LOS ANGELES

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW-Last Wednesday, state assembly members Melissa A. Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), and Mike Gatto (D- Los Angeles) introduced legislation that would require school districts to adequately protect the personal information of their students. 

ANIMAL WATCH-“Los Angeles is the only megacity in the world where mountain lions, also known as cougars and pumas, live side-by-side with humans,” CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker stated during a 60-Minutes broadcast on "Mountain-Lions-of-L.A.” 

GELFAND’S WORLD--The Emergency Preparedness Alliance met for the fourth time last weekend. As some of you may recall from previous articles, this group is developing a plan to bring the public into disaster preparation on a broad scale.

CITYWATCH—Let’s be clear at the outset: I want our mayor to succeed. It is not my goal or my nature to push for a great LA by wishing that LA’s leadership fails. But, let’s also be clear about this: Our mayor has himself in a political pickle. 

DEEGAN ON LA-Are the politicos too cozy with developers, making backroom deals that help them and harm communities? Are good construction jobs and affordable housing out of reach for those most in need? Is it time for a DWP overhaul?

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-A brief note: Opponents of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative have repeatedly claimed that it would block the construction of new affordable housing. In CityWatch I have twice asked readers to send me any addresses where that has been the case. I have also reached out to experts at USC and UCLA with the same question. So far, I have only heard a second hand anecdote, but no specifics yet. I’m still waiting. If readers can send me any details…a location and any zone changes and General Plan Amendments that were required to proceed with an affordable housing project, I would appreciate it. Until then I will assume that this is a baseless claim concocted by supporters of luxury high rise projects intent on preserving the business model of their patrons. 

CityWatch readers probably know that the City Planning Department is trying one more time to prepare and adopt an ordinance to finally stop the mansionization of LA’s single family neighborhoods. 

Part of their motivation is that there are few cases of land use that arouse as much as wrath as McMansions -- those big, boxy, pricey, and cheaply constructed houses that are often mistaken for apartment buildings. 

Consider the following: 

Some people hate them because they conflict with the City Planning Commission’s anti-mansionization policies contained in their Do Real Planning manifesto. 

Some people hate them because they conflict with the policies of the Framework Element, a key part of LA’s General Plan. The Framework is clear that new residential developments must respect the character and scale of existing residences. But, as anyone can see when driving through neighborhoods blighted by mansionization, the scale and character of McMansions intensely clash with existing homes, whether they are Spanish Revival, Tudor, mid-century, or even ranch-style. 

Some people hate them because they displace existing affordable housing. Nearly all of the 2000 homes that the mansionizers bulldoze each year in Los Angeles are small starter homes. Most of them are less than 2000 square feet, and they cost about 1/3 of the Big Macs that replace them. LA’s housing crisis did not just happen. It has multiple causes, one of which is mansionization, whether it involves losing single family homes and duplexes or the creation of Single Lot Subdivisions. 

Last, but hardly least, some people hate them because of their energy-intensive, environmentally unfriendly character. To say the least, McMansions are the least sustainable housing option out there, short of a castle, or to be generous, a real mansion. 

And also consider this: 

1. Their giant footprints cover much of their lots, so there is little open space for rain to percolate into the ground or for plants to sequester carbon and produce oxygen. 

2. Their boxiness makes them very hot in LA’s sunny climate, so the owners have no choice but to run their air conditioning around the clock. And, as LA heats up through climate change, those air conditioning units will try to keep up, spewing out even more heat and air pollution in a downward spiral. 

3. To sell McMansions to their status-conscious buyers, the contractors install outsized appliances, such as enormous restaurant stoves. Sometimes they throw in energy-hungry extras, like whole house vacuum systems with every room featuring a vacuum outlet. The result is enormous electric bills. 

4. To further appeal to these “discriminating” buyers, the contractors install pools and spas, forcing up water bills to keep them filled with fresh water, generating large electric or gas bills to heat them. 

5. LA’s new building codes require sprinklers in each room for potential fires and as a result, the DWP must install new two inch pipes for each McMansion to assure sufficient water pressure. The old standard one inch pipes are either left in the ground or hauled off as scrap. 

6. McMansions routinely include two or even three car attached garages. This feature not only incentivizes automobile driving, but the new double driveways also wipe out green space and trees in front yards and parkways. But since the attached garages are routinely used for recreation, storage, and other habitable uses, the owners park their luxury cars on their front yard driveways, next to sidewalks. 

7. McMansions create enormous amounts of rubble because they require the demolition of existing houses, most of which contains dangerous asbestos and lead paint that the contractors – with a wink and a nod from Building and Safety -- fail to remediate. 

