LA IN MOTION-Throughout LA’s vast 500 square miles are many self-identified neighborhoods. Ninety-six of them have formed official Certified Neighborhood Councils (CNCs), as established by the Los Angeles City Charter. But, the real number of neighborhood groups is much larger, and they reflect tremendous differences in concerns, demographics, resources, and strategies. (Photo above: Protesters at Mayor’s residence in Hancock Park.)
Despite their differences, the local groups have one thing in common. They are totally fed-up with City Hall. From the richest neighborhoods to the poorest, from the most organized to the least organized, and from the politically adept to political novices, three complaints repeatedly appear.
First, over-sized, over-height real estate projects are routinely permitted by City Hall, even though they exceed the capacity of local infrastructure and are out-of-character and out-of-scale with local neighborhoods.
Second, public infrastructure and public services are inadequate and poorly maintained at present. And, in the future, this situation will only get worse as maintenance is deferred and the Los Angeles region will be subject to repeated natural disasters: earthquakes, floods, heat waves, droughts, and fires.
Third, the City’s legally adopted zoning codes, building codes, and conditions imposed through project approvals are erratically enforced. In most cases local residents must make repeated calls, usually involving City Council Offices, submit voluminous rebuttal documentation into planning case files at their own expense, and in some cases they must resort to lawsuits to get code enforcement.
To many communities, these conditions appear to be intractable, and people often blame LA’s failures on its size, its public employees, or the alleged self-centeredness of its residents.
Quite frankly, we don’t buy any of these explanations. Other large cities on the west coast, such as Portland and Seattle, do not have these same problems. As for public employees, we know them well. They are dedicated and hard working. Furthermore, they do not determine the work programs of their respective departments, much less the City’s budget priorities.
As for the supposed self-centeredness of Angelenos, admittedly we do have our share of thoughtless people. But, let’s not confuse them with those in countless local organizations, working hard on a vast range of issues, too often in isolation from each other.
So, how can the overlapping concerns of LA’s residents be properly addressed? There are obviously no easy answers, but we think this is where to begin.
First, there should be an umbrella organization to pull together these many local groups so they can speak with one voice at City Hall. This group, United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA), is now organizing. Once we have more information, we will be sure to return to these pages so your neighborhood can join in.
Second, United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles’ first task will be to ensure that the City of LA follows its own legally adopted policies, ordinances, and implementing regulations. While some laws, like the Small Lot Subdivision, Baseline Mansionization, and Density Bonus / SB 1818 ordinances, are truly defective and should be repealed or totally rewritten. The even bigger problem is that decent policies and laws are twisted or ignored because of the influence of City Hall lobbyists.
An example of something that must go is the Small Lot Ordinance, which the City Council established in 2005. Its benign purpose was to provide a new type of housing for Los Angeles, but in practice it is deeply flawed. It allows small lot projects to ignore front, side, and back yard setbacks.
This ordinance also permits insufficient guest parking that overburdens available street parking. It allows the subdivision of existing lots into so many narrow parcels that each small-lot unit is a matchstick tower for which the contractors routinely seek variances to exceed height limitations, destroying the character of neighborhoods. It sanctions RD 1.5 apartments on R2 lots, formerly restricted to duplexes and forming a buffer zone between single-family homes and apartments. In RD1.5 and above zones, small-lot subdivisions displace multi-unit housing that would be subject to the Americans With Disabilities Act, thus reducing available housing for the elderly and disabled.
In contrast to the deeply flawed ordinances, the City of LA’s adopted planning policies have established highly effective criteria for reviewing and approving private real estate projects.
{module [1177]}
The City Charter, in particular Section 556 and 558, requires that ALL discretionary actions, such as zone variances and zone changes, must be consistent with the City’s General Plan. This standard is also repeated in the General Plan Framework Element, “Zoning, specific plans and other discretionary approvals and designations are implementing tools of the general plan as reflected in the community plans. The City Charter and the Los Angeles Municipal Code provide for variances, specific plan exceptions, exceptions and other tools to provide a means for relieving hardships from strict adherence to the zoning regulations or dealing with special situations.”
If properly applied through a well-organized campaign directed at City Hall, this legal requirement would result in well-designed, appropriately sized real estate projects, not behemoths that are out-of character, out-of-scale, and too big for available public infrastructure and public services. More specifically, the City’s General Plan Framework Element and local Community Plans spell out the following approval criteria:
First … applicants need to demonstrate that the existing zoning in a local area cannot meet a well- documented need for more affordable housing, office space, or retail and services (that they claim their project will address). To do this, the applicant must demonstrate that the build-out of existing zoning in the area under consideration cannot meet accurate forecasts for housing, office space, and/or retail and services. This is no small task since Chapter Two of the Framework indicates that Los Angeles has sufficient zoning to meet all growth scenarios through 2100, or 90 years after the Framework’s 2010 horizon years. In fact, the buildout of LA’s current zoning would produce enough housing and jobs to create a city of 8,000,000 souls -- without any discretionary actions required.
Second … according to the General Plan Framework’s policy 3.3.2, the applicant also needs to document that there is sufficient public infrastructure and services to meet the needs of additional tenants, employees, shoppers, or visitors in a local area. [It must] monitor population, development, and infrastructure and service capacities within the City and each community plan area, or other pertinent service area. The results of this monitoring effort will be annually reported to the City Council and shall be used in part as a basis to . . . consider whether additional growth should be accommodated, when 75 percent of the forecast of any one or more category listed in Table 2-2 (see Chapter 2: Growth and Capacity) is attained within a community plan area.”
Third … the proposed project must be consistent with the character and scale of existing local structures. For example, if there were predominantly four-story buildings on a corridor, then a high-rise building would be inconsistent and should not be approved. To this effect, the Community Plans, which implement the Framework at the local level, contain language such as this goal from the Wilshire Community Plan:
“Protect existing stable single family and low density residential neighborhoods from encroachment by higher density residential uses and other uses that are incompatible as to the scale and character, or would otherwise diminish quality of life.”
Fourth … there must be a reliable monitoring program to confirm that promises made about a proposed project’s generation of jobs, transit trips, or other desirable outcomes actually appear. If they do not, then additional permits should not be issued and existing permits should be candidates for revocation. In this vein, the Framework’s Chapter 2 states:
“After the Framework Element is adopted, the City will establish a growth monitoring program that will provide important information regarding the accuracy of future growth estimate and the distribution of that new development by community plan area. The monitoring program will annually document what has actually happened to the City’s population levels, housing construction, employment levels, and the availability of public infrastructure and public services. Information on environmental conditions will also be monitored on a yearly basis to maintain and update an environmental data, which we be used to facilitate but not replace environmental review for subsequent program and projects in accordance with CEQA.”
Fifth, the proposed project must not have unmitigatable environmental impacts, such as parking or air pollution (i.e., Green House Gases are now part of the air quality analysis). In nearly all cases, environmental mitigation is nothing more than a long list of written conditions that are seldom enforced. In other cases, an unmonitored Statement of Overriding Consideration allows unmitigatable environmental impacts to be disregarded. The City Planning Commission and then the City Council both adopt these statements. They never subsequently review them, and there are no consequences if the promised project benefits fail to appear.
Clearly, the policies and laws are on the books. What is needed is a clear, loud, collective public voice to ensure that City Hall diligently follows its own policies and laws.
(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who writes articles on planning issues for CityWatch. He welcomes questions and comments at [email protected]. George Abrahams is a director of the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association. He can be reached at [email protected].)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 63
Pub: Aug 4, 2015
