CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-Like jackalopes and unicorns, NIMBY’s (Not in my backyard) are imaginary beings. Nevertheless, real estate “developers” still spread much ill will about them. They are also endlessly pilloried by City Hall lobbyists, campaign consultants, hired pens, mainstream journalists, Internet trolls, and neo-liberal academics – all of whom have joined the welcome wagon for real estate speculation.
While NIMBYs remain imaginary, what does exist, however, are independent land use attorneys and planning professionals, as well as many self-educated community activists. What they call for is the full and equal enforcement of planning, zoning, and environmental laws and regulations. This is why they often oppose speculative real estate projects that require special land use exemptions.
In these cases, when real estate speculators cannot adequately defend their projects because their greed-driven agendas are so transparent, they fall back on finger-pointing against their critics, disparaging them with their pejorative term, NIMBY. When they do this, however, the speculators reveal a deeper reality that helps us debunk their claims: Despite deep pockets that allow them to buy expensive land use attorneys, “expeditors,” and City Hall insiders with out-stretched hands, they still cannot easily and convincingly justify their own projects. Instead, they repeatedly try to discredit their critics by calling them NIMBYs. What they forget is the old adage -- when you point your finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you.
The basis of the speculators’ claims is that their opponents are simply full of hot air, all generated by the secret agenda of local residents to feather their own nests at the expense of others. The developers’ tactics are to repeatedly discredit the messenger because they cannot discredit the message: in Los Angeles most discretionary projects conflict with planning, zoning, and environmental laws.
To understand how their NIMBY epithet is so disconnected from reality, let’s look at their most frequent claim. Supposedly, LA’s NIMBYs have managed to get so much of the city down-zoned that it is no longer possible to build housing. What these speculators are really saying, however, is that their choice to build expensive market housing where it is not permitted relies on City Hall’s soft corruption (i.e., pay to play), in combination with well-lubricated but convoluted interpretations of land use rules, to finagle their building permits.
In Los Angeles, real downzoning has taken two forms:
Assembly Bill 283: In 1978 the California State legislature adopted AB 283, a state law that required local plans and zones to be consistent with each other. In other words, cities, like Los Angeles, could no longer ignore their adopted General Plan elements, and in particular, their Community Plans, through conflicting zone change ordinances.
Based on this legislation, in the late 1980s and early 1990’s, the Los Angeles Department of City Planning undertook a massive program to bring the city’s legally adopted zones and General Plan land use designations into consistency with each other. In some cases, this meant General Plan Amendments, in some cases Zone Change Ordinances, and in some cases, both. As a result of this complex process, The City Council downzoned some parcels, mostly commercial.
But this City Council action hardly eliminated the ability to build by-right (i.e., without any zoning waivers) apartment buildings on these commercially zoned parcels. In fact, at the end of the AB 283 process, City Planning staff calculated that the new plan designations and zones allowed the Los Angeles to double it population without any future up-zoning or up-planning ordinances. Furthermore, since then the capacity of these commercial zones has increased 20 percent through SB 1818, the density bonus law and its corresponding local ordinance.
Proposition U: Also In 1978, LA voters approved Proposition U, an initiative to cap the size of commercial buildings in Height District 1 to a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 1.5 instead of 3.0. Proposition U became the primary form of downzoning in Los Angeles, but it does not apply to residentially zoned properties. Furthermore, two members of the Los Angeles City Council, Zev Yaroslavky and Marvin Braude, not local neighborhood groups, initiated Proposition U.
Proposition U, however, was largely theatre because in 1978 Los Angeles did not have new commercial structures with FARs larger than 1.5. By blocking new commercial buildings with an FAR between 1.5 and 3.0, Proposition U's impact was purely symbolic. It was only in recent years that developers have seen a financial opportunity to build new structures with an FAR above 1.5. This accounts for their many efforts to systematically up-zone commercial property. Once completed, these broad changes would allow their projects to sneak around Proposition U. They no longer will need to pay for expensive and cumbersome zone change ordinances.
So what does AB 283 or Proposition U have to do with housing construction? The answer is virtually nothing. First, Proposition U did not affect residentially zoned properties. These parcels have not been subject to any downzoning efforts, other than a few residential neighborhoods with Specific Plans, Historical Preservation Overlay Zones, and Residential Floor Area Districts. Even though these scattered land use ordinances restrict the size and appearance of single family homes, they do not change underlying zones. There also is no evidence that they have decreased property values. In fact, neighborhoods with Specific Plans, HPOZs, and RFAs have experienced the same run up in property values as nearby areas only subject to the Municipal Code.
Second, if there is any impact at all from these residential zoning overlay ordinances, it is that they have restrained mansionization, a building trend that allows real estate speculators to bulldoze small houses, and then replace them with large, boxy spec houses. In these cases, the size of houses increases, but not the number of people living in them. The developers, however, pocket between $500,000 to $1,000,000 through this not-so-slight-of-hand.
Of course, history lessons and facts, like these, have little bearing on those whose worldview is filled with imaginary beings, whether they are unicorns, jackalopes, or NIMBY’s. Nevertheless, you can count on future CityWatch columns to debunk more hyperbole from real estate speculators, their backers, and their supporters, about their elusive foe, the fictional NIMBY.
(Dick Platkin is a former LA City Planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. Please send any comments or correction to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
