🗞 Concerned For WPDR - Time-Sensitive Call To Action 11 14 24
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Summary: The next critical step in protecting our R-1 neighborhoods happens on Tuesday afternoon. We’re getting close to the finish line, and despite all odds against us, we have succeeded in keeping R-1 out of the builder incentives. To keep up our momentum, we need emails and public comments submitted to the Planning & Land Use Management Committee ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.
Links to sections below for your convenience:
What Is CHIP?
What Is PLUM?
How You Can Help
The Talking Points
— Affordability
— Equity & Justice
— Supply
How To Email PLUM Members
How To Submit Comments To The Official File
Other Homeowners Need To Hear This Message
Attend The Hearing
🚩 CHIP Heads To PLUM On Tuesday! 🚩
As I reported in my September 28th update, we dodged a bullet in front of the Planning Commission, and for another minute, R-1 was exempt from the builder incentives under the Housing Element, but the Housing Element & CHIP are now headed to the City Council’s Planning & Land Use Management Committee (“PLUM”), and then on to the full City Council for a vote.
We all came together to fight high-rises in Westchester Playa in connection with our Community Plan Update (“CPU”). We paid less attention to other aspects of the Housing Element because the CPU shenanigans were so consuming.
Fortunately for us, our friends at United Neighbors were not undergoing a CPU and they clued in to the CHIP threat earlier and started lobbying Mayor Bass and the Planning Department to focus on corridor density, not R-1 density.
What Is CHIP Again?
CHIP stands for Citywide Housing Incentive Program and is the menu of builder incentives making it financially attractive to build high density projects. On one hand, we’re fighting density in our CPU for our geographic area, but CHIP applies across the entire city.
Yep, we’re looking at a double threat.
Our CPU is in a temporary holding pattern, waiting for the next draft map and the latest estimates for adoption span into 2026. The CHIP Ordinance, on the other hand, is on a march to approval by the City Council no later than mid-February.
You can read about our CHIP fight here and here.
At every step of the fight, we fought off including R-1 in the Ordinance, but every time, the Planning Department invited the decision maker to put it back in. It’s absurd and exhausting. Progressives want it in, but nobody has had the balls to do it with our persistent pushback.
Tuesday is the next step and we need to keep up the pushback.
What Is PLUM?
PLUM is a subset of the full council and it’s critical that we get past this committee with a favorable ruling because the next and final step is the full council. As you’re likely aware, the full council is a deck stacked against saving R-1 from needless densification. The PLUM Committee Members are:
John Lee, Chair
Heather Hutt
Imelda Padilla
Kevin de Leon
Katy Yaraslavsky
The report that came out of the last step (the Planning Commission Hearing) recommends that PLUM adopt the draft CHIP ordinance without R-1, except they then snuck in an “Exhibit D” with “options” to include R-1.
In fact, the original report actually misstated the oral ruling from the Planning Commission Hearing, but United Neighbors caught it and quickly demanded a correction, which was provided.
This exhibit potentially sets us up for having to defend against a variety of ways that R-1 could be subject to builder incentives.
How You Can Help
There are several ways to help:
email the committee members
submit comments to the official hearing file
involve other friendly R-1 homeowners
show up in person at the hearing and register to speak
I’m not sure if this meeting will be available on zoom, but the committee does not take public comments by zoom.
The Talking Points
At this point in time, we are down to broad talking points and not debating the finer details of policy. In my mind, we can assume that most of the council (and therefore most of this committee) lean toward the progressive side who support obliterating our mature R-1 neighborhoods to remediate some kind of historical unfairness.
This calls for using our most succinct, strongest talking points. United Neighbors has determined that these fall into three categories - affordability, equity and supply. If you can weave in one of the talking points in your personal message, that would be helpful.
If all you can manage is “I oppose expanding CHIP builder incentives into R-1 zones,” that helps. If you can add one of the talking points below, that is an even stronger message for the cause.
Affordability Talking Points
We don’t have a housing crisis in LA. We have an affordable housing crisis. The developer interests claim prices will tank if we just build enough units. Oh yay, what a great idea. 😒 Works for developers because they make their money by building. The rest of us just have to live with the consequences.
The talking points:
Vancouver has already demonstrated that densifying residential neighborhoods does not make housing more affordable; show me one city where this plan already worked before we undertake some big experiment in LA.
Why blight our mature R-1 with high-rises when that will result in so few affordable units?
State law already allows ADUs and 4 units on R-1 lots and that hasn’t resulted in any relevant measure of affordability. High rises with so few required affordable units won’t help either.
Concentrating density along our corridors allows our cash-strapped city to concentrate infrastructure improvements on more focused areas
Concentrating density along our corridors allows economies of scale by developers that will hopefully translate to more affordability of the resulting units
Equity & Justice Talking Points
The developer interests focus on these talking points a lot. It’s not fair that everybody doesn’t get to live at the beach. It’s not fair that “nobody” can afford to live in single family homes. R-1 is exclusionary. You get the point.
But there are other fairness issues that don’t get talked about enough and are perpetuated by allowing high rises in low rise R-1 neighborhoods:
Incentivizing apartments in R-1 makes it easier for Angelenos to get trapped in permanent renter status, while simultaneously depleting our starter home inventory (developers buy the cheapest homes to destroy)
Middle class and working class families invested life savings and emotional energy into their homes - how can city leadership even think about destroying these neighborhoods without a robust citywide discussion with adequate outreach to build awareness?
