CommentsDEEGAN ON LA-"Who's on first?", the comedy routine made famous by Abbott and Costello, came to mind listening to representatives of official Los Angeles explaining how the city’s little understood housing “vacancy rate” is established. But comedy turns to tragedy as we look at the consequences brought on when this controversial, almost secret “rate” is implemented to allow developers to convert affordable rent-stabilized housing into condos.
The condo-conversion vacancy rate joins the villainous and badly abused Ellis Act (that still has no city umpire to monitor and reduce its use) as another weapon used against tenants, winning victories for developers who want to vacate affordable housing.
Once affordable housing is removed from inventory, it is gone forever. This is at the heart of the argument about how poorly the city regulates affordable housing, while simultaneously being so friendly to developers.
What is the magic wand that creates the “vacancy rate?” Councilmember Paul Koretz (CD5) offers an answer, saying, "In recent years the Planning Department has based its vacancy rate calculation on data it receives from the Department of Water and Power regarding which apartments are presumed to be occupied” by measuring how much water they pipe into buildings. Their statistics are then sent to the City Planning Department’s Demographic Research Unit (DRU) for condominium conversion projects, where they are entered into the mix as an actionable metric in making housing decisions: under 5% vacancy rate, no condo conversion -- over 5%, no problem.
This is about to change. A DWP spokesperson told CityWatch that while City Planning’s demography unit has been using DWP’s “idle meters report” as one factor in determining its vacancy rate calculations, “City Planning will no longer use DWP idle meter figures because we are unable to reliably continue to provide that data to them, due to a system change and problems during conversion.” The last time DWP provided City Planning with data was more than a year and a half ago, in 2015, according to the spokesperson.
In Councilmember Paul Koretz’ (CD5) Beverly Grove constituency, he says, “hundreds of rent-controlled apartments have been removed from the rental market or demolished.” The vacancy rate in that Community Plan Area is widely perceived as being well below 5%, but was pegged at 6% by the last Planning Department calculation in the fall of 2015.
Koretz saw the controversy that continues to surround a proposed condo conversion on North Flores Avenue in the Beverly Grove neighborhood of his district. This is where the Mendel and Mabel Meyer Courtyard Apartments has gone through a torturous process, that has included the possibility of becoming a small lot subdivision, having its tenants evicted under the Ellis Act, efforts to gain Historic-Cultural Monument status in a tenant-led crusade to protect it, and now an attempt, based on disputed vacancy rate data, to convert to condos.
Developer Matthew Jacobs stated at a public hearing that tenants he evicted from the Mabel Mercer apartment house using the Ellis Act would be offered “a discount” if they wanted to purchase their former homes back as condos. He did not mention the gap between a monthly rent payment for a rent-stabilized “affordable” apartment, which is what they had before he evicted them, and the big down-payment, monthly mortgage and property taxes on a condo. This makes what Jacobs is offering a somewhat empty offer.
After spending a couple of months unsuccessfully pushing City Planning to update the vacancy rate calculation, Councilmember Koretz introduced, on May 3, a motion calling for “a Code amendment requiring the Department of City Planning to make sure the apartment vacancy rate is up-to-date and to impose a moratorium on condominium conversions (which require a finding that the local vacancy rate is higher than 5%) if the vacancy rate calculation is more than 12 months old.”
As Koretz pointed out, "I'm not so much questioning the methodology but I do believe it's imperative that the City base its condominium conversion decisions on timely calculations." That motion is now with the City Council’s Housing Committee as Council File 17-0480.
"Neighborhoods such as Beverly Grove, which include large numbers of older, relatively affordable rent-controlled units, are under tremendous pressure from developers who would remove them one way or the other, adding to the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles," said Koretz. "The City has an obligation to make sure decisions to allow these units to become condominiums are based on accurate information, because the vacancy rate calculation is one of the few ways such conversions can be stopped. If my proposal is approved we will no longer leave it up to chance, we finally will have a mechanism to consistently enforce a concept that has long been embedded in City law."
Now, who’s on first is Koretz, and who’s out is DWP. How City Planning fits into the lineup is yet to be seen, but fans of affordable housing are hoping for a couple of affordable-housing-protecting home runs from them.
(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
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