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Low-Income Angelenos Could Be Shut Out of New Downtown Development
LOS ANGELES — With L. A.
in a housing crisis, a downtown developer sued the city in February to evade its
affordable-housing rules. Today groups filed papers in L.A. Superior Court to
prevent G.H. Palmer Associates from shutting downtown’s doors to low- and
middle-income Angelenos.
"The law of the highest bidder will be a
nightmare for this city, not just for its poorest residents but for the middle
class struggling to hang on," said ACLU of Southern California staff attorney
Peter Bibring. "A clean, safe apartment shouldn’t just be a dream for
Los
Angeles residents, it should be
a basic right."
The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
California, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and
Western
Center on Law and Poverty seek
to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of ACORN and the Southern California
Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH), which includes nearly all of the
non-profit affordable-housing developers in the
Los
Angeles area.
At issue
are L.A.’s "inclusionary zoning"
rules for the Central City West area of downtown, adopted in 1991 and intended
to help replace affordable apartments lost to redevelopment in the heart of the
city. The law requires developers to devote 15% of their apartments to people
who make less than $40,000 a year, or to help make such housing available
elsewhere. The developer suing the city is seeking to build a 340-unit building
exempt from the 15-year-old rule. Similar rules are in effect at 33
redevelopment areas scattered throughout the city.
"Angelenos have their
backs against the wall, and we should be increasing affordable housing, not
tearing down laws that protect it," said Alvivon Hurd, a board member of the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which represents
residents who would be harmed if the lawsuit succeeds. "The housing crisis is
driving this city’s working and middle class out of its future."
Rents at
one of G.H. Palmer Associates’ apartment buildings in the downtown area start at
$2,265, according to the Los Angeles Times. The average two-bedroom
L.A. apartment costs $1,426.
The national norm for rent is 30 percent of a couple’s income, and an
L.A. family would need to
earn $57,040 to afford the city average. A couple earning minimum wage would
need to work more than 70 hours a week each.
Between 2001 and 2006, the
City lost nearly 11,000 affordable-housing units due to condominium conversions
of rent stabilized units and other reasons, and has been unable to replace them
at the same rate.
Since 1974, more than 120 cities and counties
throughout California have adopted
inclusionary zoning ordinances as an effective means of addressing the critical
shortage of affordable housing.