The Housing Element Might Bite Us Yet
This publication first appeared as a Concerned For Westchester Playa newsletter.
The Housing Element Might Bite Us Yet
Dear Fellow Concerned Neighbors,
Our fight against high-rises in our low-rise community has consumed us for just over a year now. Every time I think we’ve won, we get blindsided again.
First we fought back big time on the Community Plan Update after Draft 2 started dribbling out in secrecy in June of 2023.
Heck yes, we were mad! We rallied, we brought out the media, we signed petitions, we put signs in our yards, we got the attention of our Neighborhood Council and our Councilwoman’s office. We were not taking Draft 2 lying down.
And we prevailed! It was a long, arduous fight, but Draft 3 took nearly all the high-rise risk out of our low-rise neighborhoods.
We thought we were done, but I was already sounding the alarm about the Housing Element. We barely knew what it was because we were so busy with our Community Plan Update, but I knew the Housing Element was citywide and I knew it was bigger than our CPU. I wrote about it everywhere I could, trying to get word out. Find some of my articles here, here and here.
Fortunately for us, while we were distracted with our CPU, our friends at United Neighbors were focused on the Housing Element and meeting a lot with that Planning Team. Read more about their efforts here.
As a direct result of all their hard work, single-family zones were removed from the builder incentive ordinances for the new Housing Element. United Neighbors demonstrated that we have ample capacity on our corridors to build the required number of units under our housing unit mandate from the state.
To say that the developers and their shills were outraged by this turn of events is an understatement, but again, we thought we dodged the high-rise bullet.
We could not have been more wrong.
This past Thursday brought the Public Hearing for the implementing ordinances of the Housing Element, including the builder incentives. I might have easily skipped this meeting because I thought everything was a-okay. I spoke with other community activists in the density fight, and they thought the same.
Something about an email from United Neighbors caught my attention and I agreed to attend and make remarks in support of the existing draft excluding high-rises from single family neighborhoods and the coastal zone.
I started a little preparatory research at the last minute and my heart sunk. I found the usual progressive influencers - LA Times and LAist - were urging people to come out and fight to change LA’s historical racist segregation via single family zoning. Not a peep about the fact we have adequate capacity outside our low-rise neighborhoods to build density.
I attended the Planning Department’s informational presentation before the public hearing and realized we were in deep doo-doo when the head planner said this during the presentation in what felt like an orchestrated perfect moment:
“[after acknowledging that SFR was in the ordinances and then removed] That said, we’re looking for your feedback today and we appreciate all the folks who’ve come out here today to share their perspective related to single-family,” Smith said. “We’re very much in a listening phase.”
I think my heart actually stopped. She is the senior lead planner for the Housing Element team and she was suggesting that the pro-developer voices could still effect changes to the ordinances.
The public hearing and testimony started and I got to speak in the #3 spot for public comment. I had the usually allowed two-minute remarks all scripted and practiced, but so many people came to speak that they limited remarks to 1-min, and I was left to drastically cut my remarks on the fly.
There are so many things I wished I’d said, but LAist quoted me in their follow up story on the hearing. I don’t know if what I said was some kind of brilliant, or whether they just have a short attention. I was, after all, #3. 😁
OK, so this is a nice story, but why am I writing you today?
We got creamed in public comment. 😱 Maybe 10% of the commenters were in favor of keeping the single family zone and coastal zone restrictions. The other 90% were calling it “a moral imperative” to open the rich white single family zones to less advantaged people to fix historic segregation.
All of this right after the head planner said the team was “very much in listening mode.” And they were hearing a lot from the people who want to obliterate our neighborhoods.
It literally broke my heart that the primarily young commenters really believe their lives are going to be better by wrecking our neighborhoods. They don’t understand that our communities will not be that desirable with random high-rises on our streets.
A few commenters literally said that individual owners aren’t required to sell, with zero understanding that nobody will want to stay with high-rises all around. Even one high-rise will ruin privacy and light access for a lot of neighbors who paid a premium to avoid living like that. It will be a race to the bottom to see which of us can sell out first while values are still strong.
Not only will our neighborhoods be ruined, virtually none of the high-rise units will be remotely affordable. The naivete of those commenters. 😥
I swear, their mantra is if we can’t have what those rich white people have, let’s burn it all down. And I scoffed at the criticisms about the “trophy generation” and here they are….
We still have an opportunity to make our voices heard!
Written public comments can still be submitted and added to the record, but there isn’t much time and very specific instructions have to be followed, which I’ve provided here.
We don’t need essays. We need commenting volume. Please take a minute right now and forward this message to 10 people in LA who share our belief that high-rises don’t belong in low-rise neighborhoods.
And then submit your own comment. And then submit one for your spouse. 😁
You won’t regret the 10 minutes it takes to forward this message and lodge your own community comment for the record. It’s really very empowering and I’ve made it super easy for you with my step-by-step instructions. Comments are due by August 25th.
Press About The Public Hearing
LA city planner hear from a chorus of Angelenos wanting more housing in single-family neighborhoods
Angelenos have a chance to help shape LA’s future housing & density plans
Housing sides clash at LA City Hall meeting
Housing Element meeting Thursday evening
Something Fun!!
My last message to you was about an impromptu rally for Traci Park. I was there and had a blast! There will be more rallies and I hope you get a chance to join me. Traci is in the distinct minority with her moderate common sense ideas and policies. We need to keep reminding her that we appreciate her taking a stand for common sense and moderation.
Reminding You What We’re Up Against
The Legislature is on break, but once they get back, the heavy shenanigans commence. I’ll be trying to cover and report on the process for you. Have you heard of “gut & amend” bills? They are innocuously named bills that proceed along mostly unnoticed and at the last minute, they are literally gutted and the language is replaced with controversial bills that are suddenly in the last stages of approval. It is a process that we should be very, very concerned with.
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The image above depicts the number of housing bills working their way through our state legislature right this minute. 😱 Why do we need five new ADU laws?
And that is only the housing bills.
This situation is unacceptable. No representative could possibly be reading all those bills. They end up horse trading votes without even knowing what they’re voting for. Sadly, the burden is on us to track all of this and do our best to shine a light.
I’d like to say we can vote the worst offenders out of office, but they are not even our own representatives. But they definitely push bad laws making our lives more untenable.
Find the bill descriptions from the graphic at this link. And please consider throwing a few dollars at LivableCA, a statewide group that has been hard at work for several years trying to keep us all in the know on these mostly terrible bills.
Another worthy group to support is Our Neighborhood Voices. They are the group behind the initiative to bring land use planning and legislation back to local control where we, the voters, can keep a closer eye on it. If they prevail, we won’t have to watch the State Legislature and their housing policy shenanigans so closely.
Both groups are pushing out expensive public awareness campaigns and hiring lobbyists to fight for us. Please help support them if you can.
🚨 Please take a minute right now to forward this email to 3 neighbors or local friends. 🚨
Concerned For Westchester Playa - Sharing upzoning and housing policy information and guidance to residents in Westchester, Playa del Rey, Ladera and Playa Vista
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