Category: Community Plan Update

AKA CPU, specifically for Westchester Playa

Posted on

The Housing Element – Your Cliff Notes Version

LA's Proposed Density Bonus Incentive Program for Westchester Playa

Buckle up! Long read ahead. 🙂

How We Got Here

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.

We organized and we were heard. We held a huge community meeting, we wrote our councilperson and we rallied our Neighborhood Council. We were very clear – Westchester Playa took a large number of units in the previous housing cycle, and we couldn’t take any more with our single-family home infrastructure and heavy traffic demands on our gateway boulevards to LAX.

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
  • The State certified LA’s 2021-2029 Housing Element in 2022
  • 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
    • Resident Protections Ordinance (fact sheet) → renter protections

A Special Side Note About CHIP

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??

Share your thoughts on CHIP at the bottom of this page on the City’s website. I have. 😁

Timeline

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.

Hello, LAX? Are you there?

CHIP’s Faith-Based Housing

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.

Tell Us What You Think About The Housing Element:

Go back

Your message has been sent

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.

Posted on

Why Is Everybody So Quiet About the CPU?

Westchester Playa Community Plan Update February 2024

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.

Posted on

More Housing Surprises In The Commercial Map

Housing & Then More Housing

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.

LAX-Focused Corridors Require Rear-Facing Ingress & Egress

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 not going 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 not produce 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.

Please sign and share our petition!

 

** 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.

 

Posted on

We Have A Better Plan

Community Alliance Concerned For Westchester Playa has a better plan for our community than what the city put on the table.

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.

Read more about my meeting observations in Tracy’s Post-Meeting Observations.

If you’re still not mad, read High-Rise Next To My Home? Say What?

Please Sign Our Petition

 

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.

Posted on

Tracy’s Post-Meeting Observations

Monday was the big meeting with Traci Park and our Community Plan Update planners. We had a great turn out for the Alliance Rally beforehand and the press turned out as well.

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.

Please sign and share our petition!

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

Please sign and share our petition!

 

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.

Posted on

New Location For Community Meeting On 8/28

Our volunteers have been busy distributing 10,000 flyers in our community about Monday’s important meeting.

Just as the printer was finishing up, word came that the location had to change. 😳

Please tell your friends and neighbors to come to Senior Center on Monday, not the Rec Center.

And a huge thank you to our flyer distribution volunteers for helping to get the word out!!

Please join us for the rally beforehand at 5:30 if you can!!

Posted on

But Wait! There’s More

Alliance - Citizens Concerned For Westchester Playa

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 six program 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.

Posted on

Do We Finally Have The Full Plan?

The CPU Process Starts

Draft 1 of our Community Plan Update from City Planning was a very straightforward affair with lots of community meetings and community input back in 2020. Then COVID happened and everything stopped. Post-COVID, the city seems to have forgotten it has community stakeholders, at least in Westchester Playa.

The CPU Process Restarts But Differently

As the city started back up with our CPU, it formed a 52-member Advisory Group with only five members from Westchester even though we are 25% of the four westside communities working our CPUs together. Oh, and four of those people were chosen to represent special interest groups, not us. More about the Advisory Group here.

The Advisory Group would be the only party in the conversation with Planning about our CPU, if Planning had its way. They were only meeting with the Advisory Group and were only posting updates to that group’s website.

Then the public caught wind of what was going on and groups like members of our Alliance started shining a light on the new drafts and demanding meetings with the planners.

The Advisory Group strategy was a 180 degree pivot from the full public strategy of the first draft and an abject failure.

Where We’re At Now In The Process

Below are the maps provided to the Advisory Group but not stakeholders (unless you happened to know where to look and happened to do so, like we did).

These maps are supposed to be consolidated before the end of the year and we’re told the public gets more input, but we fear that input will be in the EIR process when the maps are mostly set.

The first map was called the Residential Map. We thought it was the full residential plan and we all almost had heart attacks by the gross density proposed in that map, especially around the Sepulveda/Manchester Quadrant.

Then the Commercial Map dropped and we were shocked to see how much more density the city thinks we are willing to pile on top of commercial businesses, in addition to what is in the Residential Map.

Oh, and then the Industrial Map dropped. What? It took me several reads to discover that yet more housing is contained on this map.

Seriously? Did you know that Westchester is forecast to decline in population? Why do we need three maps worth of grossly densified high-rises in a community that was built for single family homes and doesn’t have the infrastructure to be the Wilshire Corridor of the beach cities?

Not to mention a community landlocked by the 405, Marina Channel/Kentwood Bluffs, Pacific Ocean and LAX.

And speaking of LAX, these densification plans are going to wreak havoc with LAX’s plans to grow flights. The whole plan is stupid. It’s not innovative and it’s not inspired. It’s straight up gross densification for the sake of stuffing in a bunch market rate boxes.

Is This The Whole Plan?

We’ve been told our planners are done dropping maps, other than a consolidated map promised for September. Hopefully we’re looking at the whole draft plan now.

As a reminder, we are in the CPU process with three other westside communities – Venice, Palms/Mar Vista/Del Rey and West LA under the cutesy name of “Planning The Westside.”

Why the other CD-11 communities of Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Ladera aren’t in this “westside” plan with us remains a mystery, although we have some theories.

The combined maps can be found here, here and here. But don’t forget you have to also read the separate supporting documents to even begin to read the maps (correspondence tables, GPLU keys, policy documents, housing element and maybe things we don’t even know about yet).

For your convenience, I’ve excerpted images of the Westchester Playa maps below for a quick visual, but as mentioned above the maps do not tell the entire story, sadly.

The Westchester Playa Plan

The entire plan is so grossly full of density and high-rises, even the city couldn’t capture it all in one map. Here are our three maps, all with residential implications.

The Residential Map

The residential map was apparently drawn with a new Manchester/Sepulveda TOC in mind, as well as the new Hindry light rail metro station. More has been written on the TOC here and the Osage commercial plan here.

click to enlarge

The Commercial Map

click to enlarge

The Industrial Map

click to enlarge

Does This Plan Provide Affordable Housing?

A lot of people accept the “we need density” narrative because they are told that is how we get affordable housing.

The narrative is, sadly, partially true. The only mechanism the city currently uses to incentivize affordable units is to provide extras to market rate developers to build a couple of token affordable units. 

In fact, I’ve been in meetings with the planners recently where they admit we need gross densification to meet our affordable housing targets.

Did you take that in? We’re supposed to absorb thousands of ugly boxes we don’t need to get a few affordable units. Does that make any sense? Is that a good use of our resources?

How about the city ponies up to subsidize developers to build more affordable units instead of giving away our low density communities for random acts of blighted densification??

Are You Mad Yet?

What do you think about the maps and the plan? Not mad yet? Read this.

Mad enough to sign our petition? Find it here.

Mad enough to hit the streets with us? Find out how you can help here.

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.  

Posted on

And Another Map Drops

The maps! Back in 2020 when the CPU process started, we got one draft plan that was easy to wrap our brains around. And in fact, one community group did just that and came together to create a community response to the draft.

Fast forward three years and the city has turned the process of updating our community plan into such a convoluted process that it’s taken multiple maps and numerous accompanying keys to describe their plans to densify the “you know what” out of Continue reading “And Another Map Drops”