Land Use will always be complicated — Be innovative.
Do not discount the California Housing Crisis — the result of segregating land use rules.
It’s not solely up to the real estate investor to be creative — or the planner. Development variances need approval, and sometimes entire districts are rezoned. Being innovative today enables the capitalization of tomorrow.
In baseball, “on deck” refers to being next in line to bat. On a naval aircraft carrier, on deck refers to a boarded pilot in his plane on the flight deck in which the pilot then is taxied to the catapult and launched. — ON DECK is where my thoughts are composed in original form.
Land use is complicated, remember. If it all were objective, then subjective opinions, studies, and dialogue wouldn’t matter.
I have seen this complication firsthand having lived as an “Airbnb gypsy”in and around Los Angeles for the better half of 2017. As a byproduct, this flexible living allowed me to deeply understand all of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area in a very short amount of time. I’ve lived in most of the affluent and economically vibrant regions of LA; aside from the South Bay, Downtown, and the Valley. Essentially, I’ve called the most sought after mixed-use areas of LA my home — Pasadena, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Central LA(Fairfax/Miracle Mile), Koreatown (in 2014) — not to mention seeking out the best day adventures with my beautiful wife and warrior of a son.
We had a great time at the aquarium and lighthouse at sunset in Long Beach a couple weeks ago.
Furthermore, having grown up and lived in —
a rural setting (central Louisiana; along the Red River in Effie to be exact),
sprawled bay & beach setting (Tampa/Clearwater/St Petersburg),
college town (Tallahassee; north Florida along the Florida/Georgia state line),
sprawled, yet densely populated setting during law school for a quick & hot minute (Los Angeles; K-town),
densely urban island surrounded by public transit commuters from every direction (Manhattan/New York City),
and finally, to today, a newer — yet still sprawled Los Angeles (newer: meaning more transit friendly plans in development, as well as housing/commercial developments/repositioning of neighborhoods)
— thus I am using all of these experiences coupled with traveling around the world to better understand the environment that I currently reside in. Uncovering many of the local laws, regulations, and planning has been interesting. To further the case, Los Angeles is unique in that it is also made up multiple regions and smaller cities within it. I live in one — West Hollywood.
In 1984, residents in West Hollywood organized to maintain rent control. When Los Angeles County began planning to discontinue rent controls, West Hollywood was a densely populated area of renters, many of whom would not be able to afford to keep up with the generally rapid raises in rent in the Los Angeles area. A tight coalition of Seniors, Jews, LGBTQ, and renters were greatly assisted by the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) [24]and they swiftly voted to incorporate as the “City of West Hollywood”. West Hollywood then immediately adopted one of the strongest rent control laws in the nation.
Lastly, if you ever find yourself driving in and around LA, you’d be surprised how quiet neighborhood streets are in many areas while also being located in near proximity to walkable and commercial districts.
Complication continues to be a hurdle for real estate to accompany innovation — especially with investors
When private equity real estate investment and development firms look at many of the hurdles a project in LA faces, certainly there are several reasons as to why the the current housing permits focus on areas of housing with the best risk/return scenario; while also having the least amount of development risk due to land use and timeline risks. And these approved plans we are seeing may not actually be the “best” scheme for the overall neighborhood and city as a whole. Housing in general is good. Office and retail development that improves a neighborhood is good.
However, when breaking down housing in many of the most densely populated and regulated metros — there is no coincidence in the rise of institutional capital flowing into stable multifamily apartment buildings and communities with a variety of asset qualities (A-C). These firms have many more outside variables within their investment strategy that affect their business such as interest rates(2017, 2016, 2015 — very smart in only giving yourself 17 days of technical sobriety, Gary), LP and JV metrics/desires, market demand & supply, and more. Combine that with internal challenges of an investment firm and the plate is fairly full.
To add (pun intended), value-add real estate investments are very lucrative in that a firm can use their repositioning expertise to achieve great returns on their capital — all without having to worry about ground-up development risk.
