LA’s Politicians and Academics: Shills for Real Estate Speculators
By DICK PLATKIN, CityWatchLA, 29 MARCH 2018
Greenwashing: The best know version of this ploy is greenwashing, such as Exxon’s and Chevron’s
public service announcements trumpeting their restoration of ponds, shorelines,
and meadows. Meanwhile, these and
similar energy companies continue to extract fossil fuels, often with immediate pollution, followed by the huge
generation of the Green House Gases responsible for climate change.
Now, the density hawks, whether hob-knobbing with San
Francisco’s Scott Wiener in Sacramento, or hunkering down at LA’s City Hall,
maintain that increased residential density achieved through the accelerated
construction of new, market rate apartment buildings reduces the generation of
these same Green Houses Gases.
While their claim that higher densities can reduce
individual and cumulative carbon footprints is true for highly selective urban
environments, especially New York City, their real estate proposals are
the antithesis of the New York City model. They simply want to layer dense,
energy-intensive apartment buildings on top of a generally low-density city,
Los Angeles, whose infrastructure and public services are already severely
taxed and predicted to fail. When, not if, the next big earthquake comes, Los
Angeles will be without basic services for an extended period of time according
to earthquake expert Lucy Jones.
“Every major piece of infrastructure in the Los Angeles area
needed to sustain life — electrical lines, telecommunication networks and
water aqueducts — crosses over the San Andreas fault line and would likely be
severed in the event of a major earthquake. It could be days or weeks before
power and water delivery are restored.”
Nevertheless, the density hawks are so committed to their
greenwashing claims that their proposals, such as Senate Bill 827, nevertheless exclude the
California Environment Quality Act (CEQA) from local land use decisions.
Likewise, they ignore calls for the preparation and adoption of a new,
mandatory Climate Change Element in California. Likewise, they never call for
an optional Climate Change Element in cities, like Los Angeles. For that
matter, they are equally tongue-tied regarding annual monitoring of basic climate
change indicators, such as CO2 levels.
While they continue to champion the business model of major
real estate investors, their aversion to these obvious environmental measures
is hardly an accident. If they supported environmental monitoring, it would
reveal that building our way out of the climate crisis actually makes things
worse. For example, the Hollywood Community Plan Update, voided by Los Angeles County Superior
Court Alan Goodman, included extensive increases in commercial and
residential density. The plan’s Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) determined, however, that the
additional buildings and traffic generated by this plan would generate so much
more Green House Gas emissions, that they could not be mitigated.
In the face of such overwhelming evidence that their “build
more market housing” (in Hollywood and elsewhere) version of densification
would worsen climate change, the density hawks nimbly turned to other
ruses. But, as you will see, their back-up claims are equally
specious. Like greenwashing, they, too, are just frail stalking horses
for their real objective: supporting this year’s most profitable type of real
estate investment: apartment houses.
Population boom-washing: Since their greenwashing claims failed to
gain serious traction, the density hawks turned to population-washing,
repeatedly claiming that Los Angeles was on the verge of an imminent population
boom. To, therefore, plan for the future, the city needed to build
new, high density apartment buildings so these new Angelenos would have a
decent place to live. More specifically, the density hawks called for a
deregulated housing market based on weak zoning laws, with a wink and a nod to
weak code enforcement to greet the population boom with move-in specials. Well, poor code enforcement and zoning
deregulation were right on cue, but the much-ballyhooed population boom failed
to materialize.
As previously reported, the 1996 General Plan Framework’s
population forecast for 2010 was 4,300,000 people. This figure, though,
turned out to be 500,000 people higher than the actual 2010 US Census.
Since then, according to demographer Wendel Cox, the boosters have four times
claimed that Los Angeles finally exceeded the 4,000,000 mark. But, each time
they had to walk back these claims because Los Angeles still has not surpassed
the 4 million barrier. Furthermore, according to seismologist Lucy Jones,
quoted earlier, the long-term damage from a certain major earthquake will lead
to population decline – not gain -- in Los Angeles.
In San Francisco, like LA, a major center of gentrification
in an expensive housing market, the same forecasts of an impending population
boom were cited to justify rampant land use deregulation and up-zoning.
