The Planning Department is taking public comments on the Housing Element until August 26th. I wrote more about this topic here, along with instruction for submission.
Public comments submitted to the record are the normal way for the public to share their desires, but possibly that method was working too well for those of us who want to keep high-rises out of our low-rise neighborhoods.
So City Planning decided to put up a poll and it sucks, to put it mildly. The questions are vague and poorly drafted, and anybody with an email address can fill it out. There are so many ways this poll can be manipulated.
While we’re all submitting our public comment the accepted way, please take 60 seconds to fill out the poll, too, so that we can make our voices heard over there, as well.
If you share our philosophies about keeping high-rises out of low-rise neighborhoods, we have suggested responses for you to speed you through the process:
Residential areas where more housing can be added — [ ] Major Corridors or Streets (I don’t like “streets” but this is the best response of what is offered)
Would you like to see more housing in areas zoned for single-family uses? — [ ] I wouldn’t like to see more housing in single-family zoned areas
Do you have other ideas? — [ free text ] The city’s own numbers show that we don’t need high-rises in our low-rise neighborhoods yet. Don’t destroy our mature low-rise neighborhoods until we are out of other options.
By the way, this poll seems to be shape-shifting. Question number 3 is different than when I filled out the poll a few weeks back. 😵
What are your thoughts about the poll? Drop a comment below after you fill it out.
Our fight against high-rises in our low-rise community has consumed us for just over a year now. Every time I think we’ve won, we get blindsided again.
First we fought back big time on the Community Plan Update after Draft 2 started dribbling out in secrecy in June of 2023.
Heck yes, we were mad! We rallied, we brought out the media, we signed petitions, we put signs in our yards, we got the attention of our Neighborhood Council and our Councilwoman’s office. We were not taking Draft 2 lying down.
And we prevailed! It was a long, arduous fight, but Draft 3 took nearly all the high-rise risk out of our low-rise neighborhoods.
We thought we were done, but I was already sounding the alarm about the Housing Element. We barely knew what it was because we were so busy with our Community Plan Update, but I knew the Housing Element was citywide and I knew it was bigger than our CPU. I wrote about it everywhere I could, trying to get word out. Find some of my articles here, here and here.
Fortunately for us, while we were distracted with our CPU, our friends at United Neighbors were focused on the Housing Element and meeting a lot with that Planning Team. Read more about their efforts here.
As a direct result of all their hard work, single-family zones were removed from the builder incentive ordinances for the new Housing Element. United Neighbors demonstrated that we have ample capacity on our corridors to build the required number of units under our housing unit mandate from the state.
To say that the developers and their shills were outraged by this turn of events is an understatement, but again, we thought we dodged the high-rise bullet.
We could not have been more wrong.
July 25th brought the Public Hearing for the implementing ordinances of the Housing Element, including the builder incentives. I might have easily skipped this meeting because I thought everything was a-okay. I spoke with other community activists in the density fight, and they thought the same.
Something about an email from United Neighbors caught my attention and I agreed to attend and make remarks in support of the existing draft excluding high-rises from single family neighborhoods and the coastal zone.
I started a little preparatory research at the last minute and my heart sunk. I found the usual progressive influencers – LA Times and LAist – were urging people to come out and fight to change LA’s historical racist segregation via single family zoning. Not a peep about the fact we have adequate capacity outside our low-rise neighborhoods to build density.
I attended the Planning Department’s informational presentation before the public hearing and realized we were in deep doo-doo when the head planner said this during the presentation in what felt like an orchestrated perfect moment:
“[after acknowledging that SFR was in the ordinances and then removed] That said, we’re looking for your feedback today and we appreciate all the folks who’ve come out here today to share their perspective related to single-family,” Smith said. “We’re very much in a listening phase.”
I think my heart actually stopped. She is the senior lead planner for the Housing Element team and she was suggesting that the pro-developer voices could still effect changes to the ordinances.
The public hearing and testimony started and I got to speak in the #3 spot for public comment. I had the usually allowed two-minute remarks all scripted and practiced, but so many people came to speak that they limited remarks to 1-min, and I was left to drastically cut my remarks on the fly.
There are so many things I wished I’d said, but LAist quoted me in their follow up story on the hearing. I don’t know if what I said was some kind of brilliant, or whether they just have a short attention. I was, after all, #3. 😁
OK, so this is a nice story, but why am I writing this lengthy post?
We got creamed in public comment. 😱 Maybe 10% of the commenters were in favor of keeping the single family zone and coastal zone restrictions. The other 90% were calling it “a moral imperative” to open the rich white single family zones to less advantaged people to fix historic segregation.
