The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved new rules to address major byproducts of the gentrification that has swept the city: limiting the size of "mansionization" additions and making it harder for developers to convert low-income housing into luxury lofts.
The rules radically limit the size of remodeled homes in the city's flatlands to about 3,000 to 4,000 square feet in most cases, curtailing what homeowners say is a plague of giant, ugly stucco boxes that are killing neighborhood character.
On the other end of the spectrum, council members voted to preserve more than 18,700 units in residential hotels, mostly in downtown, that advocates worry are in danger of being turned into luxury lofts or condominiums, leaving many of the city's poorest with nowhere to live.
The controversial measures required heavy negotiation among activists, property owners and businesspeople. But in both cases, the unanimous decisions by council members represent recognition of the incredible pressures that rising property values and gentrification have exerted on virtually every corner of the city in recent years.
Despite the recent slowdown in the housing market, officials said the ordinances were necessary to protect neighborhoods in the future.
"When certain neighborhoods have homes on steroids and others no longer have a place for the poor to sleep, the social fabric is torn," said City Council President Eric Garcetti.
For years, the city has been criticized for not doing more to preserve the look and character of existing neighborhoods against "tear-downs," in which property owners demolish homes and replace them with dwellings often two or three times larger. Many other Southern California cities, including Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, have far more restrictive mansionization rules.
Activists also have been alarmed at how the revitalization of downtown L.A. has led some owners of residential hotels that for decades were the domain of the poor to remake their properties for the new downtown crowd.
Mercedes Marquez, general manager of the city's Housing Department, said the double action represented a move "to make sure that everybody has a say and stake" in the city.
The mansionization law was proposed more than two years ago, after residents complained that behemoth houses were invading communities across the city, dwarfing neighborhood scale, and destroying peace and privacy.
