TIL that LA owns 12 golf courses? That's a lot of land.

Is this a poison pill for LA's proposed Low Rise program (5-16 unit, 3-4 story buildings)? Parking has to be either underground or behind the building. Most of the lots where Low Rise applies are small, 5-6k sq ft. Feels like only zero-parking projects would work using this program - not great!

Is this a poison pill for LA's proposed Low Rise program (5-16 unit, 3-4 story buildings)? Parking has to be either underground or behind the building. Most of the lots where Low Rise applies are small, 5-6k sq ft. Feels like only zero-parking projects would work using this program - not great!

Staggering how much LA has let its infrastructure languish. This year departments got *half a billion dollars* less than they requested for infra projects. The number of projects requested keeps going up, and the number of projects funded is going down. h/t @jawshv.bsky.social

Update! The map now shows what's being upzoned to 16 units (red) and what to only 10 (orange). In the LA Basin 61% of parcels are red, mostly thanks to rail lines that don't exist yet - Sepulveda, D Line to Westwood, and K Line North.

Is that...all there is? Here's a map of all the places (red) that are set to be upzoned to 3-4 stories in LA next month in response to SB 79. Less than 30,000 lots, mostly in the Valley. (We'll get more upzoning in 5 years.) Join me for a quick tour... hellomynameisoren.github.io/SB-79-in-upz...

Front yards are actively bad - useless as a private recreational space, and make the area less walkable by reducing shade and (usually) visual interest.

Just got confirmation that this was in fact a sloppy mistake and will be corrected in the final ordinance.

Like potholes? Last year LA stopped repaving streets. In new research the Data/Dev team finds by 2036 under the City's current approach a majority of LA streets will be failed and we will have more than $15 billion in outstanding street maintenance. https://data.streetsforall.org/blog/repaving/

This is just one of several bizarre edits to the up-to-now useless Corridor Transitions program that the city is proposing to make the program generate housing in SB 79 transit zones. The changes feel hastily written and kind of nonsensical. A quick 🧵:

SB 9 is taking off in LA the way ADUs did 7 years before.

A huge percentage of the CHIP projects submitted so far have been on "Lower Income Rezoning Sites", which, due to state law, have by-right approval, including with unlimited waivers. There's a lesson in there for the city, if they choose to pay attention to it.

Love to see Nithya mention shared housing as a way to get unhoused people indoors. I wrote last year about a great kind of brand new shared housing - double duplexes - that LAHSA has used to bring hundreds off the streets. But of course city leaders hate these buildings and have tried to kill them.

Great to see Janice Hahn advocating for more Metro riders on the Metro board. It's currently almost entirely comprised of politicians.

This project is a headscratcher because they designed it to the specs of the (never before used) Corridor Transition program but then applied under the TOIA program, which has stricter affordability requirements. 🤷

UNACCEPTABLE

Great explainer, thanks. I was curious what the age composition was of those for and against delayed implementation and it stacks up how you'd expect.

The expansion of development incentives was the least aggressive of three options the Council considered

🚨🚨🚨Gov. Newsom threatens to withhold homeless funding from LA over SB 79 implementation: "I cannot in good conscience provide any additional resources…if you have cities like LA who are violating state law - SB 79. I mean, you don’t build, we’re not going to fund. Period."

LA adopted an SB79 implementation plan that maybe could possibly end up being pretty historic or also potentially might be a total nothingburger that delays the law for years. It all depends on whether the city can take the currently useless Corridor Transition program and make it work. My write-up:

Here’s what happened today with SB79 at LA City Council TLDR: The result was pretty bad, but it might be possible to make lemonade out of this.

I'm hearing Katy Yaroslavsky is whipping votes for a plan even more minimal/fake than Option 1 - it would completely exempt the *entire city* from SB 79 for the next 5 years while generating no new homes. Contact your councilmember today to urge them to support Options 2 or 3. Link in thread below.

LA peeps, on Tuesday we have the best opportunity in generations to end single-family zoning in the city! City Council is considering upzoning around transit stops in response to SB 79, and for the first time there might actually be a majority to pass it. But the plan has an evil twin!

50 times as many NIMBYs have written letters to urge the council to adopt the worst SB 79 option than YIMBYs have written to support the good options. IF YOU LIVE IN LA... SPEND 2 MINUTES AND DO THIS RIGHT NOW

LA peeps, on Tuesday we have the best opportunity in generations to end single-family zoning in the city! City Council is considering upzoning around transit stops in response to SB 79, and for the first time there might actually be a majority to pass it. But the plan has an evil twin!