Teams can run leaner, and more efficient by focusing on a specific asset type across metros or multiple asset types across a single metro of their expertise. It is a great way to dial in a niche. Their funds do not have to be as large due to being below institutional’s radar but above a local mom-and-pop investor’s threshold. City planners have to worry about this, and many other variables, because even with the current housing stock — America is in a shortage. LA’s evolution, in particular, will be very interesting in the next couple couple decades to come.
It is very easy to look back, instead of forward. Investors would rather buy cash flow in low vacancy, demanding markets where affordability has been lost — even to the working professional.
In Los Angeles, there is a lack of affordable housing. It is known almost immediately when folks set their sails or ride off into the West.
For those whom spend their day, and [sometimes] night, working in real estate — this is a great place to be due to the vacancy of units. Housing, generally speaking, if priced low enough will be not be vacant (for sale or rental). With that said, clearly folks in the affordable housing space in any urban metro are in an even better place regarding demand due to their product.
Historically, homeownership has had major benefits in California due to the tax incentives (fixed property tax; Prop. 13), as well as wealth generation. If you’ve been around real estate for a while, you may have come to learn that buying homes have proved to be an american dream built on emotion — not pure financial gain. Data has shown countless times that buying a home is the overall worst financial decision Americans have done as a collective group.
However, not all financial situations are created equal; nor is real estate that is being occupied.
The point is — investment returns are not equal and measuring risk is very important. Just ask Scott Robinson.
As Housing for CA has pointed out:
Homeownership provides upward mobility, home security, and long-term wealth creation opportunities to Californians. But despite all of these benefits, housing developers in California infill locations overwhelmingly chose to build rental apartment buildings. In 2017, well over 90% of the completed multifamily units in the City of Los Angeles were rentals.
The only thing I’d add to that statement regarding long term wealth generation is that not all wealth generation is created equal. In other words, the opportunity cost of not being able to invest in higher yielding alternatives. However, in Los Angeles, you might be surprised to find homes purchased for under $100,000 a couple decades ago that are now valued north of $1 million. LA’s economy and urban planning has a lot to do with the lack of affordable housing that was not as anticipated in the past. Like I said, it is easier to look back, rather than forward. Looking forward though, clearly the city is in a place where it is evolving.
Gary Carmell recently did a great job with analyzing the tax overhaul and what the changes mean for those who own and those who rent in a high tax, high-cost state (California) and one residing in a low cost, low tax state (Texas).
Many builders and developers are not incentivized in terms of providing affordable housing to future owners. This is not simply focusing on single family homes either; condos, town homes, and small lot developments are also not receiving the attention they should in terms of the city incentivizing the folks who provide tax paying residents with the possibility of owning their own home. If you noticed — I said tax paying residents. The current tax system favors rental housing more, therefore, developers will often opt out of a for sale project.
Housing for CA, a private developer and columnist for online publication Urbanize LA, points out that a homeowner generally enjoys significant tax benefits over a renter. As far as the development of for-rent housing versus for-sale housing, the complete opposite is the case. There are often significant tax advantages to building a rental project over a for-sale project. For-sale projects are taxed as ordinary income, which is our highest level of taxation. In this recent editorial, there were 4 reasons brought up on the topic:
- It Often Takes Much Longer and Is Riskier To Get For Sale Housing Approved
- It is Much More Difficult To Obtain a Mortgage For a New Condominium than a New Home
- Our Tax System Favors the Construction of For-Rent Over For-Sale Housing
- Development Insurance is Much Higher for For-Sale Projects than for Rental Projects
Furthermore, with the supply/demand for rental living in a city where many younger people are starting careers, as well as folks who are transplanting in from colder climates — it is a no brainer as to why the sprawl continued to expand until commutes were no longer an option. Also, if you didn’t know, Los Angeles graduates more engineers than any other American urban center. The LA region has a broad, diverse background, gender and racial diversity, and is an hour drive from virtually every environment imaginable.
