CommentsLOS FELIZ LEDGER SPECIAL REPORT--A non-elected committee created to provide guidelines regarding affordable housing and development for the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council has been meeting illegally since December 2017 in violation of California’s Ralph M. Brown Act, which guarantees the public’s right to be informed of and to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies.
Additionally, it appears the committee—known as the LFNC’s Ad Hoc Committee on Housing Affordability—is co-chaired by a person with possible special interests, specifically Benton Heimsath, (photo left) who is an assistant project manager for AMCAL Multi-Housing, which builds both low income and market rate housing in California and Texas.
Further, Heimsath holds a leadership role in a volunteer organization called Abundant Housing LA, which advocates for the creation of density development—including that near public transportation in Los Angeles—fewer parking requirements for new housing units and describes its mission of “lots of new housing to drive down rents and help people get out of their cars and onto public transit,” according to the organization’s website.
Abundant Housing LA also encourages its membership, via its website, to get involved in local neighborhood councils, saying: “Win locally by getting more involved in neighborhood councils…. Neighborhood councils are often dominated by NIMBYs [an acronym for “Not in My Backyard”] … but that sounds like a temporary problem to us.”
Los Angeles is in a current affordable housing crisis, with an unprecedented number of homeless people living on the streets while the city and the state seek to encourage developers to increase the amount of low-income affordable housing units in exchange for relaxed zoning requirements of market and luxury rate housing.
The current situation has created NIMBYs as well as YIMBYs—meaning “Yes, In My Back Yard”—those who are supportive of both low-income and market rate housing and homeless shelters in their neighborhoods.
The need for a housing ad-hoc committee to advise the LFNC arose after months of controversy, preliminary approvals, appeals and ultimate Los Angeles City Council approval of a 97,000 square-foot until mixed-used commercial and residential development at Franklin and Western avenues, according to current LFNC president Luke Klipp.
“There were a number of projects, and questions of affordability kept coming up,” Klipp said in an interview, “and our planning [and land use] committee and [governing board] don’t understand these different things.”
According to Klipp, the ad hoc committee was aimed at finding “areas of potential agreement,” on such controversial issues and then informing the governing board, which he said would eventually “pick and choose or take nothing,” from the ad-hoc committee’s findings.
According to Klipp, the committee has not yet presented anything to the LFNC’s governing board.
According to a document created by the ad-hoc committee, the committee has been involved since its formation last December in goal setting, research and learning and conducting policy roundtables, all leading up to what it calls “guideline development,” in April and the planned approval of those guidelines in the summer of 2018.
Calls for interested Los Feliz stakeholders to join the ad-hoc committee were posted only on the LFNC’s Facebook page in October and December 2017, where it is believed 28 so called “stakeholders,” meaning someone who lives, works, owns property or belongs to a community organization, replied to the call to fill out a survey to be considered for the committee.
A request for the LFNC to provide those surveys of interested people was not provided on deadline.
But a handful responded to the Ledger’s request May 28th to authenticate their Los Feliz stakeholder status, including one Los Feliz resident and former LFNC president, Ron Ostrow, who said he had initially joined the committee, but later resigned, in part because of dissatisfaction with it.
“The committee wasn’t focusing on what I thought it would. I had expected the committee to create a guide for the LFNC to help it develop an overall approach to development as it fit in the neighborhood. Instead, it is focusing on increasing housing, not analyzing how affordable housing would/could/should fit into the neighborhood,” Ostrow said in an email.
Alex Kondracke, also a Los Feliz resident, said she applied as well to be on the ad-hoc committee and attended its first meeting.
But, she said, she was never invited back, which she guessed was due to her views on building more dense housing in Los Feliz. She was one of several that filed an appeal of the City Planning Commission’s approval of the development at Western and Franklin avenues.
“I was quite outspoken on that project and others,” she said.
Kondracke is also the chair of the Los Feliz Improvement Assoc. (LFIA)’s zoning committee. The LFIA recently filed a lawsuit against the city for its approval of that project.
“I feel big money is infiltrating neighborhood councils, which are supposed to be speaking for the community,” Kondracke said. “Then [developers] can say the community has no objection to a project … and then they can do what they want without obstacles.”
Thomas Brent Gaisford (photo left), Director, Abundant Housing L.A. Gaisford, along with Heimsath created a slate of “Pro Housing” candidates for the LFNC’s recent May 2018 elections and passed them out near the election poll site. Photo: Abundant Housing LA website.
