LA Mayor Karen Bass announces first round of reforms aimed at expediting the construction of affordable housing

2022-12-20T17:24:00-05:00

New Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass is wasting no time dismantling the regulatory process that’s long been held up as the source and exacerbator of the city’s intertwined homelessness and affordable housing crises.

Declaring that the “time for useless regulations is over,” Bass went to the construction site of the new 49-unit Boyle Heights Lorena Plaza development last week to announce an executive directive mandating all city departments involved in the review and approval of new housing and shelters to complete their portion of the process within 60 days.

The directive will also waive the discretionary review process of all developments not requiring zoning changes. These types of developments are often curtailed to 49 units or less in order to get under the review and public hearing process, which requires all developments of 50 units or higher to be subject to them. According to reporting in the LA Times, there are currently 31 projects in the city that will be affected by the ch...

They've been waiting patiently

2015-03-14T15:11:00-04:00

"Do you have any skills?...You don't need to have any skills to come volunteer...this is still a story".

Jordan Klepper investigates a story of reconstruction in Staten Island. Two and a half years post-Sandy, four locals offer criticism of the NYC Build it Back program. He then chats with Enrique Norten about Mercedes House, a recent TEN Arquitectos project (totaling 1.2 million square feet) in Manhattan, completed in approximately three years. The role of dreaded "bureaucracy" is then referenced and Alana Tornello (a Disaster Recovery Coordinator) urges folks to volunteer and not forget.

For an alternative view of the topic; check out Weathering the Storm: Rebuilding a More Resilient New York City Housing Authority Post-Sandy released by The Alliance for a Just Rebuilding.

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LA Mayor Karen Bass announces first round of reforms aimed at expediting the construction of affordable housing

They've been waiting patiently