There is a reason why I refer to it as Jurassic Los Angeles:
Hurdles upon hurdles: Regulation, Permitting, Timeline, Construction Costs, and Investor Returns
With the current economic drivers, in addition to many of the points that Housing for CA makes note of in the permitting process battle for a for sale development, as well as the tax and insurance incentives given to rentals — it all makes sense.
The land use road in for-sale development is a much longer and bumpier one to take. It becomes hard to pitch the timeline risks to investing partners given the returns that can be had with the alternative in rentals. A developer can always sell the entire rental building anyway. Even if a firm has no LP’s in the deal — the same scenario is presented and similar outcomes prevail. And putting investors aside, real estate is a very intricate and involved business, the notion of being challenged every step of the way can become tiresome.
Personally, I’ve enjoyed seeing many of the Small Lot Developments around LA spring up over the past year. Most add value to the neighborhoods they are in regarding design in addition to many more units/homes than a typical lot would hold.
What are “Small Lot Developments?”
Important question: Who is their daddy and what do they do?
Again: 28 years later
Handbook: Small Lot Design Guidelines by LA Dept. of City Planning
Current and past projects: via Urbanize LA
A short primer: In 2005, the City of Los Angeles established the Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance. This ordinance allowed a new hybrid housing typology that looked and functioned like row townhomes but where each unit was built independently on individual “small lots”. A major consideration in this ordinance was insurance. Small lots are technically single-family homes and have lower development insurance than condominiums. The new units are definitely a great value to the neighborhoods they are being built in. However, again, due to the lack of affordable housing, most of these homes are selling north of $1million due to their size and construction design. In the end, they technically are single family homes therefore it is understandable.
California Housing Crisis
California residents are in a tough spot when it comes to housing. The state’s property value continues to increase in addition to land use hurdles that step in the way of giving residents in the middle and lower income classes an easier time to survive. Housing officials say that 180,000 new units need to be provided per year by 2025; however a separate study by McKinsey indicates the number is more so around 437,500 units per year. Furthermore, that study indicated regardless of the number of units and complicated issues correlated with what I have already emphasized— a range from changing the rules to incentivize local governments and accelerating the land-use approval process to boosting construction productivity and deploying modular construction techniques — it will consist of “working together, cities, state authorities, business, and citizens can close the housing gap — but solutions must be highly tailored to local needs, and government, business, and citizens all need to step up to the challenge.”
It will require all parties coming to a meeting of the minds and getting the job done. It will take everyone from the local residents and government, policy makers, capital providers, and anyone in between.
To add, Housing for CA recently wrote an editorial for Urbanize LA where the piece centered around “25 Solutions From A Builder’s Perspective To Fix The California Housing Crisis.” I highly recommend visiting the editorial (linked above) due to the depths the author goes into. I’ve highlighted a lot of it, and I’d paste it all here but that makes no sense. Visit it in its original formon Urbanize LA. For background — the author is a housing developer and sure does know their state history regarding why a product inventory and what it will take to provide more in today’s land use regulatory and permitting environment.
All 25 solutions were well though out and certainly have valid reasoning in tackling the crisis. Of the solutions, here are the ones that I found most interesting:
Allow 100% Residential Development On Commercially Zoned Properties
Banning housing on these lots is an easy way for cities that don’t want housing to not get housing. There is another reason for this: money. Housing generates revenue in the form of property taxes. Property taxes in California under Proposition 13 are essentially fixed from the time of sale. Proposition 13 incentivizes jurisdictions to not zone for housing because it doesn’t create much tax revenue. Commercial property creates property taxes and, most importantly, sales taxes. Allowing housing on these commercial lots is seen as a way to block sales tax revenue from ever coming in. Follow Glendale’s lead, where they have revitalized their city and improved it for local businesses and residents.