Additionally, Heimsath, and Thomas Brent Gaisford, who is the Director of Abundant Housing L.A. and co-founder of both Upwell Real Estate Group and Treehouse Co-Living—which currently has a construction project in East Hollywood at 5842 Carlton Way slated for completion in 2019—passed out flyers near the LFNC’s May 12th polling site for its election at the Elysian Masonic Lodge on Vermont Avenue. However, the location where the pair passed out flyers was far enough from the polling place so as not to violate election rules.
The flyer requested would-be voters to “Support These Pro-Housing Candidates,” and then listed candidates for the council’s nine open seats. Ultimately, five of those nine candidates were elected, although two of the candidates were running unopposed.
According to one winner, Meggan Ellingboe, who upset the council’s long-time incumbent Mark F. Mauceri for the council’s Recreation seat, she was unaware she had been endorsed by Abundant Housing L.A.
“I was not aware of the slate or approached beforehand,” she said in an email. “I found out about the slate … after the election.”
Candidate Josh Steichmann, who did not win but was on the Abundant Housing slate, said in an email he did not know he had been endorsed by the group either, but he was glad for the nod as he is for more housing in Los Feliz.
A request for information from both Heimsath and Gaisford on how Abundant Housing LA chose its endorsements was not returned.
Meanwhile, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles certified the council’s May 2018 election on Friday, May 25th.
A total of 617 ballots were cast in the election out of 40,000 eligible voters.
Those on the Abundant Housing L.A. slate that won were Evanne Holloway in District A with 28 votes; Celine Vacher for Business Rep with 245 votes; Michael Hain, who ran unopposed, for Public Health and Safety with 433 votes; Erica Vilardi-Espinosa, who also ran unopposed for Education with 440 votes and Meggan Ellingboe who unseated Mauceri, who is also the council’s vice president, by 14 votes with a total of 173.
Other winners that were not on the slate were: Hanna Claesson-Assad in District B with 48 votes; incumbent Bryan Cassadore in District C with 93 votes; Nick Schultz in District D with 60 votes and Giuseppe Asaro in District E with 25 votes.
There were six challenges or requests for a recount of the election filed by three candidates and Kondracke.
Concerns included illegal campaigning, possible disparities between ballot registrations and votes cast and possible electioneering by Abundant Housing L.A.
However, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, who assisted with the election and certifying the results, denied all but one challenge. In their findings, they concluded District C winner Bryan Cassadore possibly campaigned illegally while wearing an official LFNC badge on a lanyard around his neck.
The league, however, said photographic evidence showing Cassadore at Our Mother of Good Counsel School wearing the logo while students there filled out registrations to vote, was not conclusive enough to disqualify him and recommended the matter be handled instead by the LFNC governing board.
“The [league] recommends that the LFNC Election Committee review the challenge submitted and [the] findings of the [league] to decide whether this warrants reprimanding candidate Bryan Cassadore,” the league wrote in a determination letter to the council.
UPDATE: After the LFNC was questioned last week by the Ledgerregarding Brown Act violations by the Ad Hoc Committee on Housing Affordability, Heimsath — the ad-hoc committee co-chair — began posting, on May 28th information related to the committee on the LFNC’s website. Additionally, other ad-hoc committees previously not shown on the website, were also listed over the last handful of days, sometimes back-dated by months.
Additionally, the LFNC was listed on a website called YIMBYwiki, a “open site for YIMBY and housing issues. . . related to creating more inclusive, affordable, equitable housing and communities.” In response to the Ledger’s inquiry of when and by whom the LFNC was placed on the wiki site, YIMBYwiki founder Tim McCormick, of Oakland CA replied May 30, 2018: “[The LFNC] was apparently added in October 2016 … I don’t recall the specifics, but suspect that someone from [the LFNC] attended the first YIMBYtown Conference in 2016, from which we used listed affiliations of attendees to provisionally start the directory. Today, Luke Klipp from the [LFNC] emailed me noting that addition and [asked] that it be removed, which I will do shortly per policy.”
The LFNC was the only neighborhood council in Los Angeles listed on the site. However, also listed on the YIMBYwiki site is “Westwood Forward,” a pro-development group, also supported by Abundant Housing LA, that successfully advocated for the Westwood Neighborhood Council to be split in two in a May 2018 election.
YIMBYwiki is supported by a 2017 grant from Better Boulder, a group advocating for “infill development,” “smart growth” and “well designed density” and the Boulder Area Realtors Assoc., both of Colorado.
As of May 31st, the notation of the LFNC has been removed from the YIMBYwiki page.
A request for comment from Klipp, President of the LFNC, was not returned.
This story was updated May 31, 2018 at 7:53 a.m.
This story was updated May 31, 2018 at 10:42 a.m. to include photos of Benton Heimsath and Thomas Brent Gaisford.
(Allison B. Cohen is the publisher of The Los Feliz Ledger where this special report originated.)