All of this right after the head planner said the team was “very much in listening mode.” And they were hearing a lot from the people who want to obliterate our neighborhoods.
It literally broke my heart that the primarily young commenters really believe their lives are going to be better by wrecking our neighborhoods. They don’t understand that our communities will not be that desirable with random high-rises on our streets.
A few commenters literally said that individual owners aren’t required to sell, with zero understanding that nobody will want to stay with high-rises all around. Even one high-rise will ruin privacy and light access for a lot of neighbors who paid a premium to avoid living like that. It will be a race to the bottom to see which of us can sell out first while values are still strong.
Not only will our neighborhoods be ruined, virtually none of the high-rise units will be remotely affordable. The naivete of those commenters. 😥
I swear, their mantra is if we can’t have what those rich white people have, let’s burn it all down. And I scoffed at the criticisms about the “trophy generation” and here they are….
We still have an opportunity to make our voices heard!
Written public comments can still be submitted and added to the record, but there isn’t much time and very specific instructions have to be followed, which I’ve provided here.
We don’t need essays. We need commenting volume. Please take a minute right now and forward this message to 10 people in LA who share our belief that high-rises don’t belong in low-rise neighborhoods.
And then submit your own comment. And then submit one for your spouse. 😁
You won’t regret the 10 minutes it takes to forward this message and lodge your own community comment for the record. It’s really very empowering and I’ve made it super easy for you with my step-by-step instructions. Comments are due by August 26th. And while you’re at it, please spend one minute filling out the city’s silly poll on the same topic.
For almost a year we’ve been in an uproar in our community over our Community Plan Update (“CPU”). For those of us who have lived in our community for a long time, we readily recognized that this CPU was unlike any other in the past.
The update process started out normal enough in 2017, with lots of community engagement opportunities and a 1st draft that raised eyebrows with what felt at the time like extensive upzoning along Manchester. We would later learn just how bad the city wanted to upzone our plan area.
This photo below is still on the planning website, pretending to depict the process. This photo is more like 2018 when I attended multiple events that looked just like this one. This photo is the opposite of how the 2nd draft went down. And the 3rd draft didn’t come from outreach like this, either.
After the 1st draft came the pandemic. Everything everywhere shut down. Little did we know what Sacramento was up to while we were all busy navigating our new normal.
And then came the shenanigans with the secret Advisory Group and Draft #2 with its crazy proposed upzoning. We were outraged.
The 3rd draft of the CPU dropped last month and it looks like we were heard. All the yellow in the map below is a full reversal of the single-family upzoning we fought so hard to prevent, but the pinks and the oranges and the blues and the maroons are still a problem (hint – the dark pinks are the worst). Navigate the interactive map here with the color explanations.
But Wait! There’s More
But while we fixated on CPU-gate, a whole other density scheme was progressing in tandem that we barely looked at – the Housing Element.
You can read more about the Housing Element background here, but I’ll summarize the cliff notes for you:
Los Angeles is a charter city (125 of 478 cities in CA are charter cities)
LA’s General Plan is composed of 11 different elements, including the Housing Element
LA’s 35 Community Plans make up the Land Use Element of the General Plan
The Housing Element must comply with specific standards and requirements set by the State and must be updated every eight years
We are currently in the midst of our 2021-2029 Housing Element cycle
LA’s Housing Element is 377 pages (find an index here) and is called the “Plan To House LA”
So what we have is the Housing Element proceeding on one track and the CPUs proceeding on another (the Land Use Element track). Together they constitute LA’s Housing Element Rezoning Program.
The CPUs are rezoning parcels (read “upzoning”) and the Housing Element’s Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) lays out the builder incentives (“developer giveaways”). (fact sheet) (draft ordinance – 85 freaking pages). CHIP, along with three other ordinances constitute the “Housing Element.”
While we’ve been focused on the upzoning, the giveaways have been progressing without us watching. And we’ve missed a lot! 6 core progressive strategies in 4 hefty ordinances:
Adaptive Reuse (remove process barriers and streamline conversion)
Affordable Housing Overlay (provide tailored land use incentives for affordable housing developments in high resource areas and incentivize affordable housing on faith based owned properties, parking lots and publicly owned sites)
Update to Affordable Housing Incentive Programs (local Density Bonus and Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) programs will be amended and expanded to provide tailored affordability, reflect recent updates to state law, and serve as the overall incentive based framework for the program)
Missing Middle (remove limitations to facilitate construction of low scale/low rise housing) (focused in higher opportunity areas and areas near transit)
Opportunity Corridors (increase housing capacity on major corridors, particularly those with transit access)
Process Streamlining (remove procedural barriers and create efficient and expedited processes for projects with an affordable housing component)
the 4 ordinances (expected adoption is Fall 2024)
CHIP Ordinance → (1) State DB Law, (2) Mixed Income Incentive Program (opportunity corridors and missing middle and TOC defined by housing opportunity maps) and (3) affordable housing incentive program
Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (fact sheet) → expands current ordinance
Housing Element Sites Ordinance (fact sheet) → this is related to an Inventory of Adequate Sites and minimum densities
As we studied and learned about the upzoning that came with our CPU, we learned about RHNA numbers and the State’s directive that LA rezone to allow almost half a million new units, notwithstanding the great outward migration we’re experiencing in our City and our State.