Stop Killing Housing By Delaying Approvals
Nothing adds to the cost of housing more than the carry a builder pays waiting for approvals. There is nothing a jurisdiction can do to lower the cost of housing more effectively than approving housing projects in a reasonable amount of time.
Let’s look at a basic case study to demonstrate how important this is. Let’s assume there is an acre of infill land currently zoned for 30 townhomes. These townhomes take 18 months to build. If the city approves the by-right project within one year, the builder can sell the townhomes and make 20% annual return on her money. The table below shows how much more the builder needs to charge his customers per home to make a 20 percent annual return if the city delays project approvals more than a year. Delaying approvals five years, as many California cities do today, can add over $162,000 to the price of a home!
Create New Zones For Missing Middle Housing
The one story single family home was the backbone of California’s post World War II housing revolution. We don’t have to go from one-story homes to all seven-story apartment buildings with two levels of underground parking. There is housing called “missing middle”. We need all kinds of housing in the state. There are numerous problems with having half of housing coming from “mega-projects” sized fifty units and over. They are the most expensive housing type to construct and they take longer to construct than smaller projects.
We Need Uniform Statewide Zoning Rules for Properties Within ½ Mile Of a Rail Stop
California taxpayers have spent good money over the years building out our rail systems. It is long overdue to capture that value.
While living in Santa Monica, I could never understand this.
Legally Enforce That All Jurisdictions Take Senate Bill 35 Seriously
For jurisdictions that are not meeting their housing goals, SB 35 mandates streamlined approvals for housing projects that conform to existing zoning. To qualify for this streamlining, you must construct the project with prevailing wages (see rule #20) and include a portion of below market rate units. SB 35 is not perfect, but it has the potential to be the most important California housing bill of all time.
Allow Housing Construction To Begin Immediately After Planning Approvals
Often in California an “approved” housing project is nothing more than an “approval to get more approvals” before starting construction. It can often take well over a year, and sometimes two or three, to get these next approvals to finally start construction.
Be Very Careful Adding New Fees To Developments That Create New Housing
There is a reason most other manufacturing industries have outsourced: it is very hard to turn a profit manufacturing with American labor. Two years ago the City of Los Angeles had some of the lowest fees for development in the state. Coming soon, thanks to two new fee ordinances, the city will have some of the highest fees in the state. This makes existing uses (though often underutilized) much more valuable and harder to compel a sale for redevelopment land value. These two new fees have also lowered residual land values. These fees greatly decrease the chances of being able to compel a cash flowing land owner to sell. The owner of a property won’t take one penny less than the original valuation before the new ordinances. However, the value for the cash flowing property has gone significantly down. They will now either sell to someone who will keep the existing use, or keep the property. Thirty townhomes will not be built.
Incentivize and Remove Planning Approvals For As Much Affordable Housing As Possible
Government subsidized affordable housing is some of the most difficult housing in California to develop. You need to compete with market-rate developers to acquire land. You need to secure approvals, often in the face of stiff neighborhood opposition. When approved, you need to secure public funds to build the project. We have never had enough public funding for affordable housing. The recently passed tax reform bill in Washington will make access to these funds even scarcer.With all of these obstacles, builders of affordable housing should receive priority treatment streamlining their approvals. Senate Bill 35 is a great start. Affordable housing in virtually every California jurisdiction qualifies for streamlining under SB 35.
Reform, don’t repeal The Costa Hawkins Act and The Ellis Act
The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act is a state law that bans rent control on all single-family homes, all condos, and multi-family units built after 1995. The Ellis Act is a state law that allows apartment landlords to evict tenants in order to “go out of business”. Often this means to demolish an apartment building to build a new residential building. There is intense pressure from affordable housing advocates to repeal both laws this year. Many quality academic works show that rent control benefits a chosen few and raises the rents for everyone else. I agree with those works. But guess what? I don’t care. I live in the real world. With real people, that have real problems. There is a human face to this crisis. An academic work cannot help the 92-year-old widow on a fixed income with no family and no place to go. It is not her fault our state neglected to build enough housing for decades. Both of these bills need common sense reforms.
