This week in affordable housing news, there was no shortage of action in Los Angeles. First, the Los Angeles Times reported on the Southern California Association of Government’s adoption of a landmark regional growth plan that will require coastal cities to accommodate the bulk of the 1.3 million new homes the state has allocated to the region over the next eight years. After SCAG outlined a plan in June for approving only 430,000 new homes during this time period, the Newsom administration responded with a target three times larger. This month, Southern California cities not only voted to accept this new allocation—but also agreed to require Los Angeles and Orange counties to plan for one million of these new homes, instead of shifting this new development to far-flung suburban cities in Riverside and San Bernardino. “This is a moment of our growing up,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said after the SCAG vote. “I understand the fear where people are like: ‘No, just keep [housing] out and maybe my traffic won’t get worse.’ Well, we’ve tried that for three decades and it’s failed. This is a new beginning.”

On a related note, the Los Angeles Times also reported this week that 95% of LA voters view homelessness “as a serious or very serious problem”—followed by traffic congestion (88%) and housing affordability (85%). In a sign of growing awareness of what’s causing these challenges, 49% of respondents said homelessness is “primarily” the result of a lack of affordable housing and wages that aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. As one focus group participant said: “We’re all one circumstance away from being there.”

The Los Angeles City Council also took action this week to take on its affordable housing shortage, directing the city’s housing department to draft an ordinance for creating “anti-displacement zones” around new luxury housing developments that don’t include any affordable units. Councilmember Herb Wesson introduced the motion, which was approved without any no votes. “Instead of building more high-end, unaffordable housing, what we need is affordable housing, workforce housing, and supportive housing,” the motion said. “Market-rate developments with no affordable units set aside that are proposed in neighborhoods where the median income is well below the City average are completely unacceptable.” The council’s proposed ordinance would cap rent increases within a two-mile radius of new luxury developments for three years.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

California To Fund $900 Million In Affordable Housing, Transit
Patch
California will award nearly $900 million in funding to help communities build affordable housing and transit, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday. “Sky-high housing costs are putting the squeeze on family budgets while long commutes contribute to dirtier air,” Newsom said in a statement. “By bringing housing closer to jobs, we can fight climate change and create healthier, sustainable communities across California.”

Proposition 13 overhaul backed by leading 2020 Democrats
San Francisco Chronicle
California property taxes are one area that U.S. presidents have no control over, but that hasn’t stopped candidates for the Democratic nomination from lining up behind a prospective ballot measure to overhaul Proposition 13, the state’s landmark tax-cutting law.

Housing crisis — fits and starts
CalMatters
The latest developments in California’s housing crisis are, as usual, mixed. In September, according to the Legislature’s budget analyst, permits for 10,580 new housing units were issued, a 13% increase from August and a 40% boost from September 2018. However, overall housing starts are still running below 2018’s level, meaning the net gain for the year, including housing that’s burned or been demolished, will likely be well below 100,000 units, or about half of what the state says we need to build each year.

HOUSING CRISIS

SoCal Has To Plan For 1.3 Million New Homes. But Where Should They Go? 
LAist
In the midst of California’s deepening housing crisis, the state has given Southern California a big task: Plan for at least 1.3 million new homes by 2029. But where to put all those new homes has been a contentious question. At a regional planning meeting last week, local representatives rejected an initial proposal to concentrate growth in the Inland Empire, instead voting to put more homes near major job centers and transit lines in L.A. and Orange counties.

Surprise! Oakland leads SF in housing
San Francisco Chronicle
The Oakland building boom has its roots in a series of five neighborhood plans the city passed in 2014 and 2015 that are now bearing fruit. These plans — which included Lake Merritt, West Oakland and Broadway-Valdez — lured developers by relaxing zoning and eliminating parking requirements.

‘Project of my heart’: How 98-year-old fought to get affordable housing built on his SF property
San Francisco Chronicle
It was a moment Mischa Seligman had thought he would not live long enough to see. On a recent Friday afternoon, Seligman, 98, walked up the steep driveway at 36 Amber Drive in San Francisco’s Diamond Heights. Waiting for him at the top of the hill were a yellow bulldozer and two silver-plated shovels. About two dozen staff and board members of the San Francisco office of affordable housing developer Habitat for Humanity milled about.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

LA proposes putting ‘anti-displacement’ zones around luxury development
Curbed Los Angeles
The Los Angeles City Council voted today to lay the groundwork for creating “anti-displacement zones” around new market-rate or “luxury” residential buildings that contain no affordable units. The vote directs the city’s housing and community investment department, city planning, department, and the city attorney’s to draft an ordinance that would put in place a battery of protections aimed at helping renters in a one-mile radius around new developments.

HOMELESSNESS

95% of voters say homelessness is L.A.’s biggest problem, Times poll finds. ‘You can’t escape it’
Los Angeles Times
As people living in tents, RVs and makeshift shelters become a fact of life in neighborhoods far and wide, homelessness is now an all-consuming issue in Los Angeles County, with 95% of voters calling it a serious or very serious problem, according to a new poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Business Council Institute.

Editorial: Veterans are still homeless in Los Angeles. They shouldn’t be
Los Angeles Times
There are 3,878 veterans who lack a “fixed, regular or adequate place to sleep” on any given night in Los Angeles County, according to the annual count of the homeless conducted in January. Like the rest of L.A. County’s homeless population, most of them live on streets and sidewalks while a smaller number find beds in shelters. About a dozen live in an encampment outside the gates of the VA’s campus in West L.A.