Neighborhoods seek removal of another proposed upzoning
OPP RC STANDS FOR Residential (R Zoned) Opportunity Corridors — a City Planning staff idea about upzoning single-family lots.
Score one for Hancock Park, Brookside, La Brea Hancock and single-family neighborhoods everywhere in Los Angeles.
“We are taking a quick victory lap together, but we need to stay vigilant!” reads a November email from the Hancock Park Homeowners Association (HPHOA) to residents.
The glee shared by local homeowner groups was the result of the City Planning Dept. pulling back on two proposed density overlays for residential neighborhoods that could have resulted in four-to five-story buildings built next to single-family homes.
The “Affordable Housing Overlays” and “Transit Oriented Community Expansions” are off the table now after fierce opposition to the Planning Dept. staff’s proposed Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP).
“At this time, single-family zoned land is not being considered as eligible for the Affordable Housing Overlay incentives in development,” Planning Director Vince Bertoni said in a statement on the Planning Dept. website on Oct. 26.
“Additionally, single-family zoned sites are not being considered in the expansion of the Transit Oriented Communities Affordable Housing Incentive Program.” (See tinyurl.com/vjjbnd4a)
While welcoming the news last month, local homeowner groups remain cautious and vigilant as a third overlay is still on the table.
Third upzoning overlay
The third zoning strategy — Opportunity Residential Corridor — still threatens all single-family neighborhoods. By contrast, commercial business-zoned corridors offer sites to accommodate the city’s much-needed housing, the HPHOA wrote to residents. The message urges residents to write a second follow-up letter to the mayor and councilmembers to remove the third overlay.
HPHOA President Cindy Chvatal-Keane and La Brea Hancock Homeowners Association President Cathy Roberts oppose the overlays in partnership with United Neighbors, a statewide coalition of renters, homeowners and community organizations.
“The Planning Department obviously felt the pressure from our collective groups to remove the overlays,” Maria Kalban, of United Neighbors wrote in the email in November. “They had no idea anyone was looking at the Housing Element maps. But if we go away quietly now, we lose. We still have to see the actual Housing Element Maps, fight the Community Plan Updates…”
The new maps are expected to be released by the city this month.
The controversial upzoning plans were under the radar until they were discovered by homeowner groups.
The city is proposing to accommodate construction on a 1.4-million-parcel “inventory of potential sites” from which the City Planning Department says it will choose a much smaller number of properties to rezone to help deal with a housing shortage. See our accompanying chart from the Chronicle’s November story on this subject, below.*
The inventory had included parcels on both residential streets and commercial corridors, according to the Planning Department’s draft “Plan to House LA” — the state-mandated Housing Element of the city’s General Plan.
The mandate requires zoning capacity for an additional 255,432 housing units to be part of City of Los Angeles-adopted law by February 2025.
Neighborhoods which had been most likely impacted in our area are identified as Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC). These include the areas of the Larchmont Village Neighborhood Association, north of Beverly Boulevard, plus Sycamore Square, La Brea Hancock and Brookside.
View the Plan to House LA at planning.lacity.org/plans-policies/housing-element.
* Excerpted from the November 2023 issue:
City of Los Angeles
Obligations to the
State of California during the
2021-2029 Housing Cycle
UNITS DEADLINE
REZONE land
to accommodate … 255,432 by February 2025
Aiming to
CONSTRUCT … 456,643* by October 2029
* Includes the potential construction of 202,153 units available under existing zoning, plus the 255,432 units through rezoning, with 186,721 units of the total to be designated lower-income.
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