Toned-Down Strategy on Housing OKd by Council

The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday approved the first citywide strategy aimed at solving the crisis in affordable housing touched off by massive immigration and skyrocketing housing costs during the past decade.

Called the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy, it represents a much toned-down approach to the housing crisis, lacking a number of controversial proposals that generated intense criticism from homeowner groups. Still, the City Council voted unanimously in favor of the revised strategy, and affordable housing advocates on and off the council praised its contents.

“This is an historic step in the right direction,” said Councilman Michael Woo, whose Hollywood district has become a haven for newcomers, many of whom live in overcrowded quarters.

The strategy, which will be submitted with the city’s application for more than $100 million in federal aid, is a broad statement of housing policy rather than a blueprint for housing construction. Its purpose is to state how, in general, the city will ensure that there are enough apartments and homes to accommodate current population growth, estimated at 25,000 families a year.

Among its top priorities, the strategy calls for the construction of housing along planned transportation corridors, particularly near rail stations where a high concentration of commercial building is anticipated. It also encourages mixed-use development--something the city has not seen a lot of--with homes, offices and other places of employment built close to one another.

The strategy also emphasizes the preservation and rehabilitation of existing affordable housing, including an estimated 200,000 slum units.

“My particular passion is getting slumlords out of the economy and doing something about the vast supply of housing that is in the hands of slumlords who systematically destroy these properties and the lives of the people living in them,” said Gary Squier, who heads the city’s Housing Production and Preservation Department, which issued the strategy.

The strategy also calls for replacing affordable housing sites that are eliminated as a result of zoning that bans or limits apartment construction. Before such zoning is permitted in a neighborhood, the strategy recommends that city officials make sure that new sites for multifamily housing are created elsewhere.

That approach is significantly different from what was advocated in the controversial first draft of the housing strategy. Many homeowner groups saw that draft as an attempt to nullify zoning laws that control apartment development in single-family neighborhoods.

The first draft would have lowered some barriers to new apartments in many parts of the city by easing environmental reviews of proposed buildings. It also would have permitted low-rise apartment complexes in single-family neighborhoods and legalized the construction of “granny flats” or extra units next to single-family homes.

All of those components were deleted after homeowner groups protested that they would devastate single-family neighborhoods.

While removing those elements helped bring at least a temporary truce between politically influential homeowner groups and housing advocates, the two groups clearly have not reached a permanent accord.

“We are still concerned that there will be efforts by the city to bust the zoning codes,” said Barbara Fine, who helped organize a citywide federation of homeowner groups in response to the first draft of the strategy.

Squier said the city will not solve its housing problems until more residents believe that “affordable housing can enhance the quality of neighborhoods.”