Really, really good, really long article about the affordable housing crisis that focuses on San Francisco but has relevance for all cities in California, especially, but also nationwide. Too hard to sum up here but the basic take-away is that the problem of affordability is REALLY COMPLICATED (concluded my Move LA colleague and affordable housing expert Beth Steckler) and rent control, the Ellis Act and Prop 13 are just a very few of the reasons that rents are too darn high. Read it while on a long bus or rail ride . . .

By Kim-Mai Cutler on Techcrunch.com.

Forget buying a place to live — you can't even find a place to rent in Los Angeles. And Los Angelenos have to spend an average of 47% of median income on the median rent — which leaves not very much left over for transportation, food, health care and clothing. There is a staggering shortage of housing for low-income workers and their families in Los Angeles, says Curbed LA, and "meanwhile,  developers are only building 'luxury' housing, and kicking out those who live in rent-controlled units."

Read more on Curbed LA and see their rent "heat map."

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti announced in his State of the City address that Crenshaw Boulevard in South LA, Figueroa Street in downtown LA, Gaffey Street in San Pedro, Reseda Boulevard, Van Nuys Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard (in Reseda, Van Nuys and Westwood) would be 6 of the 15 streets that would be the first to benefit from his Great Streets program. He said this means that " . . . We'll saturate your street with services. We'll make your street accessible to pedestrians, wheelchairs, strollers and bicycles — not just cars. We'll create an environment where new neighborhood businesses can flourish. We'll pave the streets and make them green streets — clean and lush with plant life, local art, and people-focused plazas."

Pretty cool! Read more on Curbed LA.

A new study by the University of Minnesota has found that in most places in the U.S. lower-income non-white people breathe more polluted air than higher-income whites — on average 38% more, resulting in an additional 7,000 deaths among non-whites. The study finds that race plays a bigger role than income, perhaps because more non-whites tend to live in pollution-rich downtown neighborhoods near freeways. Los Angeles ranks among the top 15 cities with the highest pollution disparity between whites and nonwhites.

Read more on The Atlantic Cities.

The median rent takes 47% of the median income in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times — more than in any other US city. For rent and utilities to be considered affordable they are supposed to take up no more than 30% of household income. The real estate website Zillow did the analysis for the NYT, and found 90 cities where the median rent — not including utilities — was more than 30%.

A recent study from Harvard University found that nationally half of all rents now spend more than 30% of their income on housing, and last December Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan declared it "the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has ever known." Apartment vacancy rates have dropped so low that forecasters predicted rents could rise as much as 4% this year compared to 2.8% last year.

This is a really good story! Read more in The New York Times.

Clearly California Senate Leader Darrel Steinberg has been listening to housing and transit advocates and he understands the problem: Both transit and affordable housing near transit are key to creating sustainable communities that can help meet the state's greenhouse gas reduction goals, but there's no money. Housing bond funds have been exhausted, and the end of redevelopment meant a loss of another $1 billion a year in funding for affordable housing -- even as rents are climbing and older affordable housing is being torn down to make way for new. Neither is there money for builidng and operating transit or for road repair, unless voters step up and agree to tax themselves to do it -- as they have in LA County with the Measure R sales tax for transportation.

Yesterday Senator Steinberg proposed addressing the problem by using Cap & Trade revenues, now approaching $1 billion a year and expected to rise to somewhere between $4-$8 billion annually in the near future. "With Measure R in LA County and Steinberg's proposed use of Cap & Trade funds we are poised to create truly sustainable communities where environmental goals can be achieved and prosperity can be widely shared," said Move LA Executive Director Denny Zane.

Steinberg would spend:
-- 40% for affordable housing and planning and development in "sustainable communities" near transit, with at least 20% for affordable housing
-- 30% on transit
-- 20% on high speed rail (HSR)
-- 10% on state highway and road rehabilitation as well as complete streets projects
-- $200 million on natural resources, water and waste projects
-- $200 million on a climate dividend for "transportation fuel consumers"
-- $200 million on an electric vehicle deployment program
-- and $10 million on clean energy and other green investments via a new state "Green Bank."

The state Air Resources Board (ARB) is implementing the Cap & Trade program under the authority of AB 32, adopted in 2006, which requires us to roll back the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Steinberg's SB 375, adopted in 2008, requires regions to plan to reduce GHG emissions through transportation and land use strategies. SB 535 by incoming Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, adopted in 2012, recognizes the disproportionate impact of emissions on disadvantaged and low-income communities — which suffer higher rates of respiratory illness, hospitalizations and premature death from substandard air quality — and requires the allocation of 25% of Cap & Trade funds to projects within those communities. Steinberg's funding proposal helps implement all three laws.

"Southern California has embraced the goals of California's greenhouse gas reduction laws but we have been calling on Sacramento to provide the tools and funding local governments need to implement them -- and clearly Senator Steinberg has been listening," said Move LA Executive Director Denny Zane. Read more on Senator Steinberg's website.

 

 

An increasing number of rent-controlled units are being converted to condos or torn down in order to allow developers to put up new, bigger condominiums or apartment buildings or clusters of single family homes, leaving a dwindling supply and fewer affordable options for residents of LA County, the LA Times reported on Sunday. Evictions in both LA and in San Francisco are surging as property owners cash in on a rebounding real estate market. This is happening because the state's Ellis Act allows property owners to evict tenants if the owners are demolishing their buildings in order to build something new or if they are getting out of the rental business.

In LA owners filed to remove 378 rent-controlled units from the market last year -- 40% more than in 2012 -- and the numbers are accelerating this year, according to the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department. Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, told the LA Times, "The people who make Los Angeles run -- such as the hotel workers, the service workers, the teachers and the bus drivers and the regular working people -- are being run out of Los Angeles."

Los Angeles passed a rent stabilization ordinance in 1979 because of concerns that rapid rent increases were pricing many out of the city. There are only 638,000 rent-controlled units left and the supply is dwindling because in 1995 the state Legislature barred units built after February 1 from rent control and ended regulations in some cities that had prohibited rent increases if a unit was vacated.

READ MORE.

You know the reasons: For building and maintaining the business-labor-enviro coalition that helped the Measure R half-cent sales tax for transportation win 2/3 voter approval in November of 2008 . . .

On the Community Partners website.

 

Nope, not talking about LA County's Measure R2 plans, but about Chicago's "Transit Future" campaign, which was inspired by LA's success with Measure R and launched last week with the help of former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Move LA Executive Director Denny Zane. Writer Emily Badger (formerly with The Atlantic Cities) asks, "So what do you do if you're a city with a 100-year-old rail network that no longer takes residents where they need to go, maybe across town instead of downtown, maybe out to the suburbs beyond the last stop?" The answer? The $20 million "Transit Future" campaign, modeled after LA County's Measure R campaign.

Read more on the Washington Post's wonkblog.

 

Curbed LA publishes Move LA's "straw man" rail map and framework of projects that could be funded by Measure R2, a 45-year half-cent sales tax, with:
*  30% ($27 billion) for expanding rail transit
*  4% ($4.5 billion) for Metrolink modernization
*  20% ($18 billion) for operations
*  20% ($18 billion) for highways and "Grand Boulevards"
*  15% ($13.5 billion) for local return to cities in the county
*  6% ($5.4 billion) for clean freight
*  4% ($3.6 billion) for active transportation

Read more on Curbed LA.