CommentsEASTSIDER--Did you ever start a project to find that it takes on a life of its own? The tenants at 3212 Verdugo Road in Glassell Park (photo below right), and the owners desire to bulldoze them over into 10 small lot subdivision homes, has turned into one of those issues for me.
The Setting
Here in Glassell Park we have been seriously gentrified in the last few years, and now we are being jammed up with new housing because our neighborhood is considered a cool place to live, close to downtown, and developers can make a bundle as they build. We have condominiums, apartments, and small lot subdivisions popping up all along Eagle Rock Blvd like popcorn. Seriously. You can check it out on Google Maps.
One of the currently popular development tools is the City’s Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance, which is currently in the process of being amended to favor the developers even more. You can find a summary of the current Code Amendment and Policy Update here. You will note that all these changes are still pending, as is all too often the case with the City Council.
Anyhow, back to this column. I recently attended a Glassell Park Neighborhood Council Meeting, Land Use Committee Meeting. At that meeting the developer’s representative brought some renderings and gave an overview of the proposal to tear down a four unit SRO apartment building, and replace it with 10, count ‘em 10, small lot three story homes/townhomes.
I was intrigued because almost all the tenants actually showed up at this meeting to ask what the heck is going on and what is someone/anyone going to do about it? I realized that this kind of displacement is going on all over the City, and thought it would be interesting to talk to the tenants and follow the process from beginning to end.
The Peeps
There are four units at the property address, with one vacant. Most are occupied by two people, and the length of time they have been there is anywhere between 5 and 26 years. The longest renting tenants recently left, because they had a family friend who has a guest house that they could move into. They booked, instead of waiting to get the insult money which would still mean that they could no longer afford to live in Los Angeles. Period.
For the remaining tenants, rents average around $1100/month, and in the event of a Small Lot Subdivision conversion, they would wind up with something between $10,000-$20,000 dollars each. I have met most of these tenants, who have jobs, including public sector and non-profit jobs which alas don’t pay enough for them to rent in Los Angeles in the event that their SRO housing goes kaput. Maybe the City Council Affordable Housing Trust Fund could front them some bus tickets to Yuma or Laredo if this all comes to pass.
And let’s be honest. Even if the tenants are given a right of return, if they could afford $600,000-$700,000 homes, they wouldn’t be renting, would they?
I’m going to track these tenants and this development through the Planning Department cycle, as an example of the human debris left by the gaping holes in SRO kinda’ rent control housing. Affordable housing, none.
The Ordinances
There are two current, popular ways to get people out of SRO housing permanently, one being the owner’s decision to convert the housing to condominiums. The other is to convert the property into Small Lot Subdivisions, and sell off the resulting no-space single family homes at a market rate.
And remember, we in Los Angeles do not have real rent controlled housing. We have something called the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which is looser than real rent control. For example, if a tenant leaves one of these apartment buildings, the landlord can immediately jack the rent up to market rate, as in whatever the market will bear. Check out the Los Angeles Tenants Union’s recent CityWatch article.
Current Happenings
Anyhow, so far this development is very early on in the process. The tenants only found out about any of this through a Notice which was provided by the developer because they were scheduled to attend a GPNC Land Use Committee Meeting, to explain the process.
The “NOTICE OF A MEETING” simply indicated that Stradella Court LLC intends to take the property addresses of 3208-3212 Verdugo Road, and use the Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance to build ten (10) single family dwellings. It also listed three Department of City Planning Case Numbers.
You will be shocked that the tenants freaked out, and almost all attended the GPNC Land Use Meeting. During that meeting, they got to see a pretty rendering of what the 10 houses would look like, presented by the developer’s representative, one Ani Petrosian. The representation was made that this would take place on the 20,000 sq/ft property.
That was it. I hung around, talked to the tenants & the Committee, and decided that this project would be a really good test case to see exactly how this “Affordable Housing”
measure by the City really works. Other than dispossessing the tenants, of course. To be fair, in this City rigged system, an owner/developer would be crazy not to cash in on the windfall. Thank you, LA City Council.
Questions Arise
After the meeting, I went online to the Zima’s, LA City’s One Stop Search engine for properties, including all the details associated with them. It’s pretty cool, and you can check it out here.
Well, according to Zimas, the property is only 10,000, not 20,000 sq/ft. I emailed the developers representative, and am still waiting to hear back. While there could be a perfectly valid explanation, it does raise questions.
Next, I tried to find documents under the three Planning Department Files listed on the Meeting Notice. No joy. So I emailed the Planner for Northeast LA and requested the information. Again, no joy and no answer.
Now wondering what’s up, I finally made a request for the information under the California Public Records Act. They acknowledged the request, and I’m still waiting to hear back. At this point I’m stymied until I receive the information. When I do, I’ll move on to Part Two of this series.
The Takeaway
If I, who purport to have some clue as to all this stuff, am having this much trouble getting any information, what do you imagine the tenants must feel? I can tell you for a fact that they are freaked out and live in terror of being dumped from the City where most of them both live and work. They will likely become detritus by products of the Affordable Housing binge of the City Council, even as it is an oxymoron.
It is no secret that the City is shedding rent-controlled apartments at an alarming rate. In August, the LA Weekly ran an article noting that ‘Evictions from Rent-Controlled Apartments in LA Double’.
And as they noted in another piece just a few weeks ago, ” The City has lost a total of 1,284 rent-controlled units in the first nine months of 2017 -- a rate of nearly five per day ...”.
These are scary numbers, and all legit under the Ellis Act which allows an owner to evict all tenants as they either get out of the rental business, or closer to home here, decide to tear down the building and build condo’s or small-lot subdivision townhomes.
I don’t think this phenomenon is going to change anytime soon, until the next housing market collapse which could occur anytime. The reason is that the City has an economic incentive to promote this type of development. It’s called the Affordable Housing Linkage Fee Ordinance, and it creates a statutory conflict of interest between the City’s supposed love of Rent-stabilized (read rent controlled) housing, and their thirst for more money. This Ordinance makes sure that the City actually gets money every time existing housing gets torn down to build stuff like Small-Lot Subdivision homes.
Between this, and the fact that something like 90% of the Airbnb money is going to go to the City administered “Affordable Housing Trust Fund”, the City Council can make money while wiping out RSO Units.
I love my City. Down is Up, and Up is Down. Stay tuned for more, as Alice follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole
(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.)
-cw