What I haven’t seen is any mandate that we provide all these builder giveaways. I could be wrong, but I follow these developments quite closely. This is a new question in my mind and I’ll be doing more research. Do let me know in the comments if you’re aware of a mandate. There have been so many gross giveaways by our legislature, I could surely have missed a few.
If there is no mandate, I have to say that CHIP is just too aggressive. We don’t need more market rate units. Full stop.
Why do we need the Density Bonus? I understand there is a state law, but I think I’m reading that the City is expanding even that?
And why do we need the Transit Corridor bonuses? I say, go with the AHIP (affordable incentives) and be done.
We need more affordable units. Forget the rest of the giveaways with their token affordable units and net loss affordable units.
I’m not even in favor of the FBO program with 80% affordable units. Churches are in single-family communities. Those communities don’t want high rises. Has Planning not been listening??
The process seems to be delayed, so I believe we might still have time to catch up. It’s Spring and I haven’t heard anything about Environmental Review for CHIP or the Housing Element. Please drop a comment if you know differently.
The CHIP Maps Drop
CHIP is the builder incentive program, which I not so fondly call the giveaways. Some of the giveaways are specifically geared toward affordable housing. I support more affordable housing, but pay close attention to how many extra market rate units (which we don’t need) are in the project, plus how many truly affordable units are destroyed on the process (“net loss” of affordable units).
For example, a project might tear down four truly affordable units to build 10 market rate units and two affordable units (defining “affordability” in a not so affordable way). This is a net loss of affordable units and a tragedy for our city.
With this lens in mind, below are excerpts of the maps for our plan area. You can try navigating the city’s explorer maps here, but they don’t make it easy.
CHIP’s Opportunity Corridors
Please note, the arrows are examples only and not meant to provide an opinion on the highlighted parcels. Sites located along the Opportunity Corridors would be eligible for development bonuses in exchange for set-aside affordable units. Development incentives have been tailored according to the type of Opportunity Corridor and type of transit proximity, with scaled development incentives as projects are farther from high-quality transit. Generally, sites would be eligible for scaled FAR and Height (up to 5 or 8 stories) based on proximity to transit. They are so casual about 8 stories!
CHIP’s Corridor Transitions
The Opportunity Corridor Transition Incentive Area proposes to remove limitations on development to facilitate the construction of various types of “low-scale” (“low-rise”) housing, such as bungalow courts, townhomes, and courtyard apartments that were commonly built before the 1950’s, to fill the gap in housing options between lower-scale residential neighborhoods and mid-rise apartments.
CHIP’s Transit-Oriented Incentive
The Transit-Oriented Incentive Area (TOIA), according the city’s website, provides opportunities citywide for the construction of affordable housing through tiered development incentives for projects within one-half mile of a high quality bus stop or major transit stop, increases housing options for residents of all income levels, and promotes access to public transportation. This program proposes to codify key elements of the Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) Affordable Housing Incentive Guidelines for sites near transit citywide.
It’s hard to read this map, but the indicated parcels are along Century Blvd. and the Reading/Ramsgate area. No other TOIAs appear in our plan area.
CHIP’s 100% Affordable Housing Incentive Program
AHIP will streamline procedures and offer land use incentives scaled at higher and lower density contexts for 100% Affordable Housing Projects citywide. For example, if a site is zoned for lower density (i.e. less than 5 units) it will qualify for lower incentives (like height or FAR) than a site zoned for a higher density scale. Sites eligible for 100% Affordable Housing project incentives are found in Low Vehicle Mile Traveled (VMT) sites, and in Opportunity Area Sites (i.e. Moderate, High and Highest Resource areas as defined by the TCAC/HCD Opportunity Maps). Incentives are also designed to be greater in high and moderate resource areas for the purposes of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and equitably distributing affordable housing development.
