Commission Eases Affordable Housing Rules
The Los Angeles City Planning Commission on Thursday approved changes in the San Pedro coastal plan that would make it easier for developers to exclude low- and moderate-income units from new housing projects.
The commission unanimously approved an amendment to the San Pedro Local Coastal Program Specific Plan proposed by City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores in 1987. The amendment replaces requirements that all development of more than eight units include at least 25% low- and moderate-income housing, or that any such housing demolished for new development be replaced within a two-mile radius.
Instead, any development of more than three units will have to include some low- and moderate-income housing, although no specific percentages are spelled out. However, builders who can show that such requirements make a development economically unfeasible may be exempted. They also may be able to obtain exemptions from requirements to provide replacement housing.
The amendment now goes to the City Council for final action.
The housing requirements were originally included in the Coastal Act of 1976 to protect tenants who were being evicted to make way for new coastal development. But after the Legislature approved the so-called Mello Bill in 1981, which provided that no community should be forced to include any housing policies in its coastal plan, most communities struck the protective housing provisions from their local plans.
San Pedro is the only community in Los Angeles, and one of only a few in California, that retains such provisions. In other areas of Los Angeles there are no such requirements, but developers are allowed to build more units per lot if they agree to provide some low-cost units.
Flores has said she proposed the amendment because the present requirements unfairly target developers in San Pedro. Supporters have included the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.
Several residents who testified at the Thursday meeting strenuously opposed the change, saying the net effect would be a reduction in affordable housing in San Pedro.
“To eliminate such requirements anywhere in the city is like burying your head in the sand,” wrote Howard Uller, executive director of Toberman Settlement House, a San Pedro social service agency. “A few wealthy developers will benefit from this, but it will leave out protections” for low- and moderate-income residents.
Residents criticized the commission for holding the hearing in downtown Los Angeles, 23 miles from San Pedro, making it difficult for many to attend. The hearing had been scheduled for last week in the harbor community but was canceled when not enough panel members were able to attend.
“We are so far from San Pedro that we have to read letters to present this testimony,” said Dee Petty of the Barton Hill Neighborhood Assn.
Although the decision could allow some developers to avoid building low-cost housing, those who cannot obtain an exemption would face somewhat stricter requirements than those established in the Mello Bill.
Any replacement housing must be built within 18 months, and within a two-mile radius of the old site. Under the Mello bill, housing must be replaced within three years within a three-mile radius.
Although neither the Mello Bill nor the amendment to the San Pedro plan spell out guidelines for feasibility, the city has developed a scale to determine what projects would be subject to the requirements.
The guidelines, developed to implement the Mello Bill, require developers to petition for exemption. The city could grant an exemption if it determines that the combined selling prices of both market rate and low- and moderate-priced units would yield the developer a profit margin of less than about 15%, said City Planner Anik Charron. Charron said that rate could fluctuate, however, depending on prevailing investment interest rates.
