Crisis in Housing
A severe shortage of apartments in Los Angeles that can be rented for $350 or less will go from bad to worse without a lot of money and strong public and private intervention.
Mayor Tom Bradley’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Affordable Housing also thinks that the intervention needs leadership from a new commission to keep city agencies from stumbling over one another while the crisis is being resolved.
As Times writer Jill Stewart reported recently, as many as 300,000 families live in housing that is beyond their means. About 150,000 families spend more than half their income on rent, often for a single room. Another 40,000 families rent garages that often have no plumbing. The homeless have nothing.
The city needs 10,000 new or remodeled apartments a year just to keep even with demand. Housing assistance generally must more than triple, from $90 million to $300 million.
Money is scarce. The federal housing budget has been hacked to one-fifth of its 1970s levels, huge federal deficits make help from Washington highly unlikely, and the burden is shifting to strapped local governments.
The mayor and his committee think that they see ways to shoulder the burden. For openers,both of them would raise $2.125 billion by lifting an existing spending limit on the Community Redevelopment Agency, which generates income by increasing the value of land in its project areas. That would give the city between $50 million and $100 million a year over a span of two decades. The panel also would charge commercial developers a fee based on square footage of construction to be used for housing. The rationale in other cities that already impose such a fee is that new high rise office buildings, businesses and hotels attract workers who need low-cost housing. A fee of $2 a square foot could raise $30 million a year.
The panel recommends forming a nonprofit housing partnership of business and governmentto build and repair housing, and it wants to sell $100 million in general-obligation bonds--a move that would require both City Council approval and the endorsement of two-thirds of the city’s voters.
None of this would be easy. Raising the spending limit at the redevelopment agency needs help from City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who went to court to impose it in the first place, from county government, which needs more money itself, and from the court.
Getting a two-thirds vote for bonds is always tough, although it can be done with hard campaigning. Intense lobbying may shake something extra loose in Washington.
The mayor’s committee has produced recommendations that can make a dent in the rental crisis. It is now up to the city to pull itself together, in ways that will combine the power of business and government, and put the committee’s proposals to work. It can start the process on Friday, when the housing report is delivered to the Los Angeles City Council.
