breakdowns
For full reference list, click References
We have a Right to Return to the new units that are proposed to be built, but need to pay Market-Rate for years during construction. Landlords aren't required to pay for interim housing for their tenants. We have a Right to Return to an equal "bedroom type" but not equal size, we can't keep our Rent-Stabilization rights, and can't return at our current rent rate. We return to whatever the city deems "affordable" the year we move back.
LA Housing Department - Senate Bill 8 RUD information, page 2
9/14/2022
Page received by tenants in a relocation assistance packet
Replacement of Protected Units Subject to the Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO), Last Occupied by Persons or Families at Moderate Income or Above
The City has the option to require that the Project provide: (1) replacement units affordable to low income households for a period of 55 years (rental units subject to a recorded covenant), OR (2) require the units to be replaced in compliance with the RSO.
Relocation, Right to Return, Right to Remain:
Any existing occupants displaced by the Project have the right to remain in their units until six (6) months before the start of construction activities with proper notice subject to Chapter 16 (Relocation Assistance) of Division 7, Title 1 of the California Government Code ("Chapter 16"). However, existing occupants of Protected Units that are Lower Income Households (as defined in California Health and Safety Code Section 50079.5) are also entitled to: (a) Relocation benefits subject to Chapter 16 (commencing with Section 7260), and (b) the right of first refusal ("Right to Return") to a comparable unit (same bedroom type) at the completed Project. If at the same time of lease up or sale (if applicable) of a comparable unit, a returning occupant remains income eligible for an "affordable rent" (as defined in California Health and Safety Code section 50053) or if for sale, an "affordable housing cost" (as defined in California Health and Safety Code section 50052.5), owner must also provide the comparable unit at the "affordable rent" or "affordable housing cost", as applicable. This provision does not apply to: (1) a Project that consists of a Single Family Dwelling Unit on a site where a single Family Dwelling unit is demolished, and (2) a Project that consists of 100% lower income units except Manager's Unit.
UNHOUSED INCOME
Most unhoused people don't make $70,000 a year.
New study says high housing costs, low income push Californians into homelessness
AP NEWS, BY JANIE HAR, JUNE 20, 2023
"Homeless people in California are already a vulnerable group, often struggling with poor health, trauma and deep poverty before they lose their housing, according to a new study on adult homelessness.
The study released Tuesday by the University of California, San Francisco attempts to capture a comprehensive picture of how people become homeless in California, and what impeded their efforts at finding permanent housing. The representative survey of nearly 3,200 homeless people found that when they lost housing, their median household income was $960 a month, and for renters on leases it was $1,400 a month, of which on average half went to rent."
$960 per month is $11,520 per year
$1,400 per month is $16,800 per yer
Neither amount close to $70,000
COUNCIL DISTRICT INCOME
Many housed Los Angeles constituents also don't make $70,000 a year. Of the 15 council districts in LA, only 3 have median household incomes greater than $70,000 according to the 2020 LA Census.
Median household incomes by Council District according to LA Census 2020
Only 3 Council Districts have median household incomes that are not considered low income, meaning they earn more than $70,760:
Council District 15 $49,571
Council District 14 $40,300
Council District 13 $36,342
Council District 12 $81,750
Council District 11 $85,022
Council District 10 $36,506
Council District 09 $29,561
Council District 08 $32,283
Council District 07 $58,066
Council District 06 $46,767
Council District 05 $80,723
Council District 04 $69,364
Council District 03 $67,639
Council District 02 $50,070
Council District 01 $32,375
COUNCIL DISTRICT 13
The average yearly income for people in Council District 13 is $36,342.
LA Census 2020
Scroll to page 28:
CREDIT SCORE
Many LA landlords only take applications from people who make three times the rent or have high credit scores.
As Landlords Intensify Tenant Background Checks, Some Lawmakers Want New Limits On Screening
LAIST, BY DAVID WAGNER, MAY 2, 2022
"It’s now common for L.A. landlords to demand that applicants show months of paystubs verifying high incomes, proof of timely rent payments during the pandemic and excellent credit scores... ONLY THOSE WITH STELLAR CREDIT NEED APPLY A recent listing for a two-bedroom apartment in Glendale started by highlighting the unit’s perks: stainless steel appliances, gated parking and proximity to the Americana at Brand mall...Then, in all capital letters, the ad listed the requirements for new tenants:
- All applicants had to show monthly income of at least three times the $2,195 rent.
