Ultimately what’s driving LA’s push to up-zone more land parcels to create more housing units in the future?
The State of California has a process by which it calculates future housing needs in specific areas around the state. The Regional Housing Allocations process (referred to by its nickname RHEE-nah) started in 1969 and continues today, assigning the City of Los Angeles a target # of housing units it must zone for.
(Keep in mind, changing parcel zoning doesn’t guarantee new housing units will be built. It simply makes it legal for a land-owner to do so, if they choose.)
Up-Zoning happening now needs to generate how many housing units?
Long story short, here are the numbers:
Bottomline: LA needs to up-zone enough land so roughly 255K new housing units can be built, should developers wish to activate new builds and/or adaptive reuse of semi-vacant commercial properties.
And how will LA deliver new up-zoning to generate this much housing?
All of the Community Plan Updates under development and approved by the City Council between (roughly) 2021 and 2027 will contribute some portion of the land required to fulfill the 255K target for new housing units. (Venice, Mar Vista-Palms-Del Rey, West LA and Westchester-Playa are all contributors to the housing commitment from Planning the Westside.)
What is Westchester-Playa’s target for the # of housing units we need to deliver?
City Planning has repeatedly declined to give Westchester-Playa (or any Plan area community) a target for how many units we need to contribute to LA’s 255K new housing units target.
It’s not clear if Planning does actually have a # or %-contribution for each of the four Westside Planning areas, and they’re just not saying. Or if the big target has not been sub-divided down to the individual Community Plan Update area.
Either way, we simply don’t know what Westchester-Playa up-zoning is expected to contribute to the larger project. Bute we do know Westchester-Playa not only needs to be part of the solution, we can and should make more housing possible here.