Make The Los Angeles Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance Statewide Law
This is a Small Lot Subdivision “SLS” unit. You take a multifamily or commercial zoned piece of property and cut it into little pieces. Everyone owns their own approximately 1,500 square feet of land and a single family home that often looks like a modern San Francisco style row home. No common walls or foundations. Often there are just six inches of air between homes.
Taken from the Los Angeles Department of City Planning website: “Adopted in 2005, the Small Lot Ordinance (“Ordinance”) established a new hybrid housing typology that looked and functioned like row townhomes but where each unit was built independently on individual “small lots”. It combined the benefits of a single-family home and its full fee-simple ownership of building with the conveniences of a townhouse lifestyle. The Small Lot Ordinance was intended as an innovative housing tool to encourage the development of alternative fee-simple homeownership in areas zoned for multi-family and commercial uses.”
SLSs are usually the most affordable single-family home available in each Los Angeles neighborhood. You trade lot size for more affordability. And yet SLSs are dying in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has run out of missing middle zoning, and they are not creating any more of it in plan updates. The city has recently looked to tighten rules on the development of SLSs. Recent increases in fees (See rule #10) has hit SLSs hard. Entitlement applications for SLS have dropped.
We Need To Look At Dodd-Frank Reform
Today, it is so difficult for a homebuilder to get a reasonable construction loan to build California housing. In the lead up to the financial crisis, nearly any developer in California could get a low-interest, high-debt non-personally guaranteed construction loan regardless of important things like the project’s location, and the experience and wealth of the developer. All sorts of construction loans for housing that never should have been issued in California were issued. When the Great Recession hit, these banks took heavy losses on these construction loans. Many banks that we thought were “too big to fail” did just that.
In response, Dodd-Frank (Nationally) and Basel III (Globally) were 2010 policies aimed at addressing the financial crisis. For the past eight years, they have done exactly that, but the policies have been bad for housing creation. These policies contain language that makes it much more difficult for banks to issue risky loans like construction loans. To issue these construction loans, banks would now have to keep larger cash reserves. This makes construction loans less profitable and more unattractive for banks to issue.
While the reforms were needed, they have gone too far in construction lending. Today, developers pay a bank about 2.5 times in interest and fees compared to what was paid 10 years ago. Financing for a private homebuilder to build projects sized 6-to-50 units (once our state’s bread and butter) remains very hard to secure, and much more expensive than before. Those extra costs are either passed on to the customer or make many projects infeasible to develop.
Fannie Mae Needs To Finance Construction Loans For Homebuilding
Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), describes their business as “our financing makes sustainable homeownership and workforce rental housing a reality for millions of Americans”. Fannie Mae provides financing that allows the acquisition of several kinds of real estate. As a staple, Fannie Mae purchases the mortgages of the homes of many Americans. This is good.
Fannie Mae also provides financing for other things not so good (in the context of middle and lower income earners). If you want to buy a non-rent controlled apartment building and raise the rents on all of the tenants, Fannie Mae will give you a low-interest mortgage to do just that. If you want to go into a working class, gentrifying neighborhood and buy up to 10 homes that take away homeownership and potential upward mobility from up to 10 neighborhood families, Fannie Mae will give you the mortgages. If you want to do what private equity giant Blackstone did: buy foreclosures during the Great Recession, evict homeowners, and then rent back to them at higher prices than their old mortgages, Fannie Mae will back the debt. What Fannie Mae will not do, is give you a construction loan to build California housing developments.
Part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, Fannie Mae was established through adjustments to the National Housing Act to make housing and home mortgages more affordable. During the Great Depression, with so many unemployed blue collar Americans (sound familiar?), FDR saw homebuilding as a key part of providing employment and stimulating the economy. Look how many homes were built in California in the 1950s and 1960s! Yes, times were different — but — We had a homebuilding revolution; today we need a new one.
