PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

The FAIR LA Housing Plan allows real estate speculators to profit from the housing crisis. It is sophisticated nonsense. By Dick Platkin* A reader asked me to review Abundant Housing’s Fair LA housing plan. It contains an elaborate formula, disconnected from the legally required planning process, to up-zone all of Los Angeles, with most up-zoning directed at affluent neighborhoods. If adopted, it would lift the zoning code’s restrictions on density, height, mass, and open space throughout the entire city. I have previously dubbed this approach to city planning urban Reaganomics because its goal is to increase housing supply through deregulation. But, unlike Ronald Reagan, its advocates pawn themselves off as “progressives” so their developer-friendly proposals can gain political traction in liberal Los Angeles. For example, they invoke the name of Bernie Sanders, while totally rejecting his approach to the housing crisis: restore HUD public housing programs and raise wages. ...

Please be in touch to add or delete names from this e-mail service. Links to archived previous columns below. Want to Finally Do Something about Homelessness? Let’s End Phony Solutions. By Dick Platkin, CityWatchLA, December 10, 2020 Planning Watch: When Albert Einstein famously observed, “God does not play dice with the universe,” his insight about universal laws of physics also applies to human affairs. We do not have a worsening homeless crisis because some supernatural being is hurling lightning bolts at us. Instead, the current housing crisis, including homelessness, overcrowding, out-migration, and rent-gouging, has very real lessons about its causes and solutions. (Photo above: Rendering of Cumulus luxury apartment project at Jefferson and La Cienega, near the Expo light rail line.) The most important lesson is to end supposed solutions that visibly make the housing crisis worse. In specific, I am referring to proposals from the California state legislat...