Additionally, the ordinance will expand the types of zones eligible for 100% Affordable Housing projects to “P” Parking zones and “PF” Public Facilities zones, and to parcels owned by public agencies. 100% Affordable Housing projects in P or PF zones will qualify for tailored incentives where projects may apply the least restrictive zoning regulation of their adjoining parcels.
Note the yellow parcels below are publicly-owned properties, such as public schools. We all assume they will continue to be schools, but with declining enrollment, this could be one way the city sneaks a bunch of high rises into our single-family low rise communities. The planning website specifically calls these parcels “citywide parcels eligible for AHIP incentives.”
This particular Incentive Plan will crush Lincoln Blvd., SE Westchester and NE Westchester up into Ladera.
AHIP adheres to the minimums of state law for Faith Based Organizations (“FBO”) tailored incentives and extends eligibility to projects that provide at least 80% affordable housing projects on sites owned by Faith Based institutions. The program’s Faith Based Organization Sites incentives build on the state’s Senate Bill 4 and include provisions created from stakeholder feedback that are intended to make FBO projects more feasible.
That paragraph above is mostly taken from the City’s website. I read “stakeholders” to mean developers because I’m highly skeptical there is a large group of everyday citizens who understand this faith-based development idea.
CHIP’s State Density Bonus Program
State Density Bonus Law (California Government Code Sections 65915-65918) mandates local jurisdictions to offer density bonuses, parking reductions, and other incentives in exchange for the provision of restricted affordable housing units in multifamily residential developments.
The map shows parcels currently eligible to take advantage of the State Density Bonus Program. As part of the Mixed Income Incentive Program, the City is also proposing the Transit Oriented Incentive Area Program, and many of the same parcels that are eligible for State Density Bonus incentives are also eligible for incentives available through the Transit Oriented Incentive Areas.
As with the Affordable Housing Incentive Program, Lincoln Blvd., SE Westchester and NE Westchester up into Ladera will get crushed. Remember, “reduced parking.” 😱
Adaptive Reuse Housing Incentive Program
The proposed Adaptive Reuse Ordinance will expand the existing incentives to encourage converting underutilized buildings into new housing. Currently, only buildings constructed before July 1, 1974 are eligible. This updated ordinance establishes a faster approval process for the conversion of existing buildings and structures that are at least 15 years old to housing and expands adaptive reuse incentives citywide.
Presumably we are already used to traffic and density associated with commercial buildings and reuse is good for the planet, but I’m told by experts that the practicalities of repurposing commercial properties will probably not pencil out for housing developers, so I’m calling this one the “wink and a yawn” initiative.
Are We Done Yet?
This is a lot, right? We’re supposed to be rezoning for only 255K units across the entire city to meet the outsized RHNA mandate, and it feels like our little ole plan area (one of 35!) is taking the whole burden between the zoning changes and the builder giveaways. The housing progressives are out of control and poised to blight our communities for generations to come. Don’t forget, these incentives will be taken up one at a time and represent huge oversized projects rising up like a middle finger to the rest of the community.
Concerned Neighbors wants to hear from you! What priorities should we be pushing regarding the Housing Element and CHIP? If the city doesn’t hear from us, that gives them room to default to their developer “stakeholders.” Those aren’t the stakeholders who have to live with this mess. Send us your comments below and we’ll be formulating our recommendations soon.
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.
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.
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.
A few weeks after the Residential Map was discovered, we found the Commercial Draft 2.0 Map, which proposes additional upzoning of residential homes to high density commercial mixed use, affecting hundreds of homes on residential streets lining every corridor of our community: Sepulveda, La Tijera, Manchester and Lincoln.
This Commercial Map proposes upzoning over 650 homes directly, and impacts another 600 adjacent homes. A total of over 1200 homes are impacted on residential streets lining our community’s biggest corridors under the Commercial Map plan.
We Are The Wrong Community For More Housing
City Planning seems to have forgotten (or is ignoring) the fact that Westchester/Playa is uniquely impacted by LAX and that all of our corridors are used by Angeleneos and world travelers to access the airport.
As residents, we live every day with the unmitigated impacts of traffic, poor air quality and noise from LAX. Upzoning our corridors for additional commercial mixed use (with a whole lot of new residential units) will lead to yet more negative environmental and traffic consequences for our community.
Westchester corridors now are designed to distribute traffic to LAX from the 405 and support local resident uses. They are lined with low-rise residential facing inward and away from the corridors in many areas of our community.
City Planning’s overarching goals for corridors in general is to promote new housing in mixed-use projects along major corridors supported by existing transportation infrastructure, and in pedestrian-oriented areas.
In Westchester/Playa, egress and ingress will have to be on the residential side of buildings, as DOT will never approve curb cuts on the corridor side for traffic reasons. Additionally, Westchester has at least one Community Design Overlay (CDO) in effect that legally requires rear-facing ingress and egress.
