- calendar_month October 4, 2024
- folder Real Estate
LA officials say city can meet goal of adding 255,000 homes
An aerial view of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, a neighborhood made up largely of single-family homes. (Christopher Montagne-Waggoner/CoStar)
The Los Angeles Planning Commission is proposing to construct 255,000 residences, mostly in multifamily buildings in areas zoned for apartments and other commercial uses rather than single-family neighborhoods. This is the latest attempt by a major U.S. city to deal with housing shortages from coast to coast.
Criticism from neighborhood groups over previous proposals by officials to allow duplexes and other small apartment projects in areas zoned for single-family buildings led the city to dial back those ideas. Instead, officials think they can meet a state mandate to build more housing by ramping up multifamily production along major transit corridors in the nation's second-biggest city. The plan now goes to the city council, with a vote needed by February 2025.
The effort to ramp up housing production in Los Angeles is similar to what's happening in New York City, where the planning commission voted last week to build 109,000 new homes over 15 years. As in Los Angeles, the city council will have the final say. New York wants to allow more types of development in areas where most houses are single-family, but this vision faces opposition from some city councilors who represent those districts.
Economists and analysts blame a national shortage estimated at between 1.5 million and 5.5 million homes for worsening the affordable housing crisis. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition calculates a shortage of 7.3 million homes affordable to renters with extremely low incomes, defined as up to 30% of an area's median income.
In its annual State of the Nation’s Housing report, issued in June, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies emphasized the importance of diversifying housing in single-family zoned neighborhoods as a strategy to address the shortage.
“The majority of land in cities across the country is currently zoned exclusively for single-family homes. Changing these regulations to allow greater densities and more diverse housing types can make the approval process faster and more predictable, in turn reducing costs," according to the report.
Updating the zoning
In Los Angeles, there's no guarantee the plan will actually have a major effect on such a large population, which numbers more than 3.8 million according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data. There are also other political and economic challenges that can arise to affect multiyear proposals.
Even so, the overall goal in Los Angeles is to build more than 450,000 homes by 2029 to meet state housing requirements. Of those units, 255,000 can’t be accommodated without updating the city’s zoning map. More than half of those homes must be affordable to people with low incomes.
If the city fails to approve a plan to reach its goal, the state could penalize it by withholding certain funding. The city would also risk triggering the “builder’s remedy,” a state-sanctioned process that enables developers to bypass zoning restrictions to overcome local government roadblocks.
The planning commission said it supports prioritizing development within a half-mile of major transit stops, on “opportunity corridors” that have frequent bus service and in transition areas between those corridors and low-density neighborhoods. The transition areas would extend no more than 750 feet from the opportunity corridors. Encouraging construction near transit stops has the planning advantage of potentially reducing the effect of added traffic that comes from new development.
Of about 3,100 comments the city received during a public outreach period from June to August about the proposed plans, 75% favored excluding single-family zones from the Citywide Housing Incentive Plan, the official name for the housing plan, according to a staff report presented before a commission vote to pursue more housing.
As in Los Angeles, the proposed changes in New York City involve traffic and transit issues. The nation's biggest city is considering lifting “arbitrary and costly parking mandates for new residential construction,” while still allowing for off-street parking as needed. New York's zoning rule changes would also allow three- to five-story apartment buildings to be built near transit and along commercial corridors.
Majority of land
Single-family zones make up 72% of Los Angeles' residential land, according to a letter critical of the city’s plans submitted by a group of housing advocates in August. They said not allowing more intensive development in these zones jeopardizes the city’s ability to meet the 255,000-home target. Moreover, according to the letter, single-family zones tend to be near the parts of the city with the best access to jobs and services and have historically excluded people based on race and those with low incomes.
By disallowing affordable and mixed-income homes, the plan "further incentivizes demolishing rent-stabilized homes in existing multifamily areas,” according to the letter, signed by representatives of 60 housing advocacy groups. They called for expanding the transition areas to at least a quarter-mile, almost double the proposed 750-foot limit.
Mahdi Manji, director of public policy for the Inner City Law Center, told CoStar News in an interview that he was encouraged that the commission presented options for the city council to consider, including some multifamily housing in single-family zones, but was disappointed the commission did not recommend them.
He noted the city used to allow more housing options in these areas but limited them in recent decades to only allow single-family homes under pressure from homeowner and neighborhood organizations.
It is challenging that the city isn't planning on building multifamily in the single-family areas even though 30% of the city's population are homeowners and 70% are renters, Manji said.
The city planning office declined to comment further.
