Affordable Housing

In his quest to balance the city's books, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is gearing up to sell city-owned properties in some of the Westside's most sought-after neighborhoods. But Villaraigosa's budget-saving strategy is running up against one of his biggest campaign pledges: to expand affordable housing.

If home prices are plunging, then why are rents going up? That's a question Lynn Washington wants answered. The lease on his Marina del Rey apartment is expiring, and he can't find anything to rent for his budget of $1,000 a month. "It boggles the mind," said Washington, 59, who works as a liaison for international students at Santa Monica College. "I don't make enough to buy. And yet I don't make enough to afford to rent. I'm caught between the two."

If there were a silver lining in the high foreclosure rate caused by the sub-prime mess, perhaps it might be that these now-vacant homes could be sold as affordable housing. ("Realtors group finds a silver lining," Feb. 20.) Just as communities require developers to set aside many new units to be sold as below-market housing, so also should communities require banks that foreclose [on properties] to sell the homes at below-market prices with a special emphasis on providing homes to public servants such as teachers, police and firefighters.

A four-mile stretch of the southeast San Fernando Valley has emerged as one of the premier battlegrounds in the fight over urbanization that has roiled neighborhoods across Los Angeles in a manner reminiscent of the growth wars of the mid-1980s. Developers' plans for the area, which stretches from Universal City to the upper reaches of North Hollywood, include roughly 5,500 new residences and millions of square feet of commercial and office space.

Re "L.A. stops 5,553-unit home plan," March 20 No member of the Los Angeles City Council who voted to stop the 5,553-unit Las Lomas development should dare make a statement lamenting the lack of affordable housing in Los Angeles, where the median price hovers around $500,000. Restricting the supply of homes while the long-term demand from an ever-growing population will continue to rise simply guarantees that prices will remain beyond the reach of those not currently in the market.

A Los Angeles resident has sued the city to block it from implementing a new law that would roll back zoning rules for projects that have at least a few units of affordable housing. Sandy Hubbard filed a lawsuit last week arguing that the City Council should have completed an environmental review of the law before approving it last month. The lawsuit's arguments closely mirrored those made by Planning Commission President Jane Ellison Usher in an e-mail sent last month to neighborhood activists saying the law was vulnerable to legal challenge.

Lawmakers returned to Washington this week determined to address the home-loan fiasco that has dragged down the economy. The Senate quickly fashioned a bipartisan, $14.9-billion package of tax breaks and grants aimed largely at home builders and buyers. These moves might help boost some segments of the housing market, but they won't do much about the problem most in need of a federal response: the growing ranks of defaulting borrowers and repossessed homes.

The debate about the availability of housing in Los Angeles and the city's development policies has been testy but long overdue. Fueling public outrage over growth policies that would significantly increase density are well-grounded fears that, in the clash between overdevelopment and neighborhood preservation, the developers will prevail.

A second lawsuit has been filed over a recently passed city ordinance that allows new buildings to be larger and more dense if they have some affordable housing. Environment and Housing Coalition Los Angeles, a collection of civic groups and homeowner associations, argued that the City Council did not provide enough environmental analysis of the new planning law, which rewards developers for making as little as 5% of their residential projects affordable. One San Fernando Valley activist filed a separate lawsuit last week.

An Irvine planning commissioner and a retired police officer sued the city this week, challenging a closed-door "settlement agreement" with a high-rise developer as questions have arisen about the builder's support of City Council members who approved it. The Irvine City Council in January approved the agreement to resolve a dispute with Maguire Properties, a Los Angeles real estate developer known for the 72-story US Bank Tower downtown.