This will force commercial ground floor egress, ingress and signage to be facing our neighborhoods on our residential streets, leading to additional cut-through traffic in all of our Westchester/Playa del Rey neighborhoods, especially if the corridors are impassable with added residential density.
Also important to note, when converting our residential streets to commercial mixed use, City Planning is notgoing to provide a blueprint for an actual planned use or community such as Playa Vista. They are simply rezoning, so that homeowners can sell to developers in a parcel by parcel approach to development.
This approach does notproduce a substantial amount of new housing, and there are no requirements for adding affordable housing in this plan.
Homeowners quite likely will face a devaluation of their property if the Commercial Map is adopted as presented. And the end result will be that our corridors will have a hodgepodge aesthetic effect – think of portions of La Brea, where you see a house next to a gas station next to a small building – can we say ugly?
This is not thoughtful development that will benefit our community. It is simply a green light for developers to build practically anything anywhere they can grab a cheap lot, with no parking and little affordable housing.
Which Streets Are Being Upzoned to Commercial Mixed Use?
In the current iteration of the Commercial Map, residential streets lining the corridors of Manchester, Sepulveda, La Tijera and Lincoln would be converted to Commercial Mixed Use, replacing single family homes and other low-rise duplex/ triplex units on the following streets:
Alverstone Ave (West of Sepulveda) Naylor Ave (East of Sepulveda) Arizona Ave (West of Sepulveda) 85th Place (North of Manchester) 86th Place (South of Manchester) 86th Place (North of Manchester) Kittyhawk Ave (East of La Tijera) Flight Ave (West of La Tijera) Manchester Ave (North and South)
What we get with rezoning – bad community planning!What we want – good community planning!
Where Is The Fair Housing The City Wants To Promote?
It has not gone unnoticed by our community that the bulk of the proposed density in all three proposed maps is on the east side of our community, in Osage and on corridors near Osage. This is also an area already heavily impacted by poor air quality and LAX-related traffic.
This brings up questions about the equitable distribution of upzoning in our community. The City’s current plan targets the most socioeconomically diverse parts of our community, the very people the City is supposed to be helping under current and proposed housing policy. The plan targets entry level housing and homeownership and threatens to displace our vulnerable RSO (rent control) and Section 8 community members, all to build market rate boxes.
And did I mention the planned 15-story buildings? The current Commercial Map allows for the potential for high density commercial mixed use of up to 15 stories with no gentle transition on streets currently lined with single family homes.
Further, the plan provides for no added green space, which Westchester/Playa is already sorely lacking. And most importantly, the plan fails to recognize that LAX modernization and growth will continue to impact our corridors which are a gateway to a world airport, LAX.
The Community Alliance Has A Better Plan
Fortunately, we have a better plan. After countless hours of meetings, rallies, petition gathering and other events, The Community Alliance understands what our community wants and is doing our darnedest to make the planners listen. Will they heed the will of our community? That is the $64,000 question.
** The views expressed in this post are Cory’s alone, and should not be construed in any way as an opinion of any other group.**
About Cory Birkett Cory Birkett is a 25-year Westchester/Playa resident and alumna of LMU. Her background in education led to her active parent involvement in many local schools since her daughter was in preschool. She has held leadership roles in the PTAs and Governing Boards of schools such as WPNS, Open Magnet Charter, WISH Middle and El Segundo High School. Her commitment to helping schools implement social-emotional programs and community service initiatives has made her a driving force behind positive changes in the local education system. As an appointed community member of the Westchester/Playa Neighborhood Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee and Ad Hoc Community Plan Update Committee, she advocates for strategic and thoughtful development that enhances affordable housing opportunities while maintaining Westchester/Playa’s unique neighborhood character.
Cory’s career path led her through the world of print and online publications as an editor. For the past 15 years, she has been a local realtor helping home buyers and sellers navigate the unique Silicon Beach neighborhoods of Westchester, Playa del Rey and beyond. Cory offers personal guidance, ensuring her clients are informed about all aspects of a home sale or purchase, including expert knowledge of local schools and neighborhoods. Cory is dedicated to serving the people and communities she loves and spends much of her free time volunteering for local organizations.
Last week at the community meeting I sat through yet one more presentation by city planners telling us our community hasn’t done its fair share to provide housing in LA and in particular, affordable housing.
7 slides out of 45 were dedicated to fair housing, code for “you’re part of the westside and you need to take a bigger share of units.” It’s only fair after all for some bizarre undisclosed reason….
