SHARING WITH YOU EXAMPLE OF SUPPORT LETTER FOR THE CHIP ORDINANCE

Dear Councilperson Yaroslavsky & the Housing Element Team at LA Planning:

Case file CPC-2023-7068-CA: 

I support the CHIP Ordinance June 2024 draft that rezones our commercial corridors while protecting single-family neighborhoods, Historic Districts/HPOZs and Rent Stabilized Units from being rezoned. 

Note… at the hearing, numerous speakers who were obviously hired voices for Developer interests encouraged the city to essentially end R-1 zoning and Historic Districts and Historic Preservation Overlay Zones (HPOZs).  These comments characterized residential zoning and historic preservation as racist and only benefiting wealthy homeowners. 

Not only that, these speakers virtually demonized homeownership, per se, which really shows the lack of awareness that many hard-working homeowners are currently in their 40s/50s/60s with young, middle, high school and young adult children living at home… along with another cohort of homeowners who are retirees. And these people are the working MIDDLE CLASS.  Not wealthy landowners. 

What the Developers fail to talk about is the destruction of the American dream, a dream established by Americans when given “four acres and a mule” to all who were willing to work a plot of land.  Back in Britain, land ownership was impossible. And now homeowners are watching an insidious TRANSFER OF WEALTH scheme to big pocketed real estate developers who’ve run out of land to exploit and can now only make money by “rezoning R1.”

Sadly these Developers are the modern “Lords and Ladies,” and the middle class will be relegated to a permanent renter class. No more land ownership for the next generations to follow.

The Developers are NOT for social justice.  They are for “pencilling out” with entitlements so they can build FOR PROFIT market rate housing, displacing the “missing middle.”  When they only return 2 “affordable” units on redeveloping a 10 unit R2 building, they are NOT solving the problem of homelessness, they are contributing to it!  

Everyone loves gentrification and neighborhood improvement, but when “market rate” rents in high-rise developments are $5K -$25K/month, R1 home ownership is now the “affordable” missing middle.

As a social justice issue, the hired voices touting the destruction of R1 neighborhoods need to do some homework.  The statements at the public hearing also ignore the following inconvenient facts:

• R-1 zoning benefits literally thousands of single-family homeowners spanning across the socio-economic spectrum throughout numerous, varied LA neighborhoods allowing them to build generational wealth.
• R1 housing supports family stability and the opportunity to care for multiple generations under one roof… and on a family-owned plot of land.
• HPOZs and historic districts already have a significant percentage of multi-family housing units that are naturally affordable.
• City Planning Department estimates indicated that about half of single-family areas on hillside and high sea-level areas are not suitable for new multifamily developments. And most people are now looking to increase green spaces instead of continuing to eliminate them.

Please save Single Family, RSO’s and Historic Neighborhoods. They are some of the City’s greatest assets and the reason people move to and stay in Los Angeles. Single Family Home Ownership is the only chance for generations of Americans to own land away from a modern gentried class of Developers seeking to exploit R1 zoning for their own profit.

Rezoning underutilized adjacent commercial corridors for more housing makes good sense.  This allows for the creation of vibrant 15 minute walking communities for everyone, without destroying what we already have. Data shows that we can protect our existing residential and historic areas and still meet affordable housing needs. Many of our communities have worked hard to show where more housing could be added in each of their neighborhoods, answering the Mayor’s call  to solve the housing crisis by having “skin-in-the-game” with supporting and working with the Planning Department’s proposed revisions to the Housing Element and CHIP program.”
 
Thank you,

*What is CHIP ? It is the Citywide Housing Incentive Program

Link to more info on the City Planning website: https://planning.lacity.gov/search/node?keys=CHIP

Link to more information:

https://centuryglen.org/