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 change.
As Mayor, I will not accept any delays of any kind when it comes to building affordable housing.
If you build affordable housing under the executive directive I signed on Friday, the City will complete the approval process in 60 days.
The time for useless regulations is over. pic.twitter.com/ml7zjbMQVU
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) December 18, 2022
“This type of action is what’s needed to make a material impact on affordable housing development in Los Angeles,” Gray Lusk, the chief operating officer of SoLa Impact, a private developer of affordable housing, told the paper. “But she has her hands full getting this implemented with the bureaucracy of several city departments, and I think she is going to have to ‘break a few eggs’ over there to make this omelette.”
Bass has been aggressive on the subject, which was a focal point of her platform during her run for office this fall. Shortly after taking office earlier this month, she declared a state of emergency on homelessness and has expressed the desire to fill staffing shortages in the various departments that comprise the approvals mechanism.
In addition to housing the minimum population of 69,000-plus unhoused people in the city, Los Angeles is on the hook to construct at least 500,000 new homes by the end of the decade. The city's plan includes language and an overall approach that is noticeably similar to the one announced by New York City Mayor Eric Adams last week in order to meet a similar quota. A new county agency has also been created through the state senate that is meant to alleviate the problem in a systematic way.
“It’s going to make such a difference on getting these units built and moving tenants into them,” one developer said in assessment, before adding that the prospects for change across the beleaguered city gave him “a big smile.”
18 Comments
It is a huge challenge Karen Bass is taking on. She must have strong projects in her hands. My guesstimate is too, around 500,000 to maintain a city with a small homeless population and put a dent in ruthless rents on low-income people. More to do after but this will teach a lot about low-cost but durable construction that is affordable to build and affordable to occupy.
Does anyone know what will happen to Christopher Hawthorne, the Chief Design Officer for the city of Los Angeles? I am curious if he will write about his experience. He had a very interesting job title. It is almost as important as being the court decorator during the renaissance.
Karen Bass is taking the housing crisis head-on. I am wondering, if not Chris Hawthorne, who will advise her about architecture if any?
Say whatever you say, Garcetti and Hawthorne created a necessary advisory position that directly has to do with "design" in all scales. Good city governments probably have positions like this but I am seeing, for the first time, a 'design officer' directly and formally advising the city about architecture and urban design. Also, If he decides to write with his critical background it would be an interesting book for the readers about how the city takes shape and counters problems such as housing, infrastructure, open space, and more. It is probably an easy book to write but would have an important impact on the public in terms of why architecture and urban design are important catalysts in the public's daily state of mind and the quality of their lives.
Orhan per this tweet from back in August appears Christopher Hawthorne is headed back East and will apparently be teaching at Yale?
In addition, new construction is higly unlikely to be "affordable" housing but new construction can free up space in older apartment buildings where the wealthier move into the new units and lower income move into the older yet usable units.
Additionally, adaptive reuse is another potential opportunity for affordable housing. Older hotels/motels that are no longer usable so much, can be converted to rented long-term sleeping units (most have also bathrooms in the units). Especially if there are "community kitchen" available as well as nearby local eating establishments. If we adapt these motels like those older motels not in use or underutilized. So options could be made with some creative thinking. There's not much of any reason a person can't live long-term (over 30 days) in such motels. A lot of people don't even cook there own food so they don't necessarily need a "kitchen". They need a place to sleep, be warm, and bathe.
Implementing a laundry facility or a laundromat nearby being needed to clean the clothes. If these currently "homeless" had something like this they can go to instead of living on the sidewalk, they can cleanup and even be able to pursue employment and potentially upgrade to nicer apartments more suitable for changes in their situation. We need to provide them a help out of living literally on the sidewalks and alleys and help up from utter poverty towards gainful employment, career development, etc. but they also must be willing to put in effort on their end.
The goal is not to give them free money to continue to remain in this situation. For a number of them, they would need help but they need to take an effort not to continue to abuse drugs and alcohol.
Remember Mr. Hawthorne use the term "The Third LA"? Has he figured it out what it suppose to be, what it looks like or how it affect neighborhoods to be more identifiable while dealing with income inequality and the environment? What happen?
We are at the critical point in the past 5-6 years where the future looks dire with trees are dying in a alarming rate, sever drought and threats to our democracy. Developers and corporations are dictating what they want to build to maximize their economic portfolio that looks similar in statue. LA's local mountain lion P-22 should remind us that we need to co-exist with nature and we are not. RIP P-22
There are 99 neighborhoods in the City of LA trying figuring out what is LA vision in a sprawling city and how it could affect housing, more parks & spatial justice, mobility, business and equity. Where is his involvement and the outcome? ADU's and street light design?
There should more architects or designers involve in the grass roots level taking accountability in a give and take scenario of learning from stakeholders and residents concerns while educating them in the importance of design and architecture. It's a moot point when there is no meeting of the minds and that Mr. Hawthorne can't do it alone.
I'd add that Mr. Hawthorne is better suited to philosophical discursions of rather than handling the built environment of the average person. One wishes they could be one and the same but this is unfortunately not the case today. He covers many social and political issues which while important, are not really architectural questions.
