LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT 11 HOMELESSNESS, SUITABLE SITES FOR OFF STREET SANCTUARY, AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING INVENTORY
Authors
Dario Rodman-Alvarez, MCP, Rudi Mattheis-Brown, RA, NCARB, Luis Ricardo de la Rosa, B. Arch
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Frank Murphy of the Homeless Committee of the Venice Neighborhood Council.
Suggested Citation
Rodman-Alvarez, Dario et al (2022) Los Angeles City Council District 11 Homelessness, Affordable Housing, and Suitable Sites for Off Street Sanctuary. Los Angeles, CA. Pacific Urbanism. Retrieved from https://www.pacificurbanism.org/publications
Table of Contents
Section A: Homelessness
Section B: Suitable Sites for Off Street Sanctuary
Section C: Affordable Housing
Bibliography
Appendix
Section A: Homelessness
Homeless Count
Since 2005, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) has conducted a regional point in time census of the homeless population using teams of thousands of volunteers to cover nearly all areas of Los Angeles County. In 2015, the Los Angeles Times made the raw data available publicly (Smith, 2015) and since then, LAHSA has published the results of its annual Homeless Counts for public use. In 2016, the LA Times published profiles of the homeless, indicating demographic characteristics such as race, sex, age, etc. (Schleuss et al, 2015)
Predictors of Homelessness.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regularly publishes reports on a number of topics that are germane to its work, among these is the 2019 “Market Predictors of Homelessness,” which applies multivariate regression analysis to document the statistically significant relationship between the increase in housing prices and homelessness rates (Nisar, 2019). The underlying causes of the rise in housing prices have been studied and are documented elsewhere (HCD, 2018, Nisar, 2019, Taylor, 2015, Taylor, 2016). In sum, the policies that constrain a healthy supply of housing also contribute to the increased homelessness rates.
Spatial Analysis by Community and City Council District
Pacific Urbanism has gathered the LAHSA data over time and studied trends using spatial analysis with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, ESRI ArcGIS. The results have been organized into counts for total unhoused population by Community Plan Area (CPA) and Council District (CD), and are provided in Appendix A (Rodman-Alvarez, 2019)
Section B: Suitable Sites for Off Street Sanctuary
Homeless Off Street Sanctuary
In 2007, the Jones Settlement resulted in a change in policy within the City of Los Angeles which prevented the Los Angeles Police Department from continuing to remove transient settlements until a sufficient number of housing intended for the homeless were provided (Shelley, 2020).
In 2020, the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights, along with a coalition of advocates for solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles, filed a legal complaint against the City and County of Los Angeles on the grounds that local decision makers have not adequately provided shelters or areas of refuge for the City’s and County’s unhoused population. Judge Carter ruled that the municipal government is required to address the homelessness crisis by providing emergency shelters throughout the city.
Suitable Sites Inventory
In 2020, Pacific Urbanism prepared the Homeless Off Street Sanctuary Network study, which provides a comprehensive list of potential sites for off-street emergency shelters in Los Angeles as well as an inventory of precedents from various cities. The results of this study were provided as exhibits in the case LA Alliance for Human Rights v. City of Los Angeles and County of Los Angeles.
The criteria of the study are as follows:
• Publicly owned land;
• Vehicular and pedestrian access (no greater than 40 feet from centerline of streets);
• Relatively level (slope less than 15%, as defined by Baseline Hillside Ordinance);
• Greater than 600’ from schools;
• Outside of significant ecological areas;
• Outside of airport noise contours;
• Exclude surface water;
• Exclude building footprints .
Publicly available data were gathered and analyzed using ESRI ArcGIS spatial analysis tools. Land categories include:
• City Parks
• Government Parcels
• Public Facilities
• Publicly Owned Land from County Assessor’s Office
• Open Space, whether publicly owned or otherwise.
Applying the criteria listed above, City Council District 11 contains 488 potentially suitable sites, with a total aggregate area of 732.2 acres. Of these 488 suitable sites, 88 are located in Venice CPA, with a total aggregate area of 140.4 acres. The list of Assessor Parcel Number, addresses where available, Community Plan Area, and potentially suitable surface area in square feet and acres are provided in the attached appendix.
Section C: Affordable Housing
Subsidized Low Income Housing Inventory
Housing that is considered affordable includes all units occupied by households with earnings that do not exceed the moderate income threshold, that is, 120% of the area median income. This includes non-subsidized, or naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH), as well as subsidized low-income housing, whether in the form of vouchers or deed restricted housing units that may only be occupied by households that qualify based on their income level.
Subsidized low income housing can be categorized by its funding source (Rodman-Alvarez, 2021) and is evaluated in various ways that are documented in academic as well as policy literature. For example, a review of best practices yields the scattered site approach as preferable for various reasons, as opposed to the concentration of poverty (Tsai, 2010).
Pacific Urbanism has gathered all available public data on affordable housing in order to observe trends and evaluate levels of service by area, normalized per capita. In other words, when comparing relative counts of existing subsidized low income housing units in areas that vary in their geographic size, it is helpful to make comparisons normalized by acre or per capita in order to compare, figuratively, apples to apples.
The results of the affordable housing inventory have been normalized per 100 people for each City, Council District, and Community Plan Area in order to compare between different jurisdictions as well.
Out of the 15 Council Districts within the City of Los Angeles, CD 11 ranked #10 with 3,354 total units at a rate of 1.2 units per 100 people. Venice CPA, however, ranked #7 (1,316 total units, 3.5 units per 100 people) out of thirty-five Community Plan Areas, higher than all the other CPAs in CD 11.
Affordable Housing Targets 2029
The 2021 through 2029 Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) target for the City of Los Angeles is 456,000 dwelling units, of which 58.3% are required to be affordable. These categories are established by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) as follows:
Income Category Percentage of Housing Units
Very-Low 26.2%
Low 15.4%
Moderate 16.7%
Total 58.3%
This translates to 266,200 net new affordable dwelling units by 2029 within the City of Los Angeles. Using the Housing Allocation Index (HAI), a method for equitable distribution of housing, the 2029 RHNA targets by Council District are as follows (Rodman-Alvarez, 2020):
The Housing Allocation Index results in a larger quantity of housing targets to those CPAs and CDs that are better suited to receive a larger share of the housing target according to affordability, environmental health, transit quality, downzoning and opportunity. For Council District 11, an equitable share of the 2029 RHNA target is 62,700 total units, which translates to 36,500 net new affordable units by 2029.
Income Category Total Affordable Housing Unit Target
Very-Low 16,423
Low 9,653
Moderate 10,468
Total 36,544
bIBLIOGRAPHY
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