Councilman Paul Koretz said Wednesday he will ask his colleagues to support a resolution in opposition to Senate Bill 50, which is intended to give cities the ability to increase residential density near most transportation facilities, contending it does not address income inequalities.
The City Council voted unanimously in April to oppose SB 50 for the 2019-20 legislative session, and amendments have since been made to the bill, but Koretz said he was not satisfied with them.
“As amended, SB 50 still doesn’t address the state’s dire lack of affordable housing, which is at the heart of our housing crisis,” he said. “There is ample evidence the bill would incentivize the construction of market-rate housing and create millions of luxury units while requiring too few affordable units.”
Koretz said the bill also doesn’t address the Costa Hawkins law, which he said makes rent-controlled units become unaffordable by preventing rent caps.
“Building millions of luxury units would only increase rent in neighboring existing buildings and de-incentivize the building of affordable housing,” Koretz said. ” If the next 100,000 units built in Los Angeles were affordable, we’d make great progress toward our actual need to make housing more affordable and reduce homelessness. But SB 50 does nothing to accomplish that.”
Los Angeles already has its own program that gives incentives to developers to build affordable housing within a half-mile of transportation. The Transit-Oriented Communities program was approved by the voters as Measure JJJ in 2016.
Koretz said one of the provisions in the bills latest amendments would allow cities to submit their own residential zoning plans to the state as a substitute to SB 50, as long as they sufficiently increase housing density.
A letter sent to Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, from a group of housing advocates said the bill doesn’t do enough to assist low-income housing, people of color and other vulnerable people.
“It fails to meet these communities’ housing affordability needs and has the potential to create new pressure and incentives for displacement,” the letter stated.
Koretz’s resolution will first be heard in the City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee.
SB 50 has until Friday to advance out of the state Senate.