- They had to prove they reliably paid rent at their previous address.
- And they needed an excellent credit score — 750 or higher.
NOT PUBLIC HOUSING
But ED1 units aren't subsidized public housing. ED1 buildings are privately owned.
Los Angeles' One Weird Trick to Build Affordable Housing at No Public Cost
CALMATTERS.ORG, BY BEN CHRISTOPHER, FEB 7, 2024
"The seven-story apartment building planned for West Court Street on the south side of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood doesn’t make sense, not if you know anything about affordable housing in California.
All 190 of the proposed units will be reserved for people making under $100,000, which in Los Angeles makes this an “affordable housing” project.
But unlike the vast majority of affordable developments that have been proposed in California in recent memory, no taxpayer dollars are allotted to build the thing. Especially in the state’s expensive coastal cities, the term 'unsubsidized 100% affordable project' is an oxymoron, but Los Angeles is now approving them by the hundreds."
"To qualify as a 100% affordable housing project under the city of Los Angeles’ streamlined treatment, a studio can go for roughly $1,800. Compare that to a traditional publicly subsidized project which could charge as little at $650 for the same unit."
VOUCHERS
ED1 buildings can accept Section 8 Vouchers, but the program is voluntary for landlords to participate in.
LA's Section 8 Housing Program Plagued by Unused Vouchers, Landlord Rejections
ABC NEWS 7, BY ROB HAYES AND GRACE MANTHEY, MAY 15, 2023
Officials for the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) say the biggest problem they run into is a lack of landlords who will accept Section 8 residents.
"It is very challenging and tough for our tenants to connect with a landlord and find a unit," explained Carlos Van Natter, the director of Section 8 at HACLA. "The landlord is not required to accept a Section 8 voucher holder."
"You have to find a rental unit at or below the Fair Market Rent. The landlord very importantly has to, you know, agree to participate in the program, which means that they don’t have biases against people that are using government money…" explained Professor Michael Lens, from UCLA's School of Urban Planning and Public Policy. "So there are these things that get in the way."
Low income housing experts will tell you- it is illegal in the state of California for a landlord to turn down potential tenants because they want to use Section 8 vouchers. But those same experts will tell you- it happens a lot.
"There's just not enough protections that are out there, so many landlords continue to just say, 'No Section 8' blatantly," said Manuel Villagomez, an attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
Villagomez says even though California and Los Angeles laws prohibit landlords from turning away potential tenants because they have Section 8 funding, they still find other ways of doing it.
"Credit checks, deposits, application fees, holding deposits that are being collected now... There are these issues that people in the Section 8 program aren't able to meet," he said.
LOTTERY
An unhoused person has to win a lottery to get on a voucher waitlist, then they can stay on the waitlist for years.
Reporter Rob Hayes in the video:
"Section 8 can be more of a Catch 22. To get a Section 8 voucher, you literally have to win a lottery just to move forward in the program. The last time the city opened up a Section 8 voucher list, more than 200,000 people applied. Now, if you’re one of the lucky thirty-or-so-thousand (30,000) picked, you get moved to a waiting list. And after potentially years of waiting, you can end up with a section 8 voucher to finally get you into a home. But, here in Los Angeles, a study found that less than half of those who got vouchers were able to find a lease before the vouchers expired.”
"We have a couple of thousand vouchers that people could use, but we need landlords to be willing to take those vouchers," [Mayor Karen] Bass told Eyewitness News.
But there are considerably more than a "couple thousand vouchers." According to the latest federal data, Los Angeles had roughly 9,000 Section 8 vouchers that went unused last year.
