CommentsPLANNING WATCH: Even before the Covid-19 Pandemic, our gentrification statistics were grim, such as widespread evictions from demolished affordable apartments.
Now, with this 21st Century catastrophe unleashing its terrible toll, California’s Governor, LA’s Mayor, and LA’s City Council remain the ever-devoted engineers of this toxic gentrification express. Despite its deadly consequences for construction workers and the city’s residents, they are steadfast in keeping the gentrification train up and running. Their Executive Orders and Guidelines give cover to unsafe and totally non-essential demolitions, speculative real estate projects, lucrative flipping, and rent extraction. To please their political donors and also appease their terrified constituents, the Governor, Mayor, and City Council have offered three easily refuted tall tales to justify their exclusion of non-essential construction in their shelter-in-place orders.
Tall Tale #1: Construction is essential. Homeless shelters, hospitals, and emergency medical facilities that treat Covid19 patients are obviously essential. But who is kidding whom? Nearly all of the construction projects in Los Angeles are non-essential speculative real estate projects. Politically savvy investors who expect to make 15 to 20 percent per year in annual profits through McMansions, luxury apartment buildings, and mixed-use commercial buildings fund them. Only the well off can afford to buy or rent these projects, not destitute people living in cars or sleeping on sidewalks.
While these real estate projects might be “essential” to the business models of the hedge funds, institutional investors, and contractors who bankroll and then heavily lobby for them, they are not remotely essential. These projects can and should be put on hold during the Covid-19 Pandemic. In order to save the lives of construction workers and Angelinos who live near these privately-funded projects, LA’s elected officials need to follow the lead of their counterparts in New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington State, and most Bay Area counties. They have all prohibited non-essential construction in their Pandemic orders.
Tall Tale #2: Construction can continue because it is legal. The buck stops with LA’s elected officials, and they determine what is legal and illegal, what economic activity is essential and non-essential. They cannot continue to hide behind their evasive answer to constituent complaints about non-essential construction, that someone else decided that all construction is legal. To paraphrase George the Younger, “They are the deciders.” It should not be that hard to respond to the worst Pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu by doing everything possible to protect your constituent, instead of handing out preferential treatment to construction industry donors and their lobbyists. Nevertheless, our elected officials, lead by Mayor Eric Garcetti, have stuck to their guns. Non-essential construction, such as McMansions, luxury apartments, and commercial buildings, remains fully legal “without limitation" in Los Angeles.
Tall Tale #3: Construction can be conducted safely in Los Angeles since the Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) has issued a 13-point list of recommended Covid-19 practices for all construction sites. But, as thorough as they are, the LADBS safety guidelines will have virtually no impact for two reasons:
- The Los Angeles City Council has not yet transformed the LADBS and Mayoral construction guidelines into an enforceable ordinance. The LDBS list is only 13 suggestions for maintaining a safe construction site during the Pandemic. Contractors who ignore these recommendations have not broken any laws. Therefore, the Department of Building and Safety will not punish them with stop orders, fines, or prosecutions. In contrast, the many building and zoning ordinances incorporated into the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) are laws that the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) can legally enforce. They can even refer cases to the City Attorney for criminal prosecution.
- Poor track record of the Building and Safety (LADBS). Inspections of LA’s active building sites, which number in the thousands, are the responsibility of LADBS. This City department is understaffed and employs many inspectors with personal and profession ties to the construction industry. This is one of the major reasons why City Hall does not undertake pro-active code enforcement. LADBS only inspects projects when permits require an in-person sign-off or (occasionally) when someone has submitted a code violation complaint.
If you have tried to get LADBS to stop a construction project because of its repeated code violations, you know this is a thankless task. For example, in my neighborhood, a Council District 5 staffer told local residents that the City received 50 constituent complaints of Beverly Grove anti-mansionization ordinance violations. In consultation with LADBS, the Council Office determined that none of the complaints had merit. Despite the lying eyes of constituents, no project was over-height or over-sized, and, therefore, City Hall dismissed all 50 complaints.
In my own case, I submitted a code violation complaint about a McMansion based on architectural drawings posted on LADBS’s own building permit website. These applicant-supplied building plans demonstrated that that the project was larger than the Beverly Grove RFA District ordinance allowed. Nevertheless, LADBS decided that the McMansion was fully legal.
