Affordable Housing

For decades, Santa Monica has allowed developers to add floors to their buildings or exceed other zoning restrictions in exchange for providing affordable housing to poor and moderate-income tenants. Such was the case with Dorchester House, a luxury condominium low-rise just blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Almost three decades ago, the city approved a development plan in which 15 first-floor units were earmarked as affordable housing. But as real estate attorney Stanley Epstein learned recently, the city has done little to enforce these agreements.

Re "2 held in slayings of USC grad students," May 19 I was a USC graduate student in the 1970s. I had come from Ohio car-less and poor and was forced to live off campus because USC could not provide housing. When a late class required me to walk home at night, I made sure that morning to wear tennis shoes and dark clothing so my footsteps would be softer and my body less visible. Gang members confronted us routinely; one student in my complex was beaten up as he was running for safety.

The Times' report on the housing crunch in Ventura County on June 4 was a good starting point for public discussion on the tremendous shortage of housing, cities' legal requirements for affordable housing, what residents tell us they want and the ocean that separates all of the above. People constantly tell elected officials that it is more important to follow the "intent" of Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR)) or Measure A than what those initiatives actually mandate.

The price of power Re "Activists feeling burned," April 6 Southern California has many large, empty rooftops that could easily support a sea of solar panels. Exploitation of this vast resource, which is already connected to the grid, should be a top regional priority. Unfortunately, the decision-makers at our utilities prefer to stick with an outmoded business model that relies on corporate point-source energy production, in which solar power plants are substituted for coal-fired ones.

Los Angeles officials are close to completing a deal that would relocate a metal finishing company that has long been the bane of a poor neighborhood -- the final piece of an ambitious quarter-billion-dollar plan to bring affordable housing to a pocket of South L.A. The company, Palace Plating, has become symbolic of the enduring troubles that followed South L.A.'s slapdash development. Opened in 1941, it's the type of factory that drew thousands of working-class families to the city during the boom years of World War II. Yet it was wedged onto a narrow street next to homes and across from 28th Street School, which soon became one of the largest elementary campuses in the nation.

A plan to reward real estate developers who put affordable housing in their market-rate residential projects was approved Wednesday by the City Council. On an 11-4 vote, the council approved a package of incentives that roll back zoning rules governing height, density, open space or the number of parking spaces for residential projects that have at least 5% of their housing units designated as affordable. -- -- David Zahniser

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday killed a plan to convert an affordable-housing complex in Venice into a project consisting mostly of upscale condominiums. The council voted unanimously to oppose the redevelopment request of TransAction Cos. Ltd., the owner of Lincoln Place, one of the largest affordable-housing complexes on the Westside. The decision came as good news to tenants who fought the proposal. "We're flying a little bit high right now," said Ingrid Mueller.

The din of construction is missing from the eastern edge of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where workers had hoped to break ground on a 70-unit affordable-housing complex months ago. No nail guns are firing. No hard hat-wearing workers are milling about. And it's not the only would-be construction site that's silent. Plans to build more than 16,000 housing units in California, many of them for low-income residents, have been frozen in bureaucratic limbo since July. Voters approved funding four years ago. Last summer, state officials chose the 121 projects they want to build.

Increasing the amount of affordable housing in Irvine is possible only if city officials are willing to give developers concessions that reduce the costs of construction, a consultant told City Council members Tuesday afternoon. Only with incentives--such as increasing the density of apartments, waiving fees for parks and requiring fewer parking spaces--can developers afford to build the lower-priced housing that Irvine officials say they want, consultant Claude Gruen said. "All we're saying is that mandating affordable housing is not free," said Gruen, who is president of a San Francisco economic and sociological research firm.

The recent craze for converting apartment buildings to condominiums, which is drawing political heat in Los Angeles and elsewhere, may be slowed by market forces before City Hall has a chance to act. One possible indication of a coming slump was the number of people willing to pay $1,800 for investment advice on the topic.

A Denny's coffee shop in Santa Monica has been sold for $11.25 million to a prominent developer known for building apartments in dense urban neighborhoods. The property at the northwest corner of Colorado Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard had an assessed value of less than $1.5 million, but it lies near the planned terminus of a Metro Rail train line expected to connect Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles by 2016 and is in a new mixed-use pedestrian district identified by the city.

