An LA County forecast sees 1 million more people. But is there enough housing?
An LA County forecast sees 1 million more people. But is there enough housing?
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Political and business leaders say a population-growth forecast for Los Angeles County shows the need for more housing construction like this in Riverside in June. (File photo)
By KEVIN MODESTI | kmodesti@scng.com | Daily News
PUBLISHED: November 3, 2017 at 6:58 pm | UPDATED: November 3, 2017 at 7:01 pm
A new forecast that Los Angeles County’s population will grow by 1 million people in the next two decades underscores the need to encourage housing construction.
That was the takeaway for many business and government leaders meeting at UCLA on Friday to the release of a preliminary forecast by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG).
“L.A. County’s population will grow from its current level of 10.2 million residents to nearly 11.2 million residents by 2035,” Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of SCAG, said in a news release. “What we cherish the most — our region’s quality of life — is at stake if we cannot build more housing or building and maintain the transportation infrastructure necessary to accommodate this growth.”
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The population growth projection of about 9 percent over the next 18 years is in line with the pace of growth in the past 18 years.
But that presents a “formidable” challenge for policymakers because the county is already behind the needed pace of home construction, said Mary Leslie, president of the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC), in a phone interview.
The forecast, released at the 16th annual Mayoral Housing, Transportation and Jobs Summit, hosted by the LABC on the UCLA campus, was only the latest over recent years to highlight the region’s and state’s housing shortage.
What seemed different this time, Leslie said, was the consensus among summit attendees about how to respond to the shortage, which leads to higher home prices and rents, contributes to homelessness, makes it harder for job-seekers find housing near work, and puts more commuters on the freeways.
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In years past, many expected solutions to come from federal, state and local governments, Leslie said. Now, with federal grants dried up and California’s Community Redevelopment Associations eliminated, there’s general agreement that government must allow house and apartment builders to do their work and increase the housing supply, she said.
Friday’s summit felt like a “victory lap,” Leslie said, after a series of positive steps: voter approval of L.A. County Measure H (homeless services) and Measure M (transportation) and L.A. city Measure HHH (homelessness housing), the California Legislature’s passage of 15 housing bills, including Senate Bill 35, which streamlines cities’ development approval process under some circumstances; Mayor Eric Garcetti’s commitment to the city constructing more than 100,000 new residential units by 2021, and Garcetti’s call for for a new Cityside General Plan and updates in the city’s 35 community plans to revise project size and density limits.
“The momentum is there right now,” Leslie said.
Garcetti told summit attendees that “L.A. is making it easier to finance and build the housing we need.”
But Garcetti would get an argument about that point.
“We’re in the middle of a crisis, and nobody is doing anything to help it,” Stuart Waldman, president of the (San Fernando) Valley Industry and Commerce Association, said in an interview after he read about the SCAG forecast. “They’re making it harder to build.
“Between NIMBYs (“not in my backyard”), and the process of going through [the] Planning [Department], going through the neighborhood councils, going through Building and Safety, going through hearing administrators, and the labor costs because of Measure JJJ, it’s made it unaffordable to build in Los Angeles anymore.”
Waldman added: “I am frustrated that it takes study after study to tell people what common sense should tell them, that the more options you have, the cheaper it will be.”
Leslie said her L.A. business advocacy group has not taken a position for or against the plan in L.A. City Hall to charge developers a “linkage fee” to raise money for affordable-housing projects. Most business groups are against.
At the UCLA conference, keynote speaker Clyde Holland, CEO and chairman of Holland Partner Group, called for the public and private sectors to team up to find ways to reduce developers’ costs.
“Current regulations are actually worsening the crisis by discouraging the production of enough housing to meet the growing demand,” Holland said.
He said cities should increase the amount of pre-approved, “by-right” development, among other steps.
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