Low-Income Housing Rules Eased for Coast Area

The Los Angeles City Council has voted unanimously to ease the requirements that developers of apartments and condominiums in the San Pedro coastal area must meet for providing low- and moderate-income units in their projects.

By a 12-0 vote Tuesday, the council deleted a provision in the San Pedro Specific Plan that required a minimum of 25% low- and moderate-income housing in projects of at least eight units. The now-defunct provision also required developers to replace affordable housing demolished for new projects within 18 months and a two-mile radius of the razed units.

In its absence, builders in the San Pedro coastal zone must now comply with the state Mello Act, a much less restrictive set of regulations that city officials say is applied in other coastal zones locally and across the state.

“It is a fairness thing,” said Dick Takase, a city hearing examiner who recommended last spring that the city’s Planning Commission approve the change. “Why should property owners and developers in San Pedro be subjected to a more stringent law than the rest of the city?”

The Mello Act imposes a general requirement for low- and moderate-income housing in projects of at least three units, but it requires no specific number of affordable units and allows city officials to waive the provision if they deem it too burdensome. The law also allows developers to wait up to three years to replace affordable housing demolished for new projects, and it permits them to build the replacement housing within a three-mile radius.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents San Pedro, proposed switching to the Mello requirements in 1987 because of complaints from builders. Local businesses, led by the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, lobbied for the change.

“It made it hard for builders to sell their units,” Gubler said. “To meet the 25% requirement, the builders tell us they basically had to subsidize those units by raising the price of the other units. And that made those units noncompetitive with other units in the area.”

No one spoke against the change at Tuesday’s council meeting, but several residents and community groups opposed it during a public hearing last spring. Opponents said they feared the change would reduce the amount of affordable housing in San Pedro.

“To eliminate such requirements anywhere in the city is like burying your head in the sand,” Howard Uller, executive director of Toberman Settlement house, wrote in a letter to the city. “A few wealthy developers will benefit from this, but it will leave out protections” for low- and moderate-income residents.

The boundaries of the San Pedro coastal zone extend roughly from 9th Street on the north, south along Pacific Avenue, west on 25th Street, south along the Rancho Palos Verdes city line, east along the coastline, and north along Cabrillo Beach, Crescent Avenue and Harbor Boulevard.