(Video shares graphic of HUD 2022 Data)
Number of HUD-funded HACLA Vacancies by Program Type:
8.8K Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8)
vs 255 Public Housing
Click the area within the frame to start video:
EMERGENCY VOUCHERS
As of June 26, 2024, of the 3,285 Emergency Housing Vouchers received by the City of Los Angeles (additional vouchers in excess of the regular Housing Choice Vouchers), only 164 are being used.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
June 26, 2024
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Line 4:
ATC Research
DOWNLOADED JUNE 18, 2024
Hover over the image and scroll down for more info.
The section beginning with "94% of the units are designated for Low or Moderate Income Households" describes what affordable means in an ED1 project.
DOWNLOADED JUNE 18, 2024
Hover over the image and scroll down for more info.
The section beginning with "94% of the units are designated for Low or Moderate Income Households" describes what affordable means in an ED1 project.
ED1 = FOR DEVELOPERS, NOT THE UNHOUSED
Environmental Reviews Are Holding Up New Affordable Housing In LA, Despite Mayor's Promise
By David Wagner, Published Jan 22, 2024
"Standing in a dirt parcel where two single-family homes were recently torn down to make way for the 44-unit project, Scheibe said, 'We would not have acquired this lot if it wasn't for ED1.'"
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-ed1-mayor-karen-bass-executive-directive-affordable-housing-city-ceqa-appeals-environmental-review-sawtelle
Los Angeles' One Weird Trick to Build Affordable Housing at No Public Cost
by Ben Christopher, Feb 7, 2024
A ‘monumental shift’ in affordable housing policy Andrew Slocum and Terry Harris, the developer pair behind the seven-story project on West Court Street, represent the type of developer suddenly wading into Los Angeles’ affordable housing market. They aren’t leading nonprofits or charities. They don’t run websites with feel-good mission statements. Both come from the proudly profit-seeking world of “luxury” housing development.
“We are mission driven in the sense that we want to provide housing,” said Slocum. But he’s pursuing this affordable project, along with two others, because it “made more financial sense.”
Harris, a former college basketball player pursuing a post-athletic career in Southern California real estate, put it more bluntly.
“I’m just trying to be as greedy as possible,” he said.
Though publicly available data on financing is sparse, an early analysis of the program by the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA estimated that roughly three-fourths of affordable units proposed through the policy are doing so without any public money. In some cases, developers, including Harris, are opting to scrap proposed “luxury” apartment projects entirely, re-submitting those plans as 100% affordable.
It’s hard to overstate just how weird all of this is.
“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” said Scott Epstein, policy director at Abundant Housing LA and one of the authors of that analysis. “When it comes to 100% privately invested projects…I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything close to the magnitude that that has been unleashed.”
"...And while Bass’ order and the state’s density bonus laws are pulling privately funded developers into the suddenly profitable world of affordable housing development, other economic forces are pushing them out of the high-end luxury market: High interest rates have made waiting around on municipal approvals that may never come an especially costly proposition. Los Angeles’ recently enacted tax on multimillion-dollar real estate transactions, the so-called mansion tax, has also slowed the fancy apartment building business, said Ligety. As a result, he said, “market rate developers are discovering affordable housing for the first time.”
“This is clearly a monumental shift in how affordable housing is developed in the state,” said Mahdi Manji, policy director at Inner City Law Center, a legal service provider and affordable housing advocacy group in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. “We just haven’t seen this before.”
Though his organization principally advocates for unhoused Angelenos, Manji said he supports the policy, even if units being proposed are “not housing for homeless folks.”
Click the article to read more, the section titled: Building affordable housing in two steps
By David Wagner, Published Jan 22, 2024
"Standing in a dirt parcel where two single-family homes were recently torn down to make way for the 44-unit project, Scheibe said, 'We would not have acquired this lot if it wasn't for ED1.'"
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-ed1-mayor-karen-bass-executive-directive-affordable-housing-city-ceqa-appeals-environmental-review-sawtelle
Los Angeles' One Weird Trick to Build Affordable Housing at No Public Cost
by Ben Christopher, Feb 7, 2024
A ‘monumental shift’ in affordable housing policy Andrew Slocum and Terry Harris, the developer pair behind the seven-story project on West Court Street, represent the type of developer suddenly wading into Los Angeles’ affordable housing market. They aren’t leading nonprofits or charities. They don’t run websites with feel-good mission statements. Both come from the proudly profit-seeking world of “luxury” housing development.
