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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Honest people do not omit extremely important facts. Many people believe that police officers plant a gun on a suspect whom they have just shot, and then the cops “lie by omission” by asserting, “He had a gun and here it is,” omitting that he did not “have” the gun before he was shot.
Some Lies by Omission Are Not So Easy to Understand
All the city council’s and all the mayor’s pre-pandemic lies about being unable to expand Rent Control due to the Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act were “lies by omission.” The politicos also asserted that the city could not modify Ellis Act (California Government Code Chapter 12.75). While that was technically true, it was irrelevant.
What they did not tell anyone is that the social ills of destroying people’s homes and creating the Homeless Crisis could be prevented without changing Costa Hawkins or the Ellis Act. Those claims were toxic lies by omissions as the City knew it had another option. Los Angeles could have passed a low-density ordinance which held that any new residential project could not have more than 25% of the Density of the prior residential structure. Thus, a developer, who bought a 12-unit RSO apartment house, could construct a maximum of three (3) units. The 25% Density limit would also apply to single family homes of any age.
The 25% Density Limit ordinance would make destroying RSO properties and R-1 homes financially unviable. When developers can tear down any RSO complex to construct a project with ten times the density in place of the RSO complex, RSO owners realize that selling to developers is more lucrative than being landlords.
When the new project’s density, however, is limited to 25% of Density of the former structure, RSO units and older single-family homes are saved and poor people will not be evicted. The city could easily have devoted CRA (Community Redevelopment Agency) funds to assist RSO owners to upgrade their units which would benefit the owners and the tenants as well as benefit the city in general. Stability is essential to society as a whole and to destroy areas so that a tiny fraction of society can reap huge profits while harming everyone else is worse than political malpractice. It’s corruption, and corruption destroys.
The 25% Density ordinance would have saved older single-family homes, often the entry level homes for the young marrieds and immigrants.
Large scale developers do not construct single family homes within developed neighborhoods when they can only construct another R-1 home. Developers will move to the periphery to construct new subdivisions to attract people to newer towns far from the urban core. That is what has been happening now that excessive density has made LA unlivable. Excessive densification is why LA is set to lose 1.7 million people in the next decades.
However, local Mom and Pop flippers who renovate a home and then resell to another family provide a significant benefit. For minimum cost, the renovated home becomes the vehicle for another family to accumulate equity and inter-generational wealth. When older R-1 ones are demolished, the replacement complexes are filled with renters. Renters never gain a penny of equity and accumulate no family wealth. Instead, the money which would have gone into mortgages goes as rent to the developer or to whatever corporation buys the huge project. Densification is a fraud by which millions of poor across the nation are being deprived of the opportunity to gain equity. Instead, renters forever remain dependent on landlords. Homeowners retire with equity but with zero rent payments, while retired renters have zero equity and increased rents until the day they die. All Los Angeles mayors and all the councilmembers, who advocate for more apartments, lie by omission by hiding these facts from voters. Converting Los Angeles and other major American cities into rentership societies has been funneling hundreds of billions of dollars upward to Wall Street. (Corporations are buying up all the R-1 homes)
Mansionization Is Not a Density Problem
The problem with Mansionization is one of style and lack of reasonable standards. The reality is that a hundred-year-old craftsman home will not have an adequate master bedroom suit nor an open floor plan. One benefit of enlarging old homes is that it attracts families to The Basin. When they live in the Basin, they do not commute from the Valleys. However, when a gigantic box springs up in the middle of one-story bungalows, it looks terrible and usually deprives existing owners of backyard privacy.
Los Angeles Officialdom Has No Problem with Density Laws
The mayor and city councilmembers love density laws which increase density. Why? Density increases land values which increases city property tax revenue. Higher sales prices increase rents which follow sales prices. Although destroying poor people’s homes increases Homelessness, that is a cost which developers and Wall Street do not bear. The costs fall on taxpayers. It’s similar to an HMO’s dumping poor uninsured patients on the street. Whether tenants are shoved onto the streets or dumped there by an HMO, life and death on the streets is not their financial worry.
The state’s high-Density Bonuses, like SB 1818, made destroying RSO units and R-1 homes seem more lucrative as developers could cram more density per square inch. Los Angeles ended up destroying far more RSO units and R-1 homes than it has homeless people.
A low-density ordinance would have precluded the vicious system of destroying RSO units and R-1 homes so that developers would make a higher profit by building fancy new units to richie-loos. This was no secret, except from the voters.
The Fraud of “The Highest and Best Use”
This meme is an outright toxic lie. The Highest and Best Use of Property meme pretends that the higher the developers’ profit, the better the use. The Declaration and the US Constitution require governments to protect individuals’ inalienable rights including the Pursuit of Happiness. None of the founding fathers would have agreed that they intended for predatory rich to destroy the lives of the poor.
Had Angelenos been told the great benefit to quality of life of a 25% Density Limit on new projects, voters would have eagerly enacted it. The 25% Density Limit would have reduced traffic congestion. The lower the density, the fewer cars in the road. Another benefit would have been the hundreds of billions of dollars saved on needles subways and fixed-rail transit. The entire pre-WW II layout for Los Angeles was walkable neighborhoods, because in the 1900 to 1930s we were still building stores and offices close to homes. Buses are the best form of mass transit when traffic congestion remains low.
Low Density Means Higher Productivity
Business thrives in a stable and educated populace. When single family homes are preserved and RSO units remain inhabitable, a city is more business friendly; people have a deeper stake in their neighborhoods and are more involved with civic behavior like PTA groups. When city councils and mayors focus on quality of life of existing residents, there are more parks, more libraries, and safer neighborhoods.
Angelenos never had a chance to improve the city by focusing on quality of life due to false meme of Highest and Best Use of Property, which requires mass destruction of homes. The aggrandizement of profits of a few, while destroying quality of life for everyone else, became king. LA knew this back in 1915 and we were warned against densification with the 1915 Study of Street Traffic Condition in the City of Los Angeles.
When Mayor Bass and city council urge up-zoning, as they are presently doing with the new Housing Element, we see more toxic lying by omission.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected].)