We Need More Labor
Even if we had the political will to build over 180,000 housing units per year in California, we couldn’t. We do not have the labor force in place to build that many homes. We barely have enough to build the half of that we are currently building. Every day on job sites in California recruiters poach framers, pipefitters, and drywallers right off jobs. They give them a raise on the spot to leave to a new job. This is part of the increase in housing cost. It costs us today just about double what it cost 10 years ago to construct a house. It is not just construction. In agriculture, we are letting our state’s crops die because there is no one to harvest them.
We cannot solve our housing crisis without addressing this shortage. Three solutions: (1) Actively recruit out-of-state skilled workers that have lost manufacturing jobs. (2) Our State’s Community Colleges need to invest more in programs to produce the next generator of entrepreneurs in trades like carpentry, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, concrete, and utility work. (3) We have to overhaul our nation’s immigration laws. The Dream Act is not good enough. We need comprehensive immigration reform that brings the nation’s undocumented out of the shadows and welcomes them with dignity to the workforce.
Threaten to Take Away Local Control From Bad Actors
No matter what reforms we pass, it is possible (probable?) that some jurisdictions simply will not follow laws to allow housing construction. One of the few ways to ultimately compel them is the threat to take away their local control.
We Need a Real Lobby
Gun rights advocates have the National Rifle Association and Wayne LaPierre. Reproductive health advocates have Planned Parenthood and Cecile Richards. To be successful, the California housing movement needs a similar organization and a leader to rally behind.
There is a movement out there, the “Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY)” movement. It is time to legitimatize and rally around them as the leaders of our cause. Brian Hanlon of California Yimby and Laura Foote Clark of YIMBY Action are CA housing advocates. Unlike other lobbies, they do not develop housing. They advocate for housing. All different types of housing. They have a podcast. Political candidates have come from this movement like Sonja Trauss for San Francisco Supervisor. Brian or Laura were likely not taken seriously at first. Today, it’s confident the 2017 housing package would not have passed without their efforts. Brian Hanlon has moved to Sacramento and created California Yimby to advocate for housing reform. He is that “leader to rally behind.”
My Opinion
As I stated above, regardless of what 3rd party or local planning studies indicate — these have been shown to be complicated issues. The overall solution and theme is correlated with what I have already stated in that it requires a range from changing the rules to incentivize local governments and accelerating the land-use approval process to boosting construction productivity and deploying modular construction techniques. This will consist of “working together, cities, state authorities, business, and citizens can close the housing gap — but solutions must be highly tailored to local needs, and government, business, and citizens all need to step up to the challenge.”
All parties coming to a meeting of the minds and getting the job done. It will take everyone from the local residents and government, policy makers, capital providers, and anyone in between.
Having lived mostly in NYC & LA during the past 5 years, I can understand this through and through. Jason Lopata, a land use consultant with Craig Lawson & Co., LLC, says it best:
The Los Angeles of the popular imagination is a city of a vast sprawling scale, of freeways and boulevards, and of single family homes on quiet residential streets. These notions do indeed describe much of the Greater Los Angeles region, a sweeping territory encompassing hundreds of municipalities and neighborhoods across five counties, which roughly 18.5 million people call home. But any astute observer of this city must realize that appearances are not always the same as reality. While that is the stereotypical impression of LA, much of the city looks very little like that picture. And over coming decades, the prevailing imagery of the city might include towers in addition to houses, subways in addition to freeways, and jacarandas in addition to palms. Los Angeles is transforming before our very eyes.
After decades of seemingly limitless outward expansion, the city has ‘filled up’ at its sprawling low-density level, and the next LA is increasingly centered around a growing urban core that is set to redefine the region as we know it. There is a growing sense both in and out of LA that this place is entering a fundamentally new phase of its history.