Last week, one of the country's oldest and largest public economic development programs came to an inglorious end when the governor and Legislature pulled the plug on California's 400 redevelopment agencies. So why did the governor and lawmakers end the state's only real community revitalization program, especially at a time when there is such great need for jobs and affordable housing? The biggest reason was the desire of local governments and the state to use the programs' resources - about $6 billion a year statewide - to fill budget holes.

What does it take to make people more physically active? Maybe just a sign. Signs posted in buildings prompting people to take the stairs instead of the elevators proved successful in getting them to hoof it, a study finds. Signs were placed in three multi-story buildings in New York: a three-story health clinic, an eight-story academic site and a 10-story affordable housing building. The signs featured a pictogram of a man walking up stairs with text that read, "Burn calories, not electricity.

It almost seemed as though oil drilling rigs were ready to tap into Los Angeles' first petroleum field again. But the workers setting up a pair of derricks south of Echo Park last week were plugging some of the city's oldest wells — not drilling new ones. The sealing of the long-abandoned wells by Allenco Energy to make way for a 45-unit affordable housing project marks the end of an era for the Los Angeles City Oil Field, which sparked Southern California's oil boom 120 years ago. The city's first commercially successful oil well was drilled about 350 feet away, at the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Rockwood Street.

Days after the California Supreme Court moved to shut down about 400 municipal redevelopment agencies, local officials are scrambling to convince the same Legislature that abolished the agencies to resurrect some of their spending powers. Some local officials predict that if the Legislature doesn't act within the next month, there will be a flurry of lawsuits, as well as layoffs and further economic stagnation. The court's decision could affect everything from police services in Oakland to a planned walkway to the ocean in Santa Monica.

What financially strapped homeowner wouldn't want to join other troubled owners in a last-ditch effort to save their homes from foreclosure? But beware of unsolicited mailings inviting your participation in a "mass joinder" lawsuit as a way to do so. Mass joinders can be just another way to separate desperate borrowers from their money — as much as $5,000 or more in upfront fees, according to the St. Louis Better Business Bureau. The bureau warned earlier this year that the mailings are the latest twist in scams that promise to force lenders to modify the loans of borrowers who no longer can afford their house payments or who owe more than their homes are worth.

The building that is likely to be the biggest commercial real estate development started in Los Angeles County this year is not part of a movie studio, aerospace venture or other type of business readily associated with the area. It's all about hot sauce. Huy Fong Foods, best known as the maker of Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce with a rooster depicted on the label, broke ground this week on a 655,000-square-foot, $40-million headquarters and factory in Irwindale. The project will nearly triple the space occupied by Huy Fong, which now operates out of two buildings in Rosemead that it will give up when the new facility is finished.

Ever since Gov. Jerry Brown proposed patching one of the huge holes in California's budget by eliminating community redevelopment agencies, supporters of those agencies and their mission have been scrambling to save them or, failing that, to save the essence of them. That's a worthy campaign, because the redevelopment system, despite its flaws and susceptibility to abuse, does provide a useful tool for revitalizing blighted areas, creating jobs and supplying much-needed support for affordable housing.

As a professional event planner, Allegra Allison has done studio openings, elaborate backyard parties and plush dinner soirees. But it took her eight years to pull off her biggest challenge: the preservation of a last-of-its-kind West Hollywood estate nicknamed "Tara" because of its resemblance to the mansion in "Gone With the Wind. " City Council members this week voted to scrap plans to turn the two-story, Colonial-style home and its wooded grounds into a federally funded, 28-unit apartment complex for low-income senior citizens.

If walls could speak. That's what came to mind when I noticed a short newspaper item announcing that the former home of Ben Margolis, an attorney who advocated on behalf of downtrodden workers, besieged Reds and persecuted labor activists, was for sale. The hillside Los Feliz house, designed by Gregory Ain in the early 1950s, with a 21st century addition by Pierre Koenig, is being offered for just under $2 million. The house Ain built Margolis is likely to sell even in the current slow market: Midcentury modern architecture is in demand at the moment.