CommentsPLANNING WATCH-Former President George W. Bush was ridiculed for mangling the famous aphorism, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Nevertheless, his insights still ring true. In the insulated world of prominent newspapers, legacy news networks, and their cable competitors, we frequently hear about the conspiracy theories that captivate much of Trump’s political base. Even the new Borat movie had a long segment with Jim and Jerry, two good-hearted Q-Anon believers who gave shelter to the hapless Sasha Baron Cohen in the midst of a Pandemic lockdown.
But political gullibility is hardly the monopoly of those wearing MAGA hats. For example, many of those who joined the anti-Trump “resistance” have been taken in by parallel political chicanery, in particular laws authored by real estate developers but wrapped in a thin progressive veneer. These proposals claim to solve homelessness, a pressing social problem for most voters. But, this solution, the deregulation of zoning laws and continued rejection of HUD public housing programs, raising the minimum wage, and quickly updating General Plans, exacerbates the housing crisis.
Fool Me Once: This was painfully obvious in 2017, with Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Its most important provisions were:
- Within two years, the City of LA would update it outdated General Plan, including the 35 local Community Plans that comprise the General Plan’s Land Use element.
- In addition, all land use decisions must demonstrate their consistency with the General Plan.
- For the two-year window of General Plan preparation, only ministerial, not discretionary, projects could proceed to construction.
To little surprise major real estate firms lavishly funded a No on S campaign since they correctly understood that an updated General Plan and a requirement that building permits must be consistent with the updated plans would jeopardize their speculative business model. These deep-pocketed opponents of Measure S coalesced into the Coalition to Protect LA Neighborhoods and Jobs, and included:
- Crescent Height, a Miami-based real estate development company.
- Westfield Development.
- Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
These opponents of Measure S hired a prominent Democratic Party campaign firm, Pasadena-based Sg and A. Political consultants Parke Skelton and Mike Shimpock then lined up the entire urban growth machine to oppose Measure S. They obtained the support off the Republic and Democratic Parties, including the latter’s political base in unions, churches, environmental organizations, and non-profits and advocacy groups. Utilizing focus groups, they depicted the Measure S Initiative as an anti-housing crusade. Reconstituted as Goes too Far – Stop the Housing Ban, they (falsely) claimed that Measure S blocked all development, including desperately needed affordable housing. With the entire corporate media, both major political parties, and even the Green and Democratic Socialist parties in de facto support of deregulation and privatization, their well-funded No on S operation handily defeated Measure S.
Three years later, their claims against Measure S have fallen flat. Business-as-usual quickly returned to City Hall. Furthermore, just as Measure S supporters predicted, Los Angeles soon experienced staggering amounts of City Hall real estate corruption plus homelessness encampments in the shadows of new luxury apartment buildings.
As for the outdated General Plan elements that Measure S would have quickly updated, and despite a 2016 Mayoral order and similar 2017 City Council directive to update these General Plan elements, nothing has been updated. As for LA’s 35 aging Community Plans, only a few Updates have made it to the City Council.
Fool me Twice: Oblivious to the whoppers that shaped the No on S campaign, many current candidates for City Council positions have repeated No on S talking points.
In LA’s Council District 14, Councilmember Kevin de Leon, who replaced the corrupt Jose Huizar, presents himself as a politician whose highest priority is homelessness. This, of course, is lifted straight from the No on S campaign. The other part of Measure S claims that updated plans and implementing zoning laws make the housing crisis worse have been discredited by three years of dismal facts. Nevertheless, this is de Leon’s fix for the housing crisis. He calls for purging hundred of pages of zoning laws from the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC).
In Council District 10, Mark Ridley-Thomas engaged in negative campaigning against his opponent, Grace Yoo, by arguing that she supported Measure S. But Grace Yoo deserves credit, not condemnation, for rejecting the claims that Measure S’s provisions “went too far.” Apparently, Mark Ridley-Thomas has remained so enmeshed in the local Democratic party’s positions that he has blinded himself to the obvious, zoning deregulation makes LA’s housing crisis worse, not better.
In Council District 4, Nythia Raman's successful campaign took No on S tactics to the next level. She glommed on to the Bernie Sanders campaign and obtained Tio Bernie’s endorsement. This was a useful tactic in a Council District where potential supporters could be wooed by progressive posturing. In this case, however, Bernie Sanders proposed restoring HUD public housing programs. In contrast, Raman’s housing platform calls for wide scale up-zoning by increasing the by-right size, density, and height of apartment buildings, as well eliminating zoning requirements for on-site parking spaces and open space. Her platform openly states:
“We must revise the planning code to ensure that builders are able to build affordable housing. This will mean:
- Removing density limits and legalizing significantly smaller units (without necessarily increasing permitted building heights).
- Eliminating parking requirements.
- Instituting explicit limitations on amenities, such as parking.”
Not only is her version of Reaganomics totally at odds with Bernie Sanders housing plank, but it will NOT result in low-priced housing. Instead, up-zoning makes it easier for real estate investors to flip their properties for instant profits or to build expensive apartments without the need for discretionary zoning approvals and environmental clearances.
Fool me Thrice: A political party that maintained, from the 1930s to the 1970s, that the private housing market could never build low-priced housing and therefore required Federal public housing programs, has now embraced its opposite. This is a clever charade in superficially liberal cities like Los Angeles, but charades do not last forever. When City Hall makes it easier for real estate speculators to flip their properties or build expensive housing, this subterfuge will eventually sputter out. No one knows when this will happen, but the growth of homeless encampments next to new luxury apartments facilitated by zoning deregulation indicates it is nearing its end.
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatch. He serves on the board of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA) and co-chairs of the new Greater Fairfax Residents Association. Previous Planning Watch columns available at the CityWatch archives and https://plan-itlosangeles.blogspot.com/. Please send comments and corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
