CommentsAFFORDABLE HOUSING-Which would you say the City of LA needs more of right now, hotels or housing?
Most people would probably say housing, but not the LA Department of City Planning (DCP). When the owner of the 40 rent-stabilized units at 1719 Whitley (photo above) asked the DCP if he could demolish the apartments and build a hotel, they okayed the project. The DCP was given a chance to preserve 40 rent-stabilized units that housed low-income, working class families, but they decided a hotel was more important.
Am I being unfair to the DCP? No doubt City Planning staff would say I am. They might point to their Housing Progress Dashboard which shows that from July 2013 to June 2020 they approved a whopping 153,805 units, far beyond Mayor Garcetti's goal of 100,000 new units by 2021. Pretty impressive. That is, until you look at how few of those units are actually available to the average Angeleno. Of that total, 134,747 are for Above-Moderate-Income households, in other words, households that earn 120% or more of the area median income. The remaining 19,058 are to be divvied up among LA's Moderate-Income, Low-Income, and Very Low-Income Households. Or to put it more simply, 88% of the new units approved are for the affluent, and the remaining 12% are for everybody else.
The DCP has turned housing into hotel rooms before. In 2015 they turned 18 rent-stabilized apartments at 1850 Cherokee into a boutique hotel. In 2017 they allowed the owner of 5815 Sunset to turn 52 apartments into hotel rooms. The same year they approved the conversion of the senior housing facility at 1449 Wellesley into a hotel. But wait. Isn't the City also converting hotels into permanent supportive housing for the homeless? Doesn't that count for something? Maybe, but I can't say I'm too impressed.
The fact that the City is finally looking at every available option, after years of inaction that allowed LA's homeless population to rise above 40,000, doesn't really impress me much at all. And getting back to the tenants at 1719 Whitley, wouldn't it make more sense to just preserve their existing homes, instead of demolishing the units to build a hotel, and then if they become homeless, putting them on a waiting list so they'd have a shot at living in a converted hotel room?
The reason I'm asking all these questions now is that the case will be coming before the LA City Council's Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee on Thursday, October 1 at 10:00 a.m. The project was originally approved back in 2019 and was appealed by United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA) and the LA Tenants Union (LATU). The appeals were denied by the Central Area Planning Commission in October 2019, and further appeals were filed by UN4LA and LATU. After a long delay, the PLUM Committee will finally hear the case.
The proposed project is in Council District 13, so you may be wondering what Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has to say about all of this. You’ll be glad to hear that O’Farrell has taken a strong stand on this issue. His web site features a page entitled Homelessness and Affordable Housing, and at the top of his list of priorities is “Protecting Tenants & Preserving Our Rent Stabilized Units.” A few paragraphs down you’ll find the statement, “Mitch believes that one of our top priorities in the City must be to preserve our older housing stock and protect our existing tenants.” So he couldn’t possibly stand by and let the owner tear down 40 rent-stabilized apartments to make way for a hotel. Right?
Wrong. Interestingly, when the first hearing was held for this project, O’Farrell did send a representative to say that the Councilmember did not support it. It was still approved. But to really understand the depth of Mitch O’Farrell’s commitment to preserving rent-stabilized housing stock, you would have had to be there for the appeal hearing. Again, O’Farrell sent a rep to weigh in, but this time the message was different. Apparently, the Councilmember was now unable to find a reason to oppose the project. Despite his steely resolve to “preserve our older housing stock and protect our existing tenants.” What happened? Could it have had something to do with the fact that the owner had engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to help push the project? Maybe.
The Mayor and the City Council are telling us constantly that they’re dedicated to easing the housing crisis and preventing homelessness. But when the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) released the results of its annual count earlier this year, the numbers showed that 41,290 people were experiencing homelessness in the City of Los Angeles, a 14.2% increase over the previous year.
The members of the City Council talk a lot about housing all the people of Los Angeles, but for the most part their words are meaningless. On Thursday, October 1, the action that the PLUM Committee takes on the appeals for 1719 Whitley will show us what their priorities really are.
Will they choose hotels or housing?
(The agenda for the meeting is available at: https://ens.lacity.org/clk/committeeagend/clkcommitteeagend26143930_10012020.html
The appeals for 1719 Whitley will be heard some time after 10:00 am.)
(Casey Maddren is President of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA [www.un4la.com]), a community group advocating for better planning and better governance, and a CityWatch contributor.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
