CommentsFraudywood #1--On March 1, 2012 CityWatch published, “Hollywood Becomes Fraudywood” explaining that the City was using bogus population data for its update to the Hollywood Community Plan. But even after the city attorney advised then Councilmember Garcetti that the Community Pan was based on false data and should be re-done, he refused to make corrections.
Fraudywood #2--A year later on June 23, 2013, CityWatch revisited the issue in “Hollywood Becomes Fraudywood, Part 2.” CityWatch made clear that the population data being used by the city was fatally defective, that the city should stop any litigation before the court ordered a new update. Valuable time was squandered through Garcetti’s insistence that the litigation continue when everyone “knew” that the court would reject the Plan.
The City of LA was adamant in its use of false data. Just as CityWatch predicted, Judge Alan Goodman threw out the Hollywood Community Plan in January 2014.
As a result, the city reverted to the 1988 Hollywood Community Plan [1988 HCP] which was based on data from the 1970's and 1980's. Thus, we are now evaluating projects based on demographic studies that are between three and four decades old. It is ludicrous to approve projects in 2016 based on population data from 1980.
Fraudywood #3--On April 29, 2016, the City of LA began work on a new Update to the Hollywood Community Plan, and once again used bogus data. The city says that its population figures come from the Southern California Association of Government’s 2016 RTP. As we reported earlier this month, the SCAG 2016 RTP has no population information for Hollywood.
The public has the unqualified right to know the data upon which the city relies. The city is urging the public to approve massive construction projects while concealing the truth from everyone.
Just as some grassroots organizations were correct in 2005 about what the official data would eventually say about Hollywood’s population, those same groups have a good idea what is happening at this time.
What is the likely Population Situation with Hollywood?
This time around, Hollywoodians Encouraging Logical Planning [HELP] (which sued the city over the 2012 Hollywood Community Plan) says that it expects to see Hollywood have a slight increase in population -- limited to primarily millennials, a blip in the population count that is temporary. It also expects to see fewer families in CD 13, while CD 4, north of Franklin Avenue, should be doing well except for the impacts from the various “disasters” in the Flats (CD13.)
Millennials are the generation born between 1980 and 1999. They have been lingering in urban areas longer than prior generations, due to high student debt, a depressed job market since 2008, and high housing costs. A significant number are living a kind of post-college dorm life existence by sharing expensive apartments in higher density neighborhoods. They are found in DTLA, and it seems that they are found in Hollywood, for instance, along La Brea in the new mixed use projects.
The Millennials are Leaving, the Millennials are Leaving…
The Millennials are departing and last year was probably their zenith. According to Dowell Myers from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, the number of new-born Millennials dropped 25 years ago and continued to decline. Thus, two important demographic factors are at play.
(1) There will be fewer Millennials in future years. In fact, their generation ends in 2019, so planning for them to be around to play out the “dorm life scenario” until 2040 is not prudent.
(2) The Millennials tend to move away from urban areas in droves when they start families. They are reaching the family rearing age and starting to move away.
The claim that Millennials would prefer to permanently live Dorm Style has been obviously bogus. When young adults transition to family life, major life style changes always occur. The demographic data showed that Millennials would desert the urban cores when starting families. For the upwardly mobile college educated Millennial, it is okay for “other people” to raise their families in apartments in DTLA or Hollywood, but they themselves tend to opt for a single family home with a yard in Austin, Texas. (They are more likely to gentrify and mansionize South Central than to remain in a tiny Hollywood apartment.)
The Right to Accurate Information
It is crucial for the public to have detailed and reliable population data about the composition of the Hollywood’s population and the trends which will play out in the next decades. If HELP is correct, then these mixed-use apartments are a glut on the market. It will be economic folly to construct more urban high rises in Hollywood.
Also, construction in these Transit Oriented Districts is more expensive than locating apartments elsewhere. Land costs the most in these TODs. In addition, the taller a project is, the more stringent the building codes and the more expensive the construction costs. The mere fact that the city wants to concentrate apartments in TODs guarantees that housing prices will rise.
The Public Wants Polices which is Lower Housing Costs
Most people in Los Angeles think that housing prices should decease. Yet, the Hollywood Community Plan is based on bogus data which misleads the public to believe that we’ve got thousands of avid apartment dwellers descending on Hollywood. This type of construction significantly increases housing costs.
In order to make meaning comments on the NOP, the public must be provided accurate population data and links to demographic studies which reliably forecast the future population changes. The City has had over two years since Judge Goodman’s January 2014 decision to provide this information. Right now the NOP does one thing – it misleads the public to support real estate developers’ desires to aggrandize their profits while harming everyone else.
The City needs to retract its NOP and issue a new one with reliable data. The NOP has to also reveal its data sources and it has link them to the NOP so that the public can double check the information.
The Recalcitrant City
The City will refuse and here’s why. The demographic data shows that TODs are a disaster; they overburden infrastructure, they deteriorate neighborhoods, they attract so many cars that the traffic congestion becomes significantly worse, and the City has a habit of giving tax dollars to developers.
Unless the City corrects itself now, the court will reject this new Hollywood Community Plan so that we will be stuck with the 1988 HCP until 2022.
Fraudywood: Hollywood’s Community Plan Redux … and We Don’t Mean that in a Good Way
