Los Angeles voters next week will consider the largest municipal housing bond in U.S. history, a $1-billion package that promises both to boost the supply of increasingly scarce affordable housing and force the city to rethink 60 years of land-use policy.
Measure H, which is backed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as well as some of the city's biggest developers, would create an estimated 10,000 affordable housing rental units, increasing the total number of such dwellings in Los Angeles by about 13%.
The bond, which requires a two-thirds majority and would add $50 to $60 to the average homeowner's yearly property tax bill, also would provide financial assistance to qualified home buyers.
Measure H comes at a time when housing prices have become a potent political issue. The average rent in the city has nearly doubled in the last 12 years and now hovers around $1,700 -- out of the range of most working-class Angelenos.
And though the city has made some progress in building low-income housing over the last decade, it has been largely offset by gentrification and rising home values. A recent study by the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing found that 12,800 affordable rental units had been built using city money since 2001, but 11,000 existing rent-controlled apartments were either torn down or converted to condominiums during the same period.
The city uses a complex formula to determine who is eligible for affordable housing units. A household qualifies now if it earns less than $44,960 a year.
Villaraigosa and others say Measure H represents an unprecedented effort to deal with what they consider a housing crisis.
Some neighborhood activists in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere have come out against Measure H. Most opponents say that it would unfairly burden property owners and that the city should not tax homeowners to build affordable housing. They also fear that new affordable units would add density to single-family neighborhoods.
But to some urban planners, passage of Measure H also would force Los Angeles to confront larger questions: Where should housing be built, and how dense should it be?
They say it would place two competing forces that have long dominated land-use policy in Los Angeles on a collision course: the need for more housing to keep up with the growing population and the desire of residents to keep their neighborhoods free of new development.
