The Los Angeles City Council took steps Wednesday to reduce the approval process for affordable housing units in an effort to encourage more development.
The motion, which passed 12-0, was introduced by Councilmen Paul Krekorian, Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Gil Cedillo with Council President Nury Martinez.
Speaking before the vote Wednesday, Krekorian said the motion is one of those that “sounds kind of technical and boring but it actually has the potential to be immensely impactful in our city’s ability to bend the arc of affordability of housing in the city.”
The council members’ vote instructed the Department of City Planning to work with the city attorney to prepare an ordinance that would amend the city’s zoning code to exempt deed-restricted affordable housing units from the site plan review threshold calculations as long as the total number of units are allowed under the area’s zoning.
“One of the steps that almost all big developments have to go through is site plan review,” said Krekorian. “Site plan review requires a full environmental review for any development over 50 units, regardless of the zone, regardless of the size of the lot, regardless of the neighborhood character, regardless of the degree of affordability of that building.”
Krekorian said that developers try to avoid site plan review by building developments with 49 units instead of 50 or more, even if they’re zoned for many more units.
Krekorian added that the city enacted a similar law in 2018 for permanent supportive housing developments that house people experiencing homelessness. That law raised the threshold for site plan review from 50 units to as many as 200 units for permanent supportive housing developments.
“The result was a doubling in the number of permanent supportive housing units that were built,” Krekorian said.