LA has so much going for it, from local character to distinct neighborhood centers. The mayor will need buy-in from the public to get more density quickly built which means showing that good infill can enhance a neighborhood's character, and not just be the backdrop for an architect's vision of society. We also don't need affordable housing that becomes an instant slum which is what most people will worry about. I applaud LA for tackling this issue head on, I just hope they do it pragmatically and elegantly.
Bureaucrats today, even ones that pretend to care about design, don't have any vision or urban design expertise. First you need vision, then follow through, like a Robert Moses.
A better vision for LA would rediscover some old concepts of what neighborhoods were supposed to be. The original designs from the 1930s era were walkable, with parks nearby, plenty of sidewalks and close to schools, churches and local shops. California and much of the country has lost that neighborhood community connection that you feel in the best 30-50s era suburbs.
Hawthorne did some good things -- talking about missing middle and treescaping -- but there wasn't enough hard design projects. Cities should use tech and building real prototypes to push design forward. I'm skeptical that these 'affordable housing' projects will do much to stop the urban decadence and crime -- as they will be as disconnected to the city as any housing project. People still want to have real homes that they can control, not to be passive cogs in someones machine.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure racists like Moses, isn't the high praise you think it is.
Nice to see the Moses urban legends are still popular among the ignorant
The truth about Robert Moses
Caro: Moses came along with his incredible vision, and vision not in a good sense. It’s like how he built the bridges too low. I remember his aide, Sid Shapiro, who I spent a lot of time getting to talk to me, he finally talked to me. And he had this quote that I’ve never forgotten. He said Moses didn’t want poor people, particularly poor people of color, to use Jones Beach, so they had legislation passed forbidding the use of buses on parkways. Then he had this quote, and I can still hear him saying it to me. “Legislation can always be changed. It’s very hard to tear down a bridge once it’s up.” So he built 180 or 170 bridges too low for buses.
From the man who wrote the biography.
Now, you can use The Daily News all you want, but anyone from the NYC area knows that you wouldn't be caught wrapping up fish with that garbage tabloid. But you keep on keeping on cuck fetishist.
Moses: “Caro's engineering and transportation outgivings are ridiculously amateurish, naive and infantile. He picked them up from a disgruntled young engineer with the City Planning Commission who indulged in nasty recriminations after he left...the Commission.”
The stats don’t lie. NYC was 95% white in Moses era. Buses did travel the parkways. Caro was reflecting a time of 1970s decline, not the 2000s reality we see now. Moses just became a scapegoat for every problem, and got no credit for the successes.
Sure, I'll take the word of a man trying to protect his legacy, a guy like that must have "black friends", right? Perhaps he hung around Bill Cosby back in the day.
And not one comment on how much the average unit will cost and not one bit of information on how they will be maintained with the large slice of mentally ill occupants or the large portion of the criminal element using the social programs as a floor income while they engage in theft, sale of stolen goods, drug-dealing, and prostitution to augment that income. The non-mentally ill, non-criminal homeless will be served and will hopefully prosper but they have not begun to address the issues.
We are going to round up the rich, and put them in camps, take their money, and feed them, of course.
Oh them criminal elements!! When will they quit being thieves, drug dealers, and prostitutes.., when will they.., die? When will they accept nice and obedient slavery which is a sound system we created for their own good?
Die mentally ill.., die you criminal elements! Die you urban population die the fuck out!!!
While there is a "criminality-promoting" subculture within a portion of the Blacks and Hispanic community popularized by certain music like "gangsta" rap that is demographically popular among blacks and hispanics. The deep truth behind it all is a disturbing byproduct of systemic racism that made it very difficult for blacks and hispanics or pretty much non-Anglo-germanic "white" to make a successful living through lawful living. The music isn't the origin but it does however perpetuate the criminal subculture even after many of systemic racism barriers had been lifting. Certainly, the musicians which are predominately black and hispanic in rap music & "gangsta rap", often get quite rich from their music but young blacks and hispanics get caught up into the criminal culture due in part by idolizing of some of these rap musicians that "popularizes" criminal conduct. Lets not forget that this is a part of the "pop culture" where what's popularized is influential on young people growing up when its basically all the education they got. Schools became glorified daycare centers and so forth. We do see a disproportionately higher percentage of blacks and hispanics in street gangs and illicit drug market than the Anglo-Germanic "white" people. One might think that with the civil rights and all, why would the be engaged in the "criminal" underworld.
It wasn't that long ago that the civil rights made it more possible for a potential equal opportunity for success in a lawful way of living. However, we have generations entrenched in the criminal underworld because they were entrenched into it because of the more racist culture of "white" America in the era of segregation and era of slavery before that. We imposed this.
Then there is an engrained culture of distrust against whites by these non-"whites". Of course, popularization of crime promoting lyrics in music and even television shows and movies in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, does surely popularize crime when popular and idolized role-models of blacks and hispanics/Latinx popularizes and even superficially promote crimes in how they present it. Over time, this criminal element would dissipate.