More shenanigans by LA Metro Board, as Karen Bass threatens to kill the K Line through Mid-City, West Hollywood, and Hollywood - what would be the highest ridership light rail line in the country. All due to NIMBY misinformation so unhinged they sound like anti-vax yoga moms who watch Newsmax.

We now have three years of post-ULA permitting data to compare to pre-ULA, and...it's not good. Average annual building permits issued in LA City have fallen by 1/3 since the measure passed. If you think this is due to macro factors, look at the rest of the county and state - doing mostly fine.

The trend shift in adults per family household is so insane. its even more insane that every important policymaker and economist thought we were slowly soaking up a glut of homes even into the 2010s. And it’s even more insane that there are still supply-crisis skeptics today.

👀

Incredibly deeply reported history by @maylin.bsky.social of LA's failure to build curb ramps for decades. Her discussion of the Willits settlement makes me wonder if the city stopped repaving in response to developments in that case (which has been in mediation in recent years).

LA keeps saying it's fixing its housing shortage. Oren Hadar got the real numbers and asks whether the City Council will use this moment on SB 79 to finally do something real, or just do the minimum to delay another four years. Full breakdown in his thread. Highly recommend reading.

👀 The insane correlation in LA between how long it takes to build an apartment building and how wealthy the neighborhood is. Left is from Soltas' paper, right is the Planning Dept.'s neighborhood map. Maybe we should make it easier to build in rich neighborhoods!

Update: the Planning Dept. told me they listed a 500+ unit TOIA project by mistake, and I found a duplicate (also TOIA). The correct total homes proposed in CHIP's first year: 99 projects, 8,835 units. Total TOIA: 2,286 units, or less than a quarter of what was proposed in TOC's first year.

Here's a map of the (paltry) 101 CHIP projects proposed in LA in the program's first year. See thread below for my analysis.

Happy first birthday to CHIP, LA's big housing plan to spur homebuilding and help us meet state housing targets. How was baby's first year? I got a list of all the projects submitted so far, and it's...underwhelming at best. A 🧵, including how this could affect SB 79 implementation:

"Public comment" was always hackable, first by NIMBYs, then by astroturf groups funded by big corporations, and now by AI. All along the way it has made our government less representative and more captured by special interests who favor the status quo. It causes more harm than good. Let's ditch it.

LA City Council: serving hyper local special interests over the greater good since 1850

Perfect framing of how LA’s political elite view things: elections aren’t for giving voters an opportunity to choose on the future of their city, county, or district; they’re for rewarding loyalty to the establishment machine. www.latimes.com/california/s...

When they say "millions" here, they mean over $100M! Together these awards totaled to: Wilmington Safe Streets: $32M Skid Row Connectivity Project: $39M Boyle Heights Connectivity Project: $32M (it's notable that the motion omits the embarrassing total)

A horrible, horrible reminder of what's at stake when we fight for pedestrian safety. God bless and keep this family.

In 2017, the city rolled back planned safety improvements that were being implemented *because people were getting killed,* including *on Pershing!* But drivers wanted to drive fast, so now they do, and occasionally they kill someone and her unborn baby, leaving two kids without a mom.

This isn't some bolt from the blue tragedy like pancreatic cancer. This is a man-made tragedy. And one where the blame is *extremely* easy to assign. The decision that led to this mom's death happened while I was in graduate school in LA.

This family's blood is on the hands of the LA City Council and former Mayor Eric Garcetti. There's just no other way to put it.

A family completely wrecked by our politicians' lack of a backbone to stand up for real safety and protect human lives. Transportation improvements are often matters of life and death. When the City of LA reversed these improvements, they collectively decided it was OK for people to die.

Near a beach by LAX 9 years ago, fatal crashes led city officials to carry out a road diet — with protected lanes for cyclists to make it harder to mow them down. Residents went so apes*t that then-mayor Eric Garcetti ordered the bike lanes ripped back out. You'll never guess what happened next.

I remember this when I was still a teen in LA. Undoing infrastructure that is meant to reduce speeding and address traffic violence makes no sense at all.

Tragedy in Playa Del Rey, as a 7-months-pregnant mother was killed by a driver while biking with her family. The baby was delivered by C-section but died in the NICU. The crash took place on Pershing Ave., where safety measures were removed in 2017 after NIMBY backlash. Donate here:

New buildings in LA suck because the city forces them to suck

My 5th grader's LAUSD teacher commutes from Ventura County to Mid-City LA. The magnet coordinator drives in from San Dimas. Both are well paid yet have to commute 40-50 miles. The school has tons of unused open space that could be converted to housing. LAUSD could do this if it had the willpower.