The logic, in case you miss the irony, is that the city wants to take our westside communities, the ones we worked so hard to make desirable, and stuff them with less desirable housing stock, thereby dragging down the community’s desirability. Who does that benefit again?
Oh yeah. The developers who get to build that crap, but I digress.
The planners then followed with a blatantly false slide claiming we’ve only built 45 affordable units from 2009 to 2020. Maybe they missed Phase 2 of Playa Vista?
And that was just the wind up to the slides about their stupid high density plans for us.
And not even a passing nod to all the existing affordable housing they’re willing to raze in our community in the name of high-rise market rate boxes, nor any kind of nod to the fact that Westchester already provides some of the most affordable housing on the westside.
And certainly no nod to the idea our streets are overburdened with traffic in and out of a world airport with expansion plans.
No, they have orders to rezone our little Mayberry for tens of thousands of high-rise units and like the good little soldiers they are, that is the unimaginative plan they put on the table.
Not even a cute little Village in sight.
They would have learned the error of their ways, had they bothered to stick around and listen to our counter plan. Instead, they waited around a token five minutes while the first community presentation started and then snuck out the back door.
I’ve heard them say many times they want our input, yet the first opportunity they had to hear it, they bolted.
And the presentations were impressive. You could tell all four groups worked very hard to provide thoughtful commentary. Our councilperson stuck it out and listened to everything, but the planners were long gone.
Our group recorded our plan, using the slides from our presentation on Monday. Watch the video and then please share with your neighbors and other Westchester friends and family.
Feedback we’ve already received on the video is that it’s easy to watch, so please take a few minutes and watch.
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.
Kentwood is a place I’ve called home for over 20 years. My husband and I were newlyweds and expecting our first baby when we bought our home.
The community is roughly bounded by Sepulveda, the Kentwood Bluffs, McConnell/Georgetown and Manchester. Kentwood is predominantly made up of a 3400 property homeowners association called Kentwood Home Guardians.
Kentwood is a very large physical portion of Westchester and consequently is subject to a lot of the city’s upzoning plans in the Community Plan Update (“CPU”) for Westchester Playa, second only to the wallop Osage is looking at.
CPUs were announced for four westside communities in 2017. Inexplicably, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades were not included in this program, even though they are westside communities also due for updates to their CPUs. The project was supposed to last three years.
The first draft of the CPU dropped in mid-2020. The biggest impact for Kentwood was a dramatic upzoning of Manchester and rezoning our neighbors on 85th Place:
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This is the full plan with some Kentwood implications, but primarily commercial implications along our corridors (mostly Manchester):
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Anybody who saw the first draft nearly lost their minds with the aggressive upzoning. Kentwood Home Guardians held meetings about the plan for Westchester Playa. Our Neighborhood Council formed a special committee to study the plan.
A private group of leaders in our community worked very hard to write a coherent response to the draft. Who knew those would be the good ole days?
Then came COVID and everything stopped.
The Advisory Group
We knew the city was picking up the project again when it announced its handpicked Advisory Group in late 2022 for the combined CPU project known as “Planning The Westside.”
The Advisory Group was chosen by the City to be the sole voice to comment on the next round of drafts of our CPU. In fact, unbeknownst to us mere stakeholders, drafts were only provided to the Advisory Group via a special website.
Despite Westchester Playa being 25% of the combined plan areas, our area was given only five seats on the Advisory Group (out of 52), and all were for special interest groups. Not one person sat at that table for residential stakeholders in Westchester or Kentwood.One group member was the chair of the Planning & Land Use Committee for our Neighborhood Council, but nobody sat at that table tasked with speaking for residential stakeholders in our community.
These maps were not announced to the general public. They were posted only on the Advisory Group Website and the rest of us were left to discover them on our own.
And discover them we did. And we’re hopping mad at what we found.
Residential Map Implications On Kentwood
The Residential Map for the Community Plan Update shows Kentwood’s southeast section (WPDR 3) being radically upzoned from single-family to six on a lot (one unit per 1,000′ of lot). Read our full Residential Map analysis here.
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Why Kentwood In The Southeast Corner?
We can’t figure out exactly why Kentwood is being targeted for radical upzoning (as in 6 units on a lot), but we’ve sleuthed out two possible reasons.
The problem with TOCs based on bus service is that they are transitory. A developer can get big incentives to build density in a TOC and then overnight buses can fall out of favor.
And when did anybody paying market rate for a new apartment even take the bus?
I digress.
The second possible reason this particular cluster of upzoning might be because a metro rail stop is coming to Manchester/Sepulveda in about 30 years. Cue the eyeroll.
How Bad Could It Get?