Removal of systemic racism and denouncing white supremacy and the hate ilk that put blacks and hispanic so deeply entrenched in the criminal underworld. The last thing we need to do is step back to segregation and they be left largely to just as their only way of life when they can in fact over time depart from that criminal underworld culture they been pushed into by historic policies and treatment. Additionally, we denounce criminal culture and encourage blacks and hispanics that they need not be living the street gang / criminal underworld life and be able to be successful. As whites, we should help and encourage them to be successful and that does start with seeing our own racial biases. I do see issues with some of the complications during the 60s through 90s and to a point, even now. However, I believe there is more opportunity today for ethnic minorities than in the past but we need to continue to help build up the new present world in the near future, so that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, raise a family, build successful lawful businesses regardless of race/ethnicity and gender.
I believe rap doesn't need to promote or popularize criminality and be popular because we got to raise all of America's youth into a world where criminality is distasteful as any sort of racism be that white supremacy or any _______ supremacy (fill in the blank with whatever race/ethnic label) that leads to policies, laws, rules, institutions that establishes any kind of racial bias or systemic racism. I know I gloss over a lot of complicated details of history and choose to simplify the matters and skipped over a lot but that would be a lot longer response.
Yes, there are fucked up issues and arguably bad choices made by a lot of individuals but it is understandable how things became the way they did given the context from the 1920s to the 2020s. Street gangs and criminalty needs to stop but we need to communicate better that there is vast opportunities to succeed in non-criminal life and with removal of impediments that preserves systemic racism and white supremacy institutions and the collapse of white supremacist institutions of power and wealth. One of those institutions is the "wealth shield" that is used to protect the wealthy white supremacists from accountability, indictment, incarceration, etc.
While this topic is ultimately about affordable housing but affordability is relative. Wealth redistribution will be key. 2% controls like 75+% of the wealth. The fortune 1000 Americans of the U.S. controls or holds significance influence (with foreign interests) on the control of 90% of that 75+%. If 99% of the wealth they control was redistributed, they will still be able to live a very comfortable life. If that 99% was redistributed fairly, everyone will be able to afford a modest home. The "American dream" would be real for everyone in this country. Affordable housing would be able to be affordable. The problem is you can't really construct any new housing that is affordable to those below the poverty line or most any household making less than $40k. Affordable housing will have to come from modest adaptive reuse of existing buildings. New construction often will involve way too much initial investment cost in material and labor to pencil out in a pro forma except maybe 10% of the units being affordable and the remaining 90% being market rate on the higher end to easily subsidize the "affordable units" and even then, developers will want free government cash subsidization so it can cost them $0 to put in "affordable housing" units. They aren't interested in housing people who can't even afford to build themselves a "supersized" dog house to live in because to most developers, they are losers, trash, garbage, waste. I doubt we'll ever change that perspective. Some of the homeless problem is not going to go away because the individuals aren't willing to change their situation. Some of the homeless are lost causes because they don't want to work or do anything. You can help those that need help if they are willing to change their situation and do what they need to do to fix their situation. For those that don't, you can't really help them much no matter how well your good intentions are. That will remain to be an issue until they sadly, die off.
This issue in America is across the board and as a building designer, there are issues way outside my professional area to resolve. There are social issues beyond my professional role. I can contribute a part of the solution but it's way beyond just what I can provide. That is the work of others interested in addressing these issues. There has to be some "buy-in" by developers.
TLDR?
Aside from a cursory skim over, we can all agree that the issues are complex and intertwined with decades of "baggage" resulting from our past and to an extent our current institutions, policies, etc. Nothing above is intended to be statements of racist views against non-whites although it does point out inconvenient truths that also reflect back on "white supremacy" institutions of systemic racism and bias. It's intertwined. To a degree, white supremacy and its institutions put many people of "non-white" into situations where some had to go to make terrible decisions like going into the criminal underworld because they were denied time and again opportunities for employment and such because of they were not white even when they were better qualified.
The "lawful culture" needs to not be a crime in itself. Less than a century, it really was a crime and to some degree, it is still, albeit less than it was in the past but still pervasive. Affordable housing is relative, of course.... the question being "affordable to who?"
We can't build housing affordable for those who have no income and then we have homeless population problems that will continue. There are those among the homeless whom you really can't do much to help because they aren't willing to do their part in what it will take to change their situation.
What's wild to me is not your subtle racism Volunteer, it's your lack of any class analysis, lack of any critical thinking, lack of acknowledgement of the failures of capitalism. In everything you write, everything, it's this lack of awareness, yet writing about the failure of this system that makes me feel for people like you; unaware of systems that perpetually destroy lives, and keep us reconciling and creating class solidarity.
she says affordable but affordable to whom? Most of her speeches are pushing tax subsidized(tax credits) housing which is typically 30-40k households, and unfortunate as it continues to overlook the Missing middle. Oh and btw all the tax credit developers earn outrageous fees while pretending to be altruistic so take it from someone on the inside. The CEOs of these tax credit developers are pillaging the city, county and state’s funds building 1.5-2.0x the cost of private housing. It’s criminal
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