It is farfetched, to say the least, that a City Department with such a tarnished track record in enforcing City Council-adopted ordinances, will reinvent itself for Covid-19 Guidelines. Will they repeatedly and pro-actively inspect several thousand active construction sites in LA, identify violations of LADBS’s 13 point Covid-19 construction site Guidelines, issue notices to contractors who violate them, and then follow-up with unannounced inspections to confirm that the Guidelines and the Mayor’s social distancing edict are scrupulously followed. If these steps fail to get results, are we to imagine that City Attorney will creatively prosecute contractors who ignore LADBS Guidelines that the Los Angeles City Council has not converted to an enforceable municipal ordinance?
No likely!
This is why many construction workers and LA residents could become unnecessary victims of the Covid-19 pneumonia virus. Many lives would still be saved if the Mayor and City Council followed the lead of New York, Vermont, Michigan, Washington State, and Pennsylvania to stop non-essential construction.
Why are our elected officials so committed to allow non-essential construction to gentrify Los Angeles in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic? Since 2015, Los Angeles has permitted 150,000 residential units, most of which are expensive market housing according to LA City Planning. Furthermore, over the past two decades, developers have demolished over 26,500 Rent Stabilized (RSO) Units in Los Angeles, forcing evicted residents to scramble for replacement housing and seldom finding units they can afford. An unknown number of other RSO and non-RSO residential units and their tenants have been eliminated by cash-and-key evictions, in which landlords informally pay-off tenants to skedaddle. Finally, the most unscrupulous landlords deliberately allow their apartment to become unlivable, so tenants disappear on their own.
Mansionization, in which real estate speculators buy older homes, hastily demolish them without posting demolition permits or remediating asbestos and lead paint, and then quickly build boxy, oversized, and over-priced houses is a form of gentrification that blights dozens of Los Angeles neighborhoods. The various ordinances to restrict mansionization have been weak, and LADBS has poorly enforced these weak ordinances. The result is that the gentrification of many older LA neighborhoods has not missed a beat, even during the Covid-19 Pandemic and shelter-in-place orders.
Down the block from these demolished single-family homes were small apartment buildings, most with rent stabilized (RSO) units. They, too, have been demolished in droves, replaced by luxury apartments, usually with “For Lease” signs to fill chronically empty units.
Pushback: The bottoms-up pushback to the gentrification express has taken many forms, such as complaints to the South Coast Air Quality District to stop demolitions that flout its rules to remediate asbestos, as well as requests to City Hall for Historical Preservation Overlay Districts (HPOZ), Residential Floor Area Districts (RFA) districts, and R-1 variation zones.
While the HPOZs are effective in stopping the gentrification process, the latter two overlay zones have become irrelevant since LADBS seldom enforces their provisions. For example, I live in an RFA district, and one of my neighbors listed the following Municipal Code violations, slipshod construction techniques, and conflicts with the Mayor’s April 1 Safer-at-Home order that LADBS ignored at a McMansion construction site near him:
- Trashcans filled with food debris, left in front of the worksite.
- In only four weeks, the contractor slapped together a structure 80% framed with OSB (cheap plywood).
- A pool within three feet of the rear of the structure in violation of the five-foot set back requirement.
- Contaminated sawdust that contains resins and loose nails.
- Double-parked dump trucks, catering trucks, and service trucks.
- Unmasked workers less than six feet apart.
What you can do to stem this public health emergency? I urge CityWatch LA readers to repeatedly share their objections to non-essential construction with City Council offices and Mayor Garcetti. The runaway gentrification train must be stopped. Your letters, calls, and emails should emphasize that these construction projects are not only a nuisance to families now dutifully staying at home, but they also endanger construction workers and nearby neighbors by spreading the Covid-19 virus. Messages like these can influence our elected officials, who within two weeks will be in charge of the next Pandemic epicenter.
Will they prioritize the health of their constituents or the business interests of their campaign donors?
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatchLA. He serves on the board of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA) and is co-chair of the new Greater Fairfax Residents Association. Please send comments and corrections to [email protected].)
-cw