“We are mission driven in the sense that we want to provide housing,” said Slocum. But he’s pursuing this affordable project, along with two others, because it “made more financial sense.”
Harris, a former college basketball player pursuing a post-athletic career in Southern California real estate, put it more bluntly.
“I’m just trying to be as greedy as possible,” he said.
Though publicly available data on financing is sparse, an early analysis of the program by the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA estimated that roughly three-fourths of affordable units proposed through the policy are doing so without any public money. In some cases, developers, including Harris, are opting to scrap proposed “luxury” apartment projects entirely, re-submitting those plans as 100% affordable.
It’s hard to overstate just how weird all of this is.
“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” said Scott Epstein, policy director at Abundant Housing LA and one of the authors of that analysis. “When it comes to 100% privately invested projects…I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything close to the magnitude that that has been unleashed.”
"...And while Bass’ order and the state’s density bonus laws are pulling privately funded developers into the suddenly profitable world of affordable housing development, other economic forces are pushing them out of the high-end luxury market: High interest rates have made waiting around on municipal approvals that may never come an especially costly proposition. Los Angeles’ recently enacted tax on multimillion-dollar real estate transactions, the so-called mansion tax, has also slowed the fancy apartment building business, said Ligety. As a result, he said, “market rate developers are discovering affordable housing for the first time.”
“This is clearly a monumental shift in how affordable housing is developed in the state,” said Mahdi Manji, policy director at Inner City Law Center, a legal service provider and affordable housing advocacy group in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. “We just haven’t seen this before.”
Though his organization principally advocates for unhoused Angelenos, Manji said he supports the policy, even if units being proposed are “not housing for homeless folks.”
Click the article to read more, the section titled: Building affordable housing in two steps
TYPES OF HOUSING
Housing Elements 2021-2029
BY LA CITY PLANNING DEPT & LA HOUSING + COMMUNITY INVESTMENT DEPT
BY LA CITY PLANNING DEPT & LA HOUSING + COMMUNITY INVESTMENT DEPT
RENT BURDEN
NO PREVAILING WAGES
Los Angeles' One Weird Trick to Build Affordable Housing at No Public Cost
by Ben Christopher, Feb 7, 2024
Another key detail: Unlike most recent statewide laws aimed at speeding up the approval of new housing, the Los Angeles law doesn’t require developers to pay construction workers heightened “prevailing wages” — roughly equal to what unionized construction workers earn on a public infrastructure projects. Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said that makes Executive Directive 1 a kind of alternate reality for housing policy in California.
“It shows what is the minimum that could be built in California, without (environmental review) and prevailing wage, like a real world example of that,” he said. “I don’t think any other big city in the country has taken this sort of initiative to build housing.”
Then comes the next step. Most so-called “ED1 projects” also make use of a hodgepodge of statewide “density bonus” laws that allow developers of 100% affordable housing projects to pack far more units and floors onto a given lot than would otherwise be allowed under local zoning rules. These laws also let affordable developers pick and choose from a wide range of goodies and freebies that cut costs further and allow for yet denser development. That means no parking spots, limited open space, smaller rooms and fewer trees.
by Ben Christopher, Feb 7, 2024
Another key detail: Unlike most recent statewide laws aimed at speeding up the approval of new housing, the Los Angeles law doesn’t require developers to pay construction workers heightened “prevailing wages” — roughly equal to what unionized construction workers earn on a public infrastructure projects. Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said that makes Executive Directive 1 a kind of alternate reality for housing policy in California.
“It shows what is the minimum that could be built in California, without (environmental review) and prevailing wage, like a real world example of that,” he said. “I don’t think any other big city in the country has taken this sort of initiative to build housing.”
Then comes the next step. Most so-called “ED1 projects” also make use of a hodgepodge of statewide “density bonus” laws that allow developers of 100% affordable housing projects to pack far more units and floors onto a given lot than would otherwise be allowed under local zoning rules. These laws also let affordable developers pick and choose from a wide range of goodies and freebies that cut costs further and allow for yet denser development. That means no parking spots, limited open space, smaller rooms and fewer trees.