LA mayor slowly dismantles her successful housing plan
Sal Rodriguez | August 8, 2024
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass continues to walk back her most successful initiative to bring much needed housing on the market.
On July 1, Bass issued her third revision to Executive Directive 1, which she notes in an accompanying letter, “has led with historic urgency to bring Angelenos inside and provide new housing in Los Angeles, having expedited more than 18,000 affordable units in the city thus far.”
Simply put, ED 1 ordered the city’s infamously slow and Byzantine bureaucracy to speed up reviews of 100% affordable housing projects throughout the city. Yet ever since ED 1 was signed, Bass has gradually walked back the applicability of ED 1.
The latest revision bars proposals to build affordable housing on parcels subject to the city’s rent-control ordinance “containing 12 or more total units that are occupied or were occupied in the five-year period preceding the application.”
This change follows a spat earlier this year over a planned 153-unit affordable housing project in Eagle Rock which would have required demolishing 17 rent-controlled units. The developer in that case applied for fast-track consideration under ED 1 but was met with a unanimous City Council vote instructing the city’s planning department to block affordable housing projects which would demolish five or more rent-controlled units.
The revision also claims to “ensure the protection of historic resources.” It achieves this by disallowing developers from using ED 1’s expedited reviews in the city’s Historic Preservation Overlay Zones.
Back in May, I wrote about Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky’s push to exclude projects in such zones from ED 1. What prompted this was a proposed 70-unit affordable housing project on a vacant lot in the Windsor Village HPOZ in her district.
“We’re not trying to stop affordable housing developments in historic zones,” her chief of staff told LAist at the time. “We really just want them to work with the community, the neighbors, with the historic zone board and with our office to make the project fit better within the context of the neighborhood.”
As I wrote at the time, “In other words, they are trying to stop affordable housing developments in historic zones by subjecting them to the same old clunky processes that yielded Los Angeles’ housing crisis in the first place.”
With her latest ED 1 update, that’s what Bass has delivered.
In addition to all of the above, the revision also seeks to “improve the design, landscaping, and open spaces of new affordable housing.” It aims to achieve this by capping the number of incentives and waivers a developer can seek to work around the typical height and density requirements.
“The added complexity makes it hard to move these projects quickly,” Abundant Housing LA’s policy director Scott Epstein told KCRW. “When you review all of these extra design standards, these things add up to a lot more planner time.”
On top of that, Bass’ note acknowledges the ongoing effort by the council to formalize and make permanent, through the City Council, the gist of ED 1. But then Bass adds, “I am prepared to support labor standards and protections for qualifying 100% affordable ED1 projects receiving streamlined approvals.”
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, “Councilmember Tim McOsker, one of organized labor’s more reliable allies at City Hall, introduced a motion [in June] to instruct city officials to explore ways of ensuring that workers on ED1 projects receive the prevailing wage and, in some cases, healthcare coverage.”
Translation: future projects can expect much higher labor costs.
“It’s just turning something that was really remarkable into another status quo type tool,” Jason Ward, co-director of the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness, told LAist. “That’s never going to get us where we need to go in terms of housing production.”
“It’s just turning something that was really remarkable into another status quo type tool,” Jason Ward, co-director of the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness, told LAist. “That’s never going to get us where we need to go in terms of housing production.”
Previously, Bass scaled back the applicability of ED 1 in single-family or more restrictive zones. That alone cuts off a great deal of the city from consideration. Taken together with the latest updates, developers willing to take on affordable housing projects are even more limited in where they can build.
Not only that, but with the prospect of looming labor changes, things will only become harder. With the new design standards and restrictions on top of that, projects simply won’t pencil out.
That’s a far cry from the promise of ED 1. Last year, the Los Angeles Business Council estimated that if the original ED 1 were applied to not just 100% affordable housing projects but all types of housing, the city could see both more affordable housing and more market-rate housing.
Rather than remain firm on her most effective policy initiative to date, and stick to the point of speeding up affordable housing projects, Bass has capitulated to political pressure to slowly suffocate ED 1 through mandates and overregulation.
Other cities should learn from the success of ED 1 and avoid the mistake Bass is now making.
Sal Rodriguez is opinion editor for the Southern California News Group and a senior fellow with the Pacific Research Institute. He is the author of Dynamism or Decay? Getting City Hall Out of the Way, published by the Pacific Research Institute.
