Livable Communities: If Something Is Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is

PLANNING WATCH - How could anyone resist a planning proposal that promised affordable housing, car free and bikeable communities, lush trees, high quality transit, and stunning architecture? 

The Livable Communities Initiative (LCI) is filled with delightful promotional writing, but for those with a planning background, this puffery is pure deception.  The purpose of Livable Communities is to camouflage pricey mini-apartments as a perfect solution to LA’s --- like the country’s-- homeless crisis.

A look at LCI’s sponsors reveals what is really going on. The list includes Abundant Housing LA, California Yimby, Yimby Action, Urban Environmentalists, and similar groups.  For those who need a reminder, these YIMBY sponsors are economic conservatives cloaked in a progressive façade.  Investigative reporter Patrick McDonald has written many articles exposing them.   McDonald revealed that these groups are funded by Big Real Estate and High Tech.  Their goal is to rescind zoning regulations, based on the bogus theory that they are responsible for the worsening housing crisis.  In fact, the removal of regulations makes two other causes of the housing crisis worse: the elimination of public housing and increasing economic inequality. 

This is why homelessness continues to rise, and these trends began long before Trump II.  By 2024 there were 75,000 homeless people in the Los Angeles area, with year-after-year increases.  While the Trump/Musk attacks on HUD make the current housing crisis worse, they date back to the elimination of public housing programs by the Nixon Administration (1968 – 1973), and they have never ended.

To obtain the benefits of Livable Community housing, sacrifices will be necessary, which is why the devil is in the details.  According to the official City Council case file, these are the sacrifices:

• Waived or reduced setbacks, unit floor area, and other development standards.  In other words, if they are ever built, Livable Community apartments will be extremely small and hardly livable.
•  Inclusionary housing requirements to increase access to affordable housing.  In other words, in exchange for jettisoning code requirements, projects “should” include “affordable” units.  Too bad there is no enforcement of this provision in Los Angeles, nor is “affordable” defined.
• Minimum density requirements to promote multifamily mixed-use development.  In other words, stack and pack by building small apartments.
• Elimination or reduction of parking minimums.  In other words, you will pay for off-site parking or take Ubers, taxis, and buses.  Good luck to LCI landlords in finding tenants for apartments without on-site parking.

Despite the Livable Communities hype, these details make it clear why this is a developer-driven proposal oblivious to how the City of Los Angeles implements proposals through its siloed departments.  This explains why the Livable Communities Initiative is moving so slowly through its adoption process.  A May 24, 2024, memo to the Los Angeles City Council from the General Managers of City Planning, Transportation, Street Services, and Economic and Workforce Development identified multiple barriers that the Livable Communities Initiative must overcome.  Though the authors never rejected the Livable Communities Initiative (program 131 in the City Council-adopted Housing Element). they effectively knee-capped the Initiative.

Their memo’s premise is that to successfully implement the Livable Communities Initiative, “the City departments responding to this motion recommend an interdepartmental work plan to identify candidate communities and corridors for further study, engage in a community outreach program to determine community needs, design and develop improvement plans for each corridor, and then determine the funding mechanisms available to deliver the improvements within a reasonable timeframe.”

This is a tall order, and the General Managers’ memo identifies multiple tasks for this to happen.  A city facing a billion dollar deficit and preparing to lay off thousands of employees, is not likely to take on the memo’s following steps:

• Fund 22 staff positions for two years in the Planning, Transportation, Street Services, and Economic and Workforce Development Departments.
• Expand public infrastructure to meet the needs of additional LCI apartments and residents.
• Adopt additional protections for LCI tenants, increase access to affordable housing, deepen affordability requirements, extend covenant lengths, and expand affordable housing replacement and right-to-return requirements.  In other words, tenants, not just developers, need clear guarantees from the Livable Communities Initiative.
• Implement multiple code changes to facilitate corridor development of smaller parcels.
• Complete an economic analysis to determine whether an incentive-based approach or an inclusionary affordable requirement is better suited for smaller projects.
• Coordinate 15 Livable Communities Pilot Projects with Community Plan Updates, 16 of 35 which are now underway.  Seven have been completed, and the remaining 12 Community Plans and three District Plans have not yet begun their updates.
• Include public amenities, such as street improvements, in Pilot Projects.
• Apply the Draft Landscape and Site Design ordinance to the Pilot Projects.
• LADBS, LAFD, and Planning must track California building code amendments to determine how they affect the Livable Communities Initiative.
• LADBS, LAFD, and Planning should track statewide transportation-related code changes to determine how they impact the Livable Communities Initiative.
• LADOT’s citywide short-range transportation investment plan identifies and prioritizes citywide transportation needs.  With additional staffing and contractual resources, this approach could be used by the LCI Pilot programs.
• City Streetscape Plans address lane configurations, street parking loss, and vehicular mobility.  They should be integrated into the Livable Communities Initiative.
• The City of Los Angeles has on-going public right-of-way improvement programs, such as sidewalk repairs.  They, too, should be part of the Livable Communities Initiative.

All that glitters is not gold, and this definitely includes the YIMBY-inspired Livable Communities Initiative.  Without essential but costly infrastructure improvements and without integration into other City programs, City Hall will continue to kick this can down the road.

(Dick Platkin ([email protected]) is a retired LA city planner, who reports on local planning issues.  He is a board member of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA).  Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives.)