No matter what the reason, the southeast corner of Kentwood is currently marked for upzoning that could result in as many as 2310 units. That is a 6x increase in units in a small area.
And that might not even be the worst case scenario. 😳
The Correspondence Key for the Residential Map says 4 on a lot (“4L”) is our limit, but the planners have been vague about whether ADUs are allowed in addition to the 4 units, bringing the 5 unit threshold into play.
Let’s just say that my calculation of 2310 units in southeast Kentwood might be the best case scenario. The Housing Element is lurking in the background and we definitely need to start looking at it more closely.
What Other Consequences Might We Be Forgetting?
Builders developing on single family lots do not have to make infrastructure contributions and due to the proximity of the TOC, will not have to provide parking.
And please don’t forget that only a fraction of this density craziness will provide any affordable housing (as in like 10% which leaves us with the other 90% to deal with for no good reason).
Will all these units be built? No, but that is the worst part of the problem.
The city plans to rezone, not take your property in exchange for fair market value and develop a coherent, cohesive vision now.
Rezoning simply means that any random developer can buy the lot next door to you and build whatever crazy project the new zoning will allow, whether we need it or not, and without community input.
This is worse than eminent domain. We’ll all be tripping over each other to be the first to sell before our property is diminished in value by the 5-story monstrosity next door. Yuck!
The Residential Map is a big problem for Kentwood.
Then came the Commercial Map. Notwithstanding its name, this map is really more residential than commercial. It contemplates first floor commercial with stories and stories of units over the commercial uses.
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There are multiple implications for Kentwood on the Commercial Map. First, the map still shows rezoning for Manchester from the first draft plan, marked as WPDR 12 on this map.
The area, shown in light pink on the new map, will be zoned as a “Neighborhood Center.” Neighborhood Centers can be 3-5 stories and will range from 1 residential unit/1200′ of lot space to 1 residential unit/200′ of lot space.
If the lot next door to you in a Neighborhood Center district is 6,000′ (typical in Kentwood), that means five units to 30 units up close and personal to you on the lot next door.
Can you imagine 30 units next door???
And the same is true for the Little Von’s area, marked as WPDR 16 on the map, as well as WPDR 13 along Sepulveda in South Kentwood.
And that’s just the LIGHT pink implications.
Look at WPDR 18 & 19, the dark pink districts. Those are marked on the map as encroaching north Kentwood and gobbling up Arizona, if not also Alverstone (it’s very hard to read these maps).
Dark pink represents “Community Centers” and those can be up to 8 stories and allow five units to 15 units per 6000′ of lot space.
As you can see, Kentwood is getting slammed on the Commercial Map, too. 😟
Industrial Map Implications On Kentwood
Well hallelujah! Nothing on the Industrial Map to report for Kentwood.
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It is hard to read the map, but WPDR 27 & 31 are not in Kentwood. They are Arizona Circle on Centinela.
The planners say they’ll work on a combined map and issue it in October-ish. That map will be the plan that goes into the EIR process in January. The planners have indicated they might send two plans into EIR.
The EIR process is about studying the “impacts” of the proposed plan(s). Many of our questions to the planners have been deferred as relating to “impacts.”
The EIR process is also when the planners plan to “solicit” our input.
You don’t have to wait until then. The planners claim they are reading all email now. If you’d like to give them an earful, here is their contact info. 😁
Is All Lost?
Is it time to sell and get out of Dodge? Hopefully not. I know many of us have been in Kentwood for decades and love our little Mayberry.
The planners sit in cubicles and draw these maps. They are not paying attention to the fact Kentwood is landlocked and they are not paying attention to the implications of LAX on our arteries. They definitely haven’t acknowledged that we have 2 million square feet of commercial space coming with the Northside Project.
The Alliance hopes to bring these facts to their attention. How can they really (with a straight face) say they want 15-story residential buildings on Sepulveda when that is a main arterial for LAX?
How can they add huge density to Manchester when that is our main east west corridor? And inland beach goers use it to access beaches. Playa del Rey will need Manchester for emergency purposes if there is a tsunami.
Where is common sense in this process?
Planners have waved off these questions, claiming they’ll be reviewed in the EIR process. The Alliance, with your help, wants them to acknowledge these limitations now, even before the EIR process, but we’ll see.
For sure we need more Kentwood neighbors paying attention to this process and willing to activate on request during the EIR process. We have got to show up as engaged and informed. There is a tremendous amount of political will both at city hall and in Sacramento behind the narrative that we need to “build our way out of our housing crisis.”
Follow our website for updates and please share it with your neighbors. We are following developments very closely and regularly meeting with our planners and other city representatives and posting what we learn to help shine a light on this process.