8. Because McMansions are huge, they devour enormous amounts of construction materials, such as cement, metals, plastics, and wood. Furthermore, because they are shoddily constructed, they will have a short life-span. Future buyers will quickly tear them down to avoid the extensive repairs necessary to keep McMansions habitable. This short life span, then, also adds to the rubble created by the mansionization process. 

9. McMansions are higher and larger than adjacent houses, and this means they create much more shadowing than the smaller houses they replace. Neighbors are impacted by loss of sunlight in their yards and gardens, as well as by reduced opportunities to efficiently run roof top solar panels. 

When these many unsustainable features are considered, it is clear that any serious effort to create a sustainable Los Angeles, such as the Climate Action Plans prepared by Mayors Villaraigosa and Garcetti, should have the mansionization process in its cross-hairs. Claims of mitigating the causes of climate change, or adapting to climate change as it worsens, will ring hollow if yet another mansionization ordinance is riddled with more loopholes that allow the continued construction of McMansions.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch. He welcomes comments, questions, and corrections at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

BUTCHER ON LA--“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.” -- Former Supreme Court Justice Lewis D. Brandeis, 1913.

ALPERN AT LARGE--After I got home last night, after a busy day in clinic and suffering through a miserable rain-soaked and traffic-plagued commute en route to an excellent meeting with CD11 planners for a proposed large development near the future Bundy/Olympic Expo Line station, it dawned on me how the changes resulting from the election of Bill Rosendahl to the City Council in 2005 are alive and well. 

EASTSIDER-I don’t mean to keep harping on Airbnb, but this company’s sophistication in maximizing profits to pay off its owners and venture capital partners (as opposed to LA City’s pathetic attempts to regulate almost anything) makes it imperative that we get the new short-term rental ordinance right. 

ECONOMIC JUSTICE-Coalition for Economic Survival tenants at Pico Plaza Apartments, a 43-unit rent controlled property in Pico Union, successfully challenged their landlord's attempt to illegally make them pay rent only via electronic or online payment.  

MY TURN-It seems that my last article about "NIMBYISM vs Progress" really hit a nerve – garnering the most negative comments of any piece I’ve done over almost three years! This proves my theory that "we the people" don't act, we react. Perhaps this is because, like the rest of the country, we are so divided that's almost impossible to move ahead. 

TRANSIT NUMBERS … INTERPRETER PLEASE--Los Angeles transit ridership has fallen even more than a recent Los Angeles Times front page story indicated, according to Thomas A. Rubin, who served as Chief Financial Officer (auditor/controller) of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) from 1989 until 1993. SCRTD merged with the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC) after the first new rail line was opened in the early 1990s. (I served as a city of Los Angeles appointee to the board of LACTC.) 

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS--In the year since an explosion rocked the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, more questions than answers remain.

GETTING THERE FROM HERE--“I take public transit, but I hate it,” says a student intern who works in my downtown Sacramento office.

ROOS RUMBLES--On 2/1/16 the Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) sent to all certified Neighborhood Councils (NCs) the following “Funding Update“: 

The photo above shows the heart of downtown Los Angeles just after the morning rush hour. Between Union Station and La Placita on the one hand, and City Hall, along with various administration and court buildings and the financial center on the other, lies this concrete trench (crammed with cars), spanned by bland concrete bridges (crammed with cars), leading to streets crammed with cars.

DUELLING VISIONS--The Build Better LA Initiative is a remarkably bad idea that hands more power to the Los Angeles City Council to approve overdevelopment, even as it boosts the council's desire for more campaign cash from real estate developers.

HELP AND HYPOCRISY - Homelessness is often described as a problem we must solve -- and Los Angeles city and county now have expensive plans to do so. Homelessness is also an industry. And as George Mason professor Craig Willse shows in his book, The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States, that industry is designed to manage costs rather than challenge the mechanisms that create and maintain homelessness. 

BACKTALK--On Tuesday, CityWatch posted an article that loosely - very loosely and deceptively - tried to paint a picture of why I support the No Kill philosophy for the City's animal shelters and why I do what I do in the realm of animal welfare.  The article got it wrong.  I do what I do because I love animals and want to see as many of them live good lives for as long as possible. (Photo above: Councilman Koretz on right with LA Controller Ron Galperin and a friend.) 

EDITOR’S PICK--Every time you turn on a light or charge your cellphone, you pay a tax. Surprised? Many Angelenos don't realize that hidden in their monthly bill from the Department of Water and Power is a big surcharge in the form of a 10% City of Los Angeles Utility Tax, as well as a “transfer” of 8% of all electric-related revenue to City Hall. In short, you're paying almost 20% more for electricity than you should be.

MEDIA WATCH: NBC4--LAPD insiders say terror preparedness is "smoke and mirrors." Jenna Susko reports for NBC4 News on Feb. 12, 2016. (Published Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016)