Focusing densification in a narrower area (corridors, not R-1) makes it easier for communities to dialogue on how to make the focused area more just and resident-friendly, including adding new single-family and townhome starter units as part of the corridor mix
Why would young people ever invest in buying homes if their investment can be tanked with random high rises next door? R-1 density development is designed to trap people into permanent renter status
Public transportation is on the corridors, not in the R-1 neighborhoods. We shouldn’t incentive density in locations that will require cars (or cause people to even want cars)
Starter homes are hard to come by, but we can add starter townhomes to corridor mixes to incentivize blending high rises with surrounding R-1
Families are running out of options - new high rises are primarily studios and 1-beds. Where are families supposed to live, especially multi-generational families?
Every high resource area has corridors. There will be plenty of high resource options with corridor density
Supply Talking Points
Supply is an important topic because we have zoning mandates from the State and if we don’t meet them, there are dire consequences. The other side likes to argue that R-1 constitutes 72% of available land in the city, conveniently ignoring that half of that land is not available for density for a variety of reasons (fire zones, slide zones, etc).
But regardless of how much land R-1 units utilize, the bottom line is that there is still enough capacity along the corridors to meet our crazy state mandates.
The talking points:
City planners confirm in their reports that we have enough supply along corridors to meet our statutory requirements
Every high resource area has corridors - there will be adequate high resource options with corridor density
Why destroy existing and truly affordable housing in R-1 to make way for predominantly market rate units?
Adaptive reuse units are on the corridors. We should be incentivizing reuse
How To Email Committee Members
This is the easiest step, but also the easiest for the committee to ignore. What they can’t ignore is volume. We don’t need lengthy messages. We need lots of messages.
While each committee member should be willing to hear from the whole city on committee matters, we also know that they will be most persuaded by hearing from their own personal constituents, so if you can send your own email plus enlist a friend or two from the constituencies of the committee members, that’s a huge bonus.
When you email the committee members, please also cc our own councilperson. She is not on the committee, but she needs to know we still care about this issue.
Here are the email addresses:
John Lee, Chair - councilmember.lee@lacity.org (District 12 - NW San Fernando Valley)
Heather Hutt - heather.hutt@lacity.org (District 10 - Arlington Heights, Koreatown, Mid-City, Palms, South Robertson, West Adams, and Wilshire Center)
Imelda Padilla - councilmember.padilla@lacity.org (District 6 - Van Nuys/Arleta)
Kevin de Leon - councilmember.kevindeleon@lacity.org (District 14 - Boyle Heights, DTLA, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, NE LA)
Katy Yaraslavsky - councilmember.yaroslavsky@lacity.org (District 5 - Bel Air, Beverly Crest, Beverly Grove, Beverlywood, Carthay Circle, Century City, Cheviot Hills, Fairfax District, Holmby Hills, Melrose, Palms, Pico-Robertson, Westwood, Westside Village, and Encino)
+ cc: Traci Park - councilmember.park@lacity.org
Make sure your subject line says: Please Exclude R-1 From CHIP - Council File 21-1230-S5.
How To Submit Comments To The Official Hearing File
Post a comment to the Council File, which makes your comment part of the permanent record. This takes less than a few minutes with these helpful tips:
Click this link
Fill in your name and email address
Copy/paste the following:
I oppose expanding building incentives into R-1
Concentrating density along our corridors allows economies of scale by developers that will hopefully translate to more affordability of the resulting units [or your favorite talking point]
Thank you.
Click “I am not a robot”
Click “submit”
You must respond to the verification email sent to your listed email address
Your comment will be posted to the file within 24 hours
Involving Other R-1 Home Owners
Please share this email with 10 friends who own or support owning homes in R-1 neighborhoods without high rises.
Do you know anybody who owns a home or supports owning a home in R-1 in any of the following communities?
NW San Fernando Valley
Arlington Heights
Koreatown
Mid-City, Palms
South Robertson
West Adams
Wilshire Center
Van Nuys
Arleta
Boyle Heights
DTLA
Lincoln Heights
El Sereno
NE LA
Bel Air
Beverly Crest
Beverly Grove
Beverlywood
Carthay Circle
Century City
Cheviot Hills
Fairfax District
Holmby Hills
Melrose
Palms
Pico-Robertson
Westwood
Westside Village
Encino
Each of the above communities is in the district of a PLUM committee member. Please share this post with your friends in those communities and encourage them to email their councilperson with a talking point and identify themselves as a resident of the district.
Attend The Hearing On Tuesday & Register To Speak
Anything you can do will help, but getting bodies downtown on Tuesday is really needed. The developer lobbies have been very successful in bringing loads of speakers to meetings at each stage of this ordinance’s progression.
The meeting will be downtown on Tuesday. We are waiting to see the agenda but expect the meeting to start at 2:30 pm. We are also confirming what time we can check in to register to speak. Registered people get one fast minute, which is barely enough time to spit out your name and one talking point. Please let me know if you can attend and whether you are interested in carpooling.
OK! That was one long post, but this is an important topic and I want to make sure I’m doing my part to help people who support keeping high rises out of our low rise neighborhoods. Contact me with questions.
Content Authenticity Statement
100% of this week’s newsletter was generated by me, Tracy Thrower Conyers. No AI here. And if I add any, I will tell you. 😊
🚨 Please take a minute right now to forward this email to 5 neighbors or local friends. 🚨
Until Next Time…
Be well and use this link to refer others to The Politics Of Housing. Let’s grow a community of informed neighbors!
Concerned For Westchester Playa - Sharing upzoning and housing policy information and guidance to residents in Westchester, Playa del Rey, Ladera & Playa Vista