But, in SF more people are leaving than moving in. In fact, the Wall
Street Journal reports that despite the riches of the high tech boom,
San Francisco declined by 24,000 people last year,
mostly because too many residents were priced out of its expensive housing
market.
Transit-washing: Since more people are leaving than
coming to LA and SF, the real estate industry and their lieutenants have
already contrived another whopper to justify zoning deregulation: it will
increase the number of people living near mass transit stations ridership, and
therefore reverse a long-term trend of declining transit ridership. This is
because they believe – despite contradictory evidence -- that anyone who lives
near transit will use it.
The fallacy of this “build more market housing near transit”
argument was revealed by recent research from UCLA. In the Los
Angeles metropolitan an increasing number of low income tenants own and drive
cars, and no longer use transit. This is
why the gentrification of neighborhoods close to transit services would not
increase transit ridership. It replaces existing low income transit users,
whose numbers are already declining, with affluent newcomers who drive cars and
seldom or never use transit, even when they live close to it.
According to this report on declining transit
ridership,
“The growth in vehicle access has been especially dramatic
among subsets of the population that are among the heaviest users of transit…
Living in a household without a vehicle is perhaps the strongest single
predictor of transit use; the decline of these households has powerful
implications for transit in Southern California.”
At no point does this important transit study ever mention
increasing the residential density of market rate apartments near subway and
bus stops as a strategy to reverse declining transit ridership. The reason is
obvious. The construction of new market apartments will evict far more existing
transit users than it will draw into the same neighborhood.
Voila! Transit-washing bites the dust, even though the
revived Hollywood Community Plan is still based on the discredited claim that
Hollywood must be up-zoned to increase the number of people living in
transit-adjacent neighborhoods. Once they move in, they will quickly embrace
transit and soon fill up busses and subway cars with their warm bodies.
Housing-washing: The final justification for the
build-more-market-housing business model is that it will increase the supply of
desperately needed affordable housing. How so? The claim is that the more
market housing constructed in Los Angeles, the more affordable housing will
eventually appear through filtering, also known as long-term
trickle down. Since there is zero evidence of expensive housing trickling
down to become affordable housing in Los Angeles, the density hawks then invoke
another taken-out-of-context economic theory: supply-and-demand.
They imagine that a glut of expensive housing forces the
price of housing down to the point that it becomes affordable, and apartments
that rent for $2000-3,000 per month will be discounted to $600 a month because
of high vacancy rates. Again, there is zero evidence of this happening in Los
Angeles for two very good reasons. First, investors don’t like to go bankrupt,
which happens when they charge affordable rents. Second, landlords can easily
fill empty houses and apartments through highly lucrative Airbnb short-term
rentals when they are faced with money-losing high vacancy rates.
If the filtering and the supply-and-demand arguments do not
pass the smell test, you are right. And,
in the Los Angeles Times, Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal explained why. Gentrification reduces transit ridership. In
order to assemble building sites for new, market-oriented apartments; builders
must evict current residents, most of whom are low income and the most likely
demographic category to use transit. In contrast, the new residents of
new market housing are much better off. Almost all of them own cars, which they
use for most trips. According to Rosenthal, the more LA gentrifies, which is
the program of the density hawks, the more transit ridership will decline, a
finding confirmed by the previously mentioned UCLA transit ridership
study.
How do we know that these four types of “washing” are really
bogus?
Why are these four claims about the alleged benefits of
unregulated real estate investments really a subterfuge for a speculative
business model? Two reasons make it obvious that the claims are really
hog-washing.
First, the density hawks never mention non-real estate
programs to help resolve the crises they invoke, such as fare reductions to
increase transit ridership, restoration of HUD and CRA programs to build
affordable housing, and massive tree planting to ameliorate climate
change.
Second, the density hawks are so committed to their
one-size-fits-all market housing solution, that they see no need to
monitor or inspect any new residential projects to validate their claims. Is
permanent affordable housing actually appearing through filtering and
supply-and-demand? Are new up-scale
tenants giving up their cars to take busses and subways for most trips? Are
existing infrastructure and services strained because of new real estate
projects?
The answers could only complicate the
build-more-market-housing business model, so the questions are never
asked.
That is our job!
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who
reports on local planning controversies for CityWatchLA. Please send comments
and corrections to rhplatkin@gmail.com.
Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives.) Prepped for
CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
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