operation to the greatest extent practicable;
Scalability to accommodate range of community populations;
Approx. $10k per completed unit to install.

ADU

The ADU study applies a site suitability analysis to identify parcels, property owners, communities, and cities where ADUs are more feasible and desirable, according to a composite index score that takes into account the following variables:

Slope, percent lot coverage, Sq ft of Bldgs on the lot, Number of units on the lot, Average unit size, proximity to the Coastal Zone, Rate of change in sale price, Average sale price per sq ft, Proximity to C zones, and ADU Capacity.

Commercial Conversions

The commercial conversion study contributes to the body of literature by preparing and publishing an inventory of the 376M sq ft Office Building area in LA County, including a unit and floor area count, a profile of offices that answers the questions: where are they? How many are there? What rents they charge per square foot? What are the standards for conversion? Are there any Zoning or other policy barriers?

A main objective is to produce and promulgate Building and Safety rules and technical details of conversions in the form of a guidebook.

2029 RHNA Target & Rezoning Program

Due to the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) targets for the current 8-year planning cycle, the housing stock for the city of LA is going to increase and it ought to occur in a fair and equitable manner.

Perhaps an obvious next question is, what metrics are employed to deem an approach fair and equitable, which is why we developed the method of a Housing Allocation Index, also known as the formula based allocation index of RHNA plan, or the FAIR LA Plan. The Housing Allocation Index method is described in full detail in our May 8, 2020 publication.

Now, whereas the current approach by the City of LA and the Department of City Planning is dominated by a reliance on transit oriented communities and increasing density along transit corridors alone, our research and the research of others has shown that these policies are insufficient in order to arrive at the housing target.

Our research question

The big planning question with which we have been grappling is whether any zoning changes are either necessary, or more conducive to, accomplishing the 8 year targeted increase in housing supply, and if so, what specific zoning changes are these.

If TOC bonus capacity and capacity along commercial corridors, without zoning changes to existing single family and other reduced density residential land, is insufficient to prompt the necessary increase in rate of net new housing units offloaded onto the market, then land use policies, specifically zoning changes, and other mechanisms, are warranted, if necessary, to arrive at the desired target dwelling unit supply rate.

The bottom line is that if current planning and policy mechanisms are insufficient to produce the necessary supply of dwelling units, then additional measures are necessary, and whether it’s through City Ordinances, Community Plan updates, the Housing Element, State legislation, etc., or all of the above, communities can either take a proactive approach or have solutions imposed upon them in a top down fashion. We maintain that the former may result in greater benefits to local communities.

(Dario Rodman-Alvarez, 2021. Los Angeles, California)