REAL ESTATE NEWS

A citywide rezoning plan to facilitate the building of 255K more homes in Los Angeles by 2029 will fall far short of the target, according to a new analysis from a UCLA research team.

The state-mandated eight-year housing element plan for Los Angeles requires the city to plan for 457,000 new homes, with 255K of the homes to be enabled via land rezoning.

Measures now under consideration by the City Council propose to put higher-density housing in existing multifamily or commercial areas of L.A. Neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes, which make up 72% of the city’s residentially zoned land, are largely exempted from the city’s rezoning plan, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee is voting this week on an ordinance known as the Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) that will enable developers to build higher-density projects and receive breaks on height limits and parking requirements if they include a certain percentage of affordable units and the property is near transit, or along a major street near jobs and schools.

Projects that are 100% affordable will be eligible for incentives across a wider part of the city. However, the incentives only apply to single-family zones if a property is owned by a public agency or a faith-based organization, which accounts for just 1% of the city’s single-family lots, the report said.

The UCLA study said the city’s rezoning plan may keep Los Angeles in compliance with its state-mandated housing element plan, but when analyzing the likelihood of what developers would actually build, the researchers found that the number of new units would be far lower than the target.

According to Shane Phillips, Housing Initiative Project Manager at UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, housing production citywide is now about a third of what is needed to meet the housing element plan’s goal.

Taking into account the costs of development and other factors, the rezoning plan only increases the “realistic” capacity for new construction by about 30%, the UCLA study found.

The study said the most likely parcels to see new construction under the city’s plan are in existing low-density multifamily zones or are currently occupied by parking lots.

Phillips, a co-author of the report, told the LA Times that the city’s capacity to build new housing could be tripled by including some neighborhoods with single-family homes.

A coalition of tenant and housing advocates has expressed concern that the Citywide Housing Incentive Program could end up displacing tenants in rent-controlled apartment buildings as older apartment inventory is demolished for new developments.

Planning department officials responded to the UCLA study by emphasizing that the city’s proposal will exceed state zoning requirements and spur growth, including in higher-resourced areas that have traditionally had less development.

“The [city plan] is the first of its kind in the state, and as confirmed in the analysis will result in meaningful changes to patterns of development,” the city planners said, in a statement.

Source: GlobeSt/ALM