CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-It should not be so hard, really, to finally stop the mansionization of Los Angeles neighborhoods. On paper it should be a snap for the four precedents I describe below. Yet, time after time, whenever City Hall decision makers close the front door to mansionization through motions and ordinances, they open up the backdoor through bonuses and exemptions. These lethal loopholes have so undermined every anti-mansionization ordinance that they end up allowing the very McMansions that they purport to stop.
Four anti-mansionization precedents.
First, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission approved a set of guidelines called Do Real Planning. One of its principles is explicitly anti-McMansion.
NEUTRALIZE MANSIONIZATION: Neighborhoods zoned single-family deserve our protection. The most pervasive threat they face is the replacement of existing homes with residences whose bulk and mass is significantly larger than the street’s current character -- sacrificing greenery, breathing room, light, and air. Let’s be the champions of a citywide solution to prevent out-of-scale residences.
Second, the Los Angeles City Council has legally adopted many official planning policies that protect residential neighborhoods from mansionization. For example, Objective 3.5 of the General Plan Framework Element states: “Ensure that the character and scale of stable single-family residential neighborhood is maintained, allowing for infill development provided that it is compatible with and maintains the scale and character of existing development.”
Third, when City Council offices have conducted constituent surveys or when they tally communications from the public regarding mansionization, a whopping majority of these comments consistently call for stronger regulations to stop McMansions. Furthermore, at City Planning Commission and City Council public hearings on ordinances to restrict mansionization, most of those who offer testimony call for stronger ordinances, especially to count garages as part of a house’s overall square footage.
Fourth, a May 2014 City Council motion directed the Department of City Planning to cleanup the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance by removing the bonuses and exemptions that allowed mansionization to continue. The intent of this Council motion could not have been clearer:
“The by-right FAR for the smaller lots should be reduced to .45 to ensure that all R-1 lots are covered by the same zoning regulations… Exemptions for attached garages appear to result in out of scale and out of character development. They should, therefore, be removed from the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance.”
Despite all of these precedents, the City Council has one again opened up the backdoor to mansionization by re-inserting the exact loopholes that their own Council motion instructed them to remove. Despite compelling testimony from community advocates -- who easily outnumbered boosters of loopholes three to one -- the Chair of the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, Jose Huizar, reinstated two important loopholes.
Without any debate or discussion, he simply announced that attached garages would again be excluded from floor area calculations and that houses on lots smaller than 7,000 square feet could be built out to 50 percent of lot area, not 45 percent. In one barely audible sentence he added back 700 feet to the size of houses that the Department of City Planning had removed in response to many community meetings and endless emails, phone calls, and letters.
But, this Councilmember’s action then triggered a citywide push by anti-mansionization groups from many Los Angeles neighborhoods, as well as the Conservancy. Their last minute lobbying did pay off, and the full City Council again removed the loopholes. Nevertheless, no one knows the final action of the City Council when the amended Baseline Mansionization Ordinance and Hillside Baseline Ordinance have their second reading in January 2017. Will the mansionization lobbyists again prevail through their backdoor deals? Or, will the community groups and the Conservancy maintain sufficient pressure to prevent the City Council from, once again, backsliding by opening up the back door?
Trappings of democracy.
The outcome apparently depends on intense counter-lobbying from those who support the guidelines of the City Planning Commission, the legally adopted planning policies of the City Council, the motions of the City Council, and the super-majority of Los Angeles residents who have supported anti-mansionization legislation.
While we certainly have the appearance of democracy in Los Angeles, as long as some elected officials reject their own adopted motions, guidelines, and policies to help a small group of real estate speculators, support for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative will grow. If voters adopt this legislation in March 2017, it can foil these repeated corrupt backroom deals that undermine local democracy. These shady deals not only turn this country into a dollarocracy, but they cement the very collusion between the public sector and private commercial interests that now seamlessly stretches from City Hall to the White House.
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angele city planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
Putting the Brakes on Mansionization in LA: No Rest for the Weary
