By Maria Patino Gutierrez, Director of Policy and Research, Equitable Development and Land Use
September 20, 2024
****Join us this Thursday, Sep 26 at 8am and tell the City Planning Commission to meet LA’s most pressing needs for affordable and healthy housing without displacement! You can find a toolkit for public comment here.****
On Tuesday, September 17, the Los Angeles City Planning Department released their third draft of the Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and Resident Protection Ordinance. The new draft incorporates some of our recommendations, which we’ve been developing in collaboration with SAJE members and community over the past three years.
The CHIP was created to address Los Angeles’ housing affordability crisis by making it easier to build more housing throughout the city. In particular, it amends the Los Angeles Municipal Code to streamline the construction of affordable housing near bus and train stops and in neighborhoods with strong economic resources.
This is great—Los Angeles needs to build more affordable housing! But we want to make sure the CHIP alters the city’s zoning laws in ways that are equitable and do not unintentionally lead to the displacement of existing communities. Displacement can happen when existing rental units are demolished to make way for new housing, or when neighborhoods begin to gentrify because they suddenly have resources to attract new residents.
Fortunately, this latest draft of the CHIP has some promising changes. Here is where we are:
A Stronger Resident Protections Ordinance
The Planning Department has made some good updates to the Resident Protection Ordinance, including:
- Adding a Private Right of Action for tenants who face harassment or illegal eviction from developers
- Creating a process for tracking and punishing chronic bad-actor landlords and developers
- Establishing a regulated notification process to ensure tenants are informed of their rights when they face displacement because of new construction. This includes informing them of their right to return to their unit at a similar rental rate after construction is complete; the right to relocation fees if they cannot return; and the right to remain in their unit if the development does not proceed as planned.
Better Incentives for Acutely-Low Income Housing
This new CHIP draft includes important revisions to the CHIP to include a higher percentage of incentives for developers who build Acutely Low-Income units for households at 15% or less of Area Median Income (AMI). This is a good start, but we would still like to see deeper affordability levels across the whole city.
The Transit Oriented Incentive program, which incentivizes affordable housing development near public transit, has created thousands of units affordable to households at 30% AMI and above. But these units are still out of reach to many—nearly a third of Los Angeles renters earn incomes at or below 30% AMI.
Option to Expand the CHIP Into Single-Family Zones
SAJE and our allies at ACT LA have been asking the city to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing and by ensuring historically exclusionary policies such as redlining are remediated. We want the Planning Department to include incentives for developers to build affordable housing in Single-Family Zones in High Resource areas.
It is disappointing the updated CHIP does not include language on Single-Family Zones. However, in an appendix, the Planning Department outlines various options the Planning Commission could act on, including an option to “expand eligibility for the CHIP Ordinance to interior neighborhoods across the Higher Opportunity through the Corridor Transition Areas program, primarily in areas of Mid-City, West LA, and the South Valley and Northwest Valley.”
We are asking the City Planning Commission to adopt this option (Option 1) into the CHIP.
SAJE members and allies will be attending the Los Angeles City Planning Commission on Thursday, September 26, to advocate for these changes to the CHIP. If you want to get involved, please reach out to info@saje.net.