What Else Can You Do?
Please support the Alliance. The Alliance is comprised of residents from most of our neighborhoods and seeks to speak for our entire Westchester Playa community. We need a united voice and it’s not enough for Kentwood to rise up and say “no” to upzoning. There needs to be a broader plan for the entire plan area that the city will accept.
The Broader Housing Element
At the time this page was published, the content offered is strictly about the Community Plan Update. Be aware that the city is also working on its Housing Element with additional zoning implications for Westchester and Kentwood. We will update this page as more is learned.
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 and Lisa 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.
Unfortunately, only half the people who came could get into the room due to capacity restrictions. Traci Park vowed to support us in having more meetings and we say yes to that!
Here are the slides from the Alliance Presentation. Sadly, we went last and most of the audience had dropped out by then. Click the image to see the slides:
The meeting was relatively productive and our councilwoman stayed to the very end, unlike the planners who stayed a token five minutes after their presentation, but then bailed.
The planners tell us all the time they want to hear from us, but couldn’t be bothered to stay for four community presentations. Go figure.
One thing I heard from the planners during their presentation that I thought was particularly alarming was a statement that our plan won’t be adopted until 2025.
While this is technically correct, it is problematic because it gives the impression there is no urgency. What they failed to say is that once the very expensive EIR process starts in January, our chances of significantly altering the plan are slim.
Possibly the planners are going to throw the kitchen sink into EIR and it can be slimmed down from there, but that is risky. And it will give us all a heart attack.
What we all need to do now is put our collective feet to the pedal and alert our neighbors what is happening. 400 people turning out for a meeting is awesome, but we have at least 20K people in our plan area. There are so many people who need to know what is happening.
The Alliance recorded the meeting but we’re having problems with the file. A 3-1/2 hour meeting is no joke for a video file. We are continuing to work on making it usable and will share when we can.
Meanwhile we are planning other ways to share the Alliance Plan.
Below is my personal take on each of the community presentations.
Preserve Westchester presented first. There is a lot of overlap between their views and those of the Alliance. Where we primarily diverge is their support for upzoning (if we have to upzone at all) along the corridors. The Alliance believes our corridors are already too burdened by LAX travelers and South Bay commuter traffic.
Build A Better Westchester spoke second. I agree with two of their main points. They believe the CPU can be an opportunity and they believe we need more affordable housing. Where I thought they fell short was in their lack of research and lack of understanding how the CPU plans to raze wide swaths of existing affordable housing in favor of high rise market rate units we don’t need.
Stakeholder John Birkett presented third on the implications of having LAX as a neighbor. I and the Alliance completely agree that our community is already burdened enough with LAX traffic and doubling our population is absurd. Read City Planning Has Lost Its Mind. Is LAX Watching? for more on our views on the topic of LAX.
Finally the Alliance got to present. The entire Alliance worked very hard on the presentation and it showed in the depth of research, the beautiful slides and thoughtful plan recommendations.
What do you think we should do next to shine a light on the CPU and share our message with neighbors? Drop a reply below. We are particularly happy to talk to neighbor groups if you want to organize a back yard event
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.
We’ve been working mightily over here to catch our neighbors up on the craziness with our Community Plan Update. We described the plan as we know it. We outlined all the problems we’ve discovered with the plan (here and here).
What if I told you there was more??
Yes, friends, there is another housing plan on a parallel track to our CPU with yet more housing implications.
In addition to our CPU, the city is also updating its Housing Element and proposing a raft of rezoning proposals for that initiative, including sixprogram concepts: adaptive reuse, updates to affordable housing incentive programs, opportunity corridors, the affordable housing overlay, missing middle and process streamlining. 😳
The schedule to adopt this program is even more aggressive than our Community Plan Update.
If we’re not careful, we’re going to be slammed by a boatload of densification from the Housing Element while we’re all distracted and concerned by our CPU.
Why does the Housing Element matter to us? Because it’s core objective is to “focus new housing capacity in Higher Opportunity Areas” and the westside, including us, is who they’re looking at.
This is the developer giveaways piled on top of the CPU developer give aways. Can you say high-rise next door?
We might have missed our initial opportunity to provide the loudest input on the first draft of the element, but they will share/publish soon and listen again.
Meanwhile, each of us still has an opportunity to individually share our thoughts and hopefully the city is still listening. Fill out the survey here.
I know it’s confusing. We’re under assault from several angles. Stay tuned. We’re working overtime at the Alliance to keep you up to speed on developments.
In the meantime, sign our CPU petition and we promise to start following and providing updates on the Housing Element.
Concerned For Westchester Playa 