A group affiliated with the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley is in the midst of a three-month-long project to re-evaluate the region’s land-use philosophies. Representatives from the five Valley cities have attended along with local business interests the meetings of The Livable Communities Council in order to reach common ground on long-term strategies. The group will hold its final meeting in this series later this month. The latest meeting on November 22 focused on regional housing needs. Dan Blake, Director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at Cal State University Northridge, reported that the Valley is experiencing a steady increase in its population density. In 2000, there were 5,868 residents per square mile in the Valley, which increased to 6,275 per square mile by 2004, which is still behind the Los Angeles average, but will still have a drastic impact on the Valley as the trend continues. “If anything is certain over the next few years in the Valley it is an increasing homelessness problem,” said Blake. “Rents are up and that’s pushing people out.” In the past, Blake said, options like mobile home parks have been available for lower-income residents. But the high price of land is pushing even those developments out of the Valley. Blake also pointed out that as the region’s population ages, the number of informal and illegal conversions to homes to accommodate elderly relatives will put local code enforcement officials in conflict with housing advocates. In Glendale, the growing population would logically be accommodated by an increased number of high-density developments, said Senior Planner Jeff Hamilton. “To accommodate what we need for the future we have to crank (high-rise developments) up, but the political will is not there to do that,” Hamilton said. “The reality is that a lot of the public doesn’t want high-rise development, but high-rise development is going to be needed to meet our needs.” While Los Angeles has seen resistance to the idea of ratifying an inclusionary zoning law in order to provide more affordable housing, Burbank will likely have such a law on the books by February or March of next year. “The bottom line is that it’s going to be a requirement for development if they want to build a multi-family project with five or more units. They will have to make 15 percent of those units affordable,” said Deputy City Planner Joy Forbes. In a Burbank City Council study session earlier this month, Planning Department staff described some of the incentives the City is willing to provide developers for complying with the regulations, which include requiring less open space than is normally required and allowing for modified setbacks. Forbes said that developers have not raised an outcry to the proposed law. She said that the city convened a focus group of several of the city’s prominent developers in order to identify and avoid possible problems. Developers were somewhat concerned that the new laws would change the value of the land on which they plan to build, but she said that a continuingly robust housing market will still make multi-family construction profitable. The city has also assured developers that the new regulations will not slow down the approval process, and those who file for building permits within the first six months of the law taking effect will only be required to make 10 percent of a building’s units affordable. “The (Building Industry Association) has given us its obligatory letter saying how it will make prices for market-rate units go up, which is just ridiculous. Developers can get what ever the market can support, this cannot force the market to go up,” said Forbes. The Livable Communities Council also discussed further developing Los Angeles in specific “clusters,” which focus density away from single-family areas and toward neighborhoods like downtown Los Angeles that can sustain density and provide services and infrastructure that limit car trips for residents. Adjusting commercial zones to accommodate more housing limits space for businesses somewhat, but proponents say that the model is a better fit for a city like Los Angeles. Still, future development will hardly pass by single family neighborhoods altogether, and Sharon Mayer, neighborhood liaison for the Los Angeles Planning Department. Developers in areas like Studio City, she said, are meeting heavy resistance from residents over projects that are allowed by specific plans. Mayer said the city needs to work harder to explain to residents what types of development are legal before any widespread change in the city’s residential neighborhoods can take place.
