Sigh of relief: Disaster diverted and delayed from housing bill
A collective sigh of relief was heard throughout the neighborhoods of Greater Wilshire, particularly the Citrus Square Historic District and the Hancock Park Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. The passage of two plans, one by the City Council and the other by the Metro Board, effectively mitigated much of the threat posed by state housing law Senate Bill 79.
I have been chronicling the progress and passage of SB79 over the last year with a focus on its potential threats to the historic resources and historic districts in our area as well as throughout the city. At the time of writing only preliminary maps have been made available by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, and none by the Southern California Association of Governments, whose maps will be considered the official documents to identify parcels subject to the new law.
City Planning’s maps caused great alarm in Greater Wilshire communities, with affected zones including Melrose, Brookside, Sycamore Square, La Brea-Hancock, Citrus Square, Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Western-Wilton, Wilshire Park, and Country Club Heights. Affected areas all fell within one mile of an existing or proposed qualifying transit stop, allowing for the construction of buildings up to nine stories even within historic districts and single-family neighborhoods.
A reprieve was granted for most of these areas on March 24, with the unanimous decision by the City Council to opt for a phased approach to the implementation of SB79. By choosing what is known as Option C1, the development of three- to four-story buildings in areas zoned for single-family is restricted to high and moderate opportunity zones. They followed this with a delay of full effectuation of SB79 in most affected sites—including low-resource, high-fire-severity zones, and historic districts until 2030, thus exempting for a few years all affected areas in Greater Wilshire, including Hancock Park, Citrus Square, Windsor Square, Wilshire Park, and Country Club Heights HPOZs. The delay also allows the city time to develop its own citywide Local Alternative Plan to enable the city to find a way to place the density required by the law in a more sensitive manner to affected communities.
This good news was followed on March 26 with the approval of the Metro K Line extension, which directed the north/south lines to follow San Vicente Boulevard from Mid-City up through West Hollywood then terminate at the Hollywood Bowl. This change of route entirely eliminated the threat to Citrus Square, Melrose, and almost all of Hancock Park that was posed by two potential K Line stops on La Brea Avenue at Beverly and Santa Monica boulevards.
We owe a rare debt of gratitude to our Los Angeles city leaders in this instance as they deftly outmaneuvered Sacramento legislators, taking back local control of land use, at least temporarily, from a state government that would see a “one size fits all” solution to the problem of housing. It is a lesson to the legislators that passed this bill, the majority of whom represented communities that would be unaffected by this legislation, that without local support from those to be impacted, the intended outcomes of such laws will inevitably be blunted or fail. Four years of delayed effectuation is an eternity for opponents now given the opportunity to lobby for changes to the law. It’s time to mold SB79 closer to needs of the city and its individual communities rather than the political ambitions of state Sen. Scott Wiener.
Category: Real Estate
