Vacant lots in Los Angeles are ubiquitous. It's a longtime fact that non-residents don't know: empty parcels of land are everywhere.
There are numerous reasons for this. For one, tax laws assess property owners a low penalty for holding onto empty land. So these people tend to wait for surrounding real estate values to climb higher before trying to sell, but in so many cases, that doesn't happen.
Another issue is that both LA city and LA county have very slow permitting processes, and slow environmental clearance approvals. Costs of permitting and cleanup are also very high, giving land owners no incentive to sell.
Then there is the huge mass of bureaucratic red tape that surrounds every process in LA.
A large parcel of empty land, on Western Avenue South and West 59th Street has been sitting idle for a very long time. A few years ago, a group wanted to put a community garden on the location, along with other resources that would benefit this lower-income neighborhood. But excessive and unrelenting delays by the city resulted in the group scrapping the idea, according to a city official that spoke to me anonymously.
In South LA and Koreatown, many of the vacant lots that dot each area are left over from the 1992 Rodney King riots. Crazy, isn't it? Unforgivable is another way to put it.
One of those lots, at 75th and Western, is pictured here:
Going south from this point, there are several more huge vacant lots along Western, at 83rd, 84th, 87th and 88th, just to name a few.
Of course, vacant lots often become dumping grounds, which blights the surrounding area.
One would think that LA Mayor Karen Bass, who campaigned so hard on her promise to decrease homelessness in the city, would have taken steps to make it easier to convert these empty lots into homes - or something. (Anything else would be better)
She did not. But fortunately, someone else did. A story that ran in the LA Times two weeks ago - which is below - details this effort. It is not official, but it provides a lot of hope for the city.
Putting land to good use is not only practical, but it fosters feelings of overall well-being and community, and makes residents feel like the city cares. It could also provide home ownership opportunities, as well as affordable housing, for so many people for whom those things are completely out of reach right now.
Let's campaign for this to happen. It is so very long overdue.
A housing fix, one empty lot at a time
Los Angeles Times, Aug. 6 –
It is perhaps one of the biggest contradictions of Los Angeles’ housing crisis.
How can a
city where homes are in such short supply and financially out of reach for so
many have more than 20,000 lots that are zoned for housing, but remain vacant?
It’s been
a long-missed opportunity, but one that some housing experts hope could now
create a fresh wave of attainable home ownership.
A
newly-launched novel experiment aims to demonstrate how these vacant lots,
while small, can be transformed into thoughtfully-designed “gentle density” –
housing – such as duplexes, fourplexes and townhome communities – to be sold at
more reasonable prices than LA’s long-venerated single-family home.
“There
hasn’t been a new generation of starter homes since World War II. How do we get
back to that?” said Dana Cuff, director of UCLA’s cityLAB, which is
spearheading this phase of the “Small Lots, Big Impacts” initiative, focused on
turning vacant, privately-owned parcels into affordable homeownership
opportunities.
Small-scale,
multiunit housing has been a mainstay of LA architecture for more than a
century – from grand Spanish Colonial duplexes in places such as Carthay Circle
to tidy courtyard apartments and boxy mid-century “dingbat” complexes across
Hollywood and the Fairfax District.
But such
small-scale housing options have typically been offered as rentals, or
sometimes as high-end listings in some of the city’s most desirable
neighborhoods. In recent years, LA has held some of the lowest rates of home
ownership in the state, which already falls well below the national average.
Until
recently, almost three quarters of the city’s residential areas were zoned only
for single-family homes.
But with
recent legislation that upended zoning laws across the state, many more lots –
including vacant ones – are now open for development of small-scale complexes,
each of which can be sold individually. This, proponents say, presents an
opportunity to develop reasonably-priced homes for sale, particularly in
communities that may not have many mid-density buildings.
Affordable
home ownership is “a big hole in the market,” said Emmanuel Proussaloglou,
co-director of cityLAB. “If we do this right, hopefully this is going to be the
first step in making that available.”
Los
Angeles has famously struggled to build enough housing to keep up with demand. While
some areas such as downtown have seen a surge of new units over the last decade
– mostly large-scale, high-rise apartments – many other neighborhoods haven’t
kept up. Often, proposals for new developments have faced pushback from
resident groups.
But
backers of this initiative believe they can find success by focusing on smaller
lots that can take on slightly more density than a single-family home, or even one
with an accessory dwelling unit, without changing the fabric of a neighborhood.
“If we can
figure out a way, through this project, to build five, six, 12 units (on lots)
that could otherwise hold one or two…that seems to be a really sustainable way
to build housing in LA, Proussaloglou said.
CityLAB’s
analysis found more than 20,000 privately-owned vacant lots primed for such
projects. Its search included parcels already zoned for residences that are a
quarter-acre or smaller, and don’t have any existing structures, he said.
“It’s a
pretty incredible number,” Proussalogou said. He pointed out that these lots
account for only about two percent of all privately-owned parcels in LA, but
still, they “can have a big impact.”
This week,
the “Small Lots, Big Impacts” initiative announced the three designer-developer
teams that will bring to life pilot versions of these “multi-family, attainable
homeownership projects…to lead the missing middle revolution in Los Angeles,”
according to a news release. The teams are expected to build their unique
housing complexes – each with at least five separate units – on a small,
privately-owned empty lot within the city,
The program
will provide some financial and regulatory support, including a low-interest
loan to fund each project from community development Genesis LA. The teams are
all required to list the homes for sale, with a percentage reserved below
market rate for low or middle-income buyers. The effort is also receiving
support from private-public alliance group LA4LA, the city of LA, and BMO bank……
“It’s a kind of Noah’s Ark for the next generation of LA,” Cuff said.........
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