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 The Los Angeles Planning Department is in what planner Gabriela Juarez calls an “information-gathering phase” for a proposed city law that would allow auxiliary dwelling units, or “granny flats,” in long-protected neighborhoods and wipe out key rules against parking your car in your yard.
Welcomed by the density hawks but abhorred by others, the emerging plan would directly target the city’s most fiercely protected lands, the single-family home neighborhoods known as R-1 zoning. Employees of the Planning Department have been hearing, loudly, from L.A. residents. People are alarmed that the proposed new allowances could double the population of some of the city’s most attractive neighborhoods, permitting what are essentially duplexes where single-family homes now exist, a possibility complicated further by infrastructure that cannot adequately handle the population invasion. But that’s not true, says City Planner Tom Rothmann, who heads the Codes Studies division. “From what we’ve gathered in our studies, I don’t believe that our single-family neighborhoods are going to be deluged.” Rothmann adds that the Planning Department, run by Planning Director Gail Goldberg, has no particular stake in the outcome. A cause for skepticism over these remarks arises from two underlying realities: First, the city’s fiscal crisis — a $98 million deficit expected to grow to $400 million next year — stands to get some relief from increased property taxes if Los Angeles County reassesses L.A.’s home values after granny flats have been constructed. These backyard rentals could provide a revenue stream not just to property owners but to the county and city coffers through taxes. Second is the Planning Department’s controversial backing two years ago of a city law that allowed developers to construct far bigger apartment complexes than allowed by existing zoning. Goldberg and the Los Angeles City Council, urged on by former Westside Councilman Jack Weiss, among others, insisted that L.A. had no choice but to let developers of apartment complexes ignore local zoning laws, and blamed the rule on a California affordable-housing law called Senate Bill 1818. That turned out to be spin. Like the granny-flat idea, SB 1818 was ostensibly designed to increase the stock of affordable housing. (READ THE FULL STORY, HERE.)
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