The density wars in Los Angeles are heating up.
On one side are homeowner associations, neighborhood councils and a smattering of politicians. They are becoming increasingly outspoken in their opposition to what they believe is City Hall's insatiable desire to build taller in order to create more housing for a growing city population, now more than 4 million. Such development, they say, is ruining the character of the city's neighborhoods as cars clog streets and big residential buildings wipe out views. They believe a city government that allows this to happen must be in the big developers' pockets.
On the other side are the mayor, most members of the City Council and planning officials. They face an affordable-housing deficit that is exiling big chunks of the city's workforce to the Antelope Valley and San Bernardino County and turning older neighborhoods, such as Pico-Alvarado and parts of East L.A., into slums. About 62% of the city's inhabitants rent, and the monthly payment for a typical one-bedroom unit is more than $1,400, according to city housing statistics. That's unaffordable to anyone making under $50,000 a year, given the rule of thumb that a tenant should spend no more than 30% of his or her income on rent. The housing meltdown has made matters worse, as foreclosures push former homeowners into a rental market with a 2.5% vacancy rate.
Into this fray has jumped none other than Zev Yaroslavsky, the L.A. County supervisor who, in 1986, as the youthful hotspur of the City Council, got a citywide initiative, Proposition U, passed that cut in half the size of most new commercial and industrial buildings. Twelve years later, he was responsible for a measure that effectively ended L.A.'s westbound subway line at Western Avenue. Now he's grabbed the reins of the anti-density stagecoach and is stampeding the horses. Critics wonder why he's putting time and effort into an issue beyond his elected purview -- this while the county's health department, probation department and jails face major problems.
What's going on?
Yaroslavsky insists that politics -- that is, running for mayor in 2009 -- has nothing to do with his born-again anti-development fervor. "My interest," he told me last week, "is simply due to my being a resident of Los Angeles."
