A poster on Nextdoor recently asked about status for our Community Plan Update (“CPU”), and the comments surprised me. I saw a deep misunderstanding in our community about housing policy in this state and what is facing us here in LA and more specifically, Westchester/Playa.
I’m not really surprised about the widespread misunderstanding. We’re being pelted from so many directions, you practically have to be a scholar on housing policy to understand the nuances. While I’m no scholar, I have been closely following the issues for almost a decade and I belong to several housing groups where these topics are regularly discussed. Here are my cliff notes to help bring you up to speed on the different issues, along with my latest information on the next round of CPU draft changes.
From the highest level the state’s housing authority runs a housing assessment cycle called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (“RHNA”). Every six years they dictate the number of units we need to build in CA to house our citizens. We are currently in a cycle that runs from 2021 to 2029.
Unfortunately, the ultra progressive factions are having a moment and pushing through a housing agenda with a lot of unrealistic and downright stupid housing policy (trickle down from the left, anybody??). They pushed through SB-9 which pretty much does away with single family zoning and local control as a matter of state law. It’s a problem, and comes during a time when California is losing population, especially losing our more affluent population, the people who pay for government giveaways favored by the factions currently in power. I wrote more about these laws last year here.
For more about SB-9, read Lots Of Housing Laws, Not Much Housing. See also, New Laws Seek To End Private Developer Risk, Burdening Public Instead.
But SB-9 and the other state laws are a completely different issue than what we’re currently experiencing with our CPU. The CPU is about zoning changes and quotas. And these quotas come from one agency, California’s Housing & Community Development (or “HCD”). I wrote this summer about the alarming quotas in the current cycle here.
LA’s staggering quota and its response to our assigned quota is to rezone wide swaths of our city. Some of that rezoning is being done with a rewrite of the city’s Housing Element. A lot of it is being done with Community Plan Updates (CPUs).
The city will tell you they have to comply with the quota, or the consequences from the state are draconian. I agree the consequences are ridiculously draconian, but instead of rolling over and rezoning, I’d like to see some critical pushback by the city on the numbers, especially in light of our declining population. This mindless rezoning could result in devastation to our mature single-family home communities before most people wake up to the idiocy of the strategy.
Our CPU in Westchester/Playa started well before the pandemic and has been going on for awhile. My first hint we might be in trouble was when they announced the entire westside (south of Santa Monica) would undergo concurrent CPUs. That is unheard of, and my current understanding based on wide reading and conversations with various city officials and other pundits is that this method was chosen to dump tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of units on the westside, with maximum flexibility on where they dump the units. For years, people from other parts of the city complained the westside wasn’t doing its part to house our citizens.
It bears pointing out that Pacific Palisades and Brentwood are also considered the “westside” and they are not part of this exercise. They will get new CPUs at some point, but this crazy allocation dump will likely be over by then.
NOTE: We’re not talking about built units when talking about the CPUs and rezoning, we’re talking only about rezoning, which in my mind is worse. The city plans to rezone many multiples of the needed number “in hopes” the needed number gets built. So instead of focusing new development in a concentrate area (like Playa Vista when it was built) where infrastructure can be built to support the new units. we’re all at risk of random “middle fingers” popping up next to our home blocking our sun and sucking up our parking and sewer system.
Also important to note, HCD and our state legislators don’t care about the crumbling infrastructure. That’s their idea of “local control” – they dictate stupid numbers and we figure out the consequences locally. There is going to be a nasty day of reckoning with failed infrastructure that nobody at the city level is talking about.
The first draft of our CPU (pre-pandemic) was an affair with tons of public outreach and opportunities to have a say, or at least be heard. Then came the pandemic. The CPUs slowed down but the public meetings stopped. Last summer (post-pandemic), city planners dropped the 2nd draft of the westside CPUs. They didn’t drop them for the public. They dropped them to a hand-picked “advisory” group. And while they were published on a public website, they were not announced (“if a tree falls in the forest…”).
Quite by accident, some of our community members “discovered” the draft maps and the bombshells in that draft. Almost all of Osage and a huge quadrant around Manchester/Sepulveda were mapped for six units on a lot. 😱 There is no way our crumbling infrastructure can handle a fraction of the development allowed on those lots, let alone the additional traffic on our arterials which already serve as the “gateway to LAX.” Our community was incensed, first by the density, and more importantly, by the sudden covert nature of the process. We were in an uproar.
We attended community meetings in huge numbers, we protested, we signed petitions, we brought out the media, we galvanized our new council person. We hosted the planners for a tour of our community and were shocked how little they understood about the implications of their “plan.” All of this was happening in summer into fall 2023. The planners promised to rewrite their plan and now we’re waiting for that draft. Back channels have indicated we’ll see big changes, but we just won’t know for sure until those plans are published.
We were first told to expect the new draft in December. My sources are now telling me early to mid-March. As a prominent voice in this fight, I personally apologize for going dark over the holidays, but man, the fight was exhausting. I (and many others in our community) put so much time and energy into Concerned For Westchester and other allied groups. Once we went into a lull, it was hard for awhile to think about these big issues.
Stay tuned. We’ll know soon whether we need to fight on for a CPU we can live with, but I’m also here to tell you we haven’t even started considering the Housing Element and the proposed changes to that. There may be another fight brewing, but on a citywide basis. That’s good for a bigger conversation, but it’s harder to impact that bigger conversation, also. Proponents for the current housing agenda are incredibly organized and play the social media game at a high level. They also have a lot of developer money behind them. Every one of us needs to be aware of these issues and helping educate our friends, family and neighbors. The changes are coming fast and furious and many of the changes rolling over us are nonsensical.
For my own part, I will continue to beat the drum to make people aware of what is going on, so they can vote accordingly and fight back as needed. I hope soon to see the political tide come back to the middle, but it’s going to take a lot of political change at both the state and city level. I have been heartened to see that Mayor Bass appears sensitive to public pushback. She agreed to take single-family zones out of her ED-1. That means, at least at the city level, we still have a chance.
And before the haters hate on me, let me say I am a mother with a young adult child in Los Angeles. I am fully aware what a challenge and privilege it is to be housed in LA. I stand 100% as a realtor, mother and community member for affordable housing options in LA. My beef is with destroying mature R-1 neighborhoods on a whim when there is still so much room to grow in areas that were designed to accommodate more density. Oh, and I’m also 110% against the fictitious numbers that say LA needs to increase its housing stock by 35% in a time when so many are leaving our state.
Tracy is active in a number of local community organizations including the Neighborhood Council PLUC, Neighborhood Council Ad Hoc CPU Committee, Kentwood Home Guardians and Emerson Ave Community Garden Club. The views expressed in this post are Tracy’s alone, and should not be construed in any way as an opinion of any other group. Are you planning a meeting with the planners? Have Tracy along to make sure you get the same information other community members get. Are you willing to host a group of your neighbors for a talk? Tracy would be happy to join you.
About Tracy Thrower Conyers Tracy Thrower Conyers is a long-time resident of Westchester 90045. Tracy closely follows local politics, political players and social chatter relevant to Westchester. You’ll frequently find her at Neighborhood Council meetings, as well as on all the social platforms where 90045 peeps hang out. Tracy is a real estate broker and founding principal in Silicon Beach Properties. She is a recognized expert on Silicon Beach and its impact on residential and residential income real estate, and has been featured by respected media outlets including the LA Times, KPCC and KCET. Tracy is also a licensed attorney and accidental housing policy junkie.
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