LA is in a rare position to pursue this sort of hybridized model, in that its pre-war urban core was big enough that it carries some weight, but small enough that its grip was never so firm as to continue dominating the region following from the introduction of the automobile. The suburbs could never truly vacate the core power of a place like Manhattan, because there was simply too much economic and cultural capital locked up on that island. Conversely, cities like Phoenix or Houston had far less developed urban cores by the advent of mass automobile ownership, and thus today there would be relatively little basis on which to anchor a return to urban densification. LA is somewhat unique in this respect in that it strikes a middle ground between these two extremes. It has the legacy of an old urban center, even though Downtown was largely vacated for decades, but which already has the solid physical and cultural bones — the government offices, the dusty old theaters and commercial buildings, the legacy businesses and social clubs — to function as the main center for the region once it was reactivated. As such, the study of the ‘re-urbanization’ of LA is unlike that of the urban renaissances of other great American cities whose urban cores never truly ceased their roles at the center of metropolitan life; but it is also unlike the study of projects to invent an urban core from scratch as has been attempted in several cities around the world.
Clearly, many in Los Angeles enjoy the environment, space, and privacy of living in single family homes located in an urban metro. As I said before, heading west after my son was born was my own attempt toward a more sustainable life — a warmer life for my wife (a necessity, believe me!) and a less dense life for my boy to grow up in. However, we still live in our nation’s most populated city on the west coast, but it’s apples and oranges though in terms of the daily grind.
Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is experiencing a construction boom of epic proportions. Since 2010, CoStar reports there’s been 42 developments of at least 50,000 square feet delivered in the urban core, with another 37 large projects under construction as of Dec ‘17.
Current DTLA skyline
DTLA skyline in 2030 | Courtesy of Visualhouse and Jon Wilson
Curbed LA has done a great job outlining the big picture of what is to come, even with current state of regulatory controls on land use in Los Angeles. To get a sense of just how much vertical development is on the way, they mapped all of the tall buildings that are planned and under construction right now around LA.
“Drive through Downtown LA and you can’t help notice construction cranes everywhere, not to mention a bunch of new buildings (including the almost-complete Wilshire Grand Center, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River)”
3D animated flyover of the central city showing the development of LA’s towers — starting with City Hall (1928)
When zeroing back on housing in Los Angeles, many of the single family homes were zoned for and built long, long ago. The LA Times recently published an OP-ED, “L.A.’s land use ruled were born out of racism and segregation. They’re not worth fighting for.” The gist of the article hovered around this:
These days, about half of the city is zoned for single-family exclusively. It is illegal to have anything except a detached house (and sometimes an accessory unit) on close to 500,000 properties in Los Angeles. Limiting what types of homes are allowed in this way has not only contributed to soaring housing costs, it has also created profound racial and class segregation.
I have been down this road before where I talked about Richard Florida’s interesting article, How Zoning Restrictions Make Segregation Worse. This article was a follow up to a recent case study performed at UCLA, and takes on the precise nature of the connection between land use restrictions and the economic segregation of metros. What this case study uncovers, which we haven’t fully understood until now, is how restrictive land use regulations in cities and urban centers shape segregation across entire metropolitan areas.
There is much correlation in comparing my opinion regarding Florida’s analysis of that case study from UCLA and my opinion on the California Housing Crisis.
Many areas are segregated due to the density restrictions within the land use regulations of the metropolitan area. Furthermore, we must remember not all restrictions are equal in terms of their effects on segregation. To continue to make strives within this area of our economic well being, our state governments must be more involved in land use regulation residential development, and growth management.
Thus — I can’t say it enough. It will take everyone. All parties coming to a meeting of the minds and getting the job done. It will take everyone from the local residents and government, policy makers, capital providers, and anyone in between.
Hiking in Griffith Park
La La Land views from a family visit to the Griffith Observatory
Hiking in the Hollywood Hills after sunset
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How innovative has your city, state, developers, capital providers, and community been in addressing these land use issues as we evolve into the future?
Carl
Spring 2018
Los Angeles
Originally published on Medium. Find me on Twitter.