Today, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti released his Sustainable City Plan, a detailed and ambitious set of goals aimed at transforming LA into a better city over the next two decades. The environmentally-focused game plan hits on everything from earthquake preparation to "green jobs," says KPCC, and also includes a housing section that focuses on stemming LA's immense dearth in new housing, creating more units close to transit hubs, and closing the scary-large gap between rents and incomes. Sounds pretty good, but there's a long, tricky road ahead.
The document sets goals that are to be completed as soon as 2017; one of the first targets is to start construction on 17,000 new units within 1,500 feet of transit by then. The plan also calls for a move to stop the loss of affordable housing, and to increase funds from all sources (federal, state, local) for affordable building projects by 33 percent by 2017.
Sounds great, but how is this actually going to happen? Steps outlined in the plan to help the city hit these targets include a lot of tweaks to the zoning code—especially in transit hotbeds—and working on more joint developments with Metro (Metro has its own plans for more rail-adjacent affordable housing), making it easier to build transit-oriented projects by streamlining certain permitting processes, and working harder to keep existing affordable housing intact by, among other things, "strengthening" Ellis Act provisions that relate to replacing affordable units. The Ellis Act is a state law that allows landlords to evict all their tenants at once; it's been used rampantly in the San Francisco hypergentrification of the last few years and has lately become popular in Los Angeles.
· Mayor unveils 'ambitious' plan to make LA greener [SCPR]
· Los Angeles Housing Now More Screwed Up Than San Francisco [Curbed LA]
· How Much Does Los Angeles Have to Build to Get Out of Its Housing Crisis? [Curbed LA]
· Los Angeles Has the Biggest Disconnect in the US Between Wages and Rents [Curbed LA]
· 10 Sites Along Rail Lines Where Metro Wants New Housing [Curbed LA]
· LA Landlords Pushing Out All the Rent-Controlled Apartments [Curbed LA]
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