BRADLEY RETREATS

Los Angeles Times

November 10, 1991, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part A; Page 1; Column 1; Metro Desk

LENGTH: 1929 words

HEADLINE: BRADLEY RETREATS FROM AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN;

PLANNING: MISCALCULATIONS BY THE MAYOR'S OFFICE TRIGGERED A BACKLASH AMONG

HOMEOWNER GROUPS.

BYLINE: By FRANK CLIFFORD, TIMES URBAN AFFAIRS WRITER

Three months after Mayor Tom Bradley made homeowner groups the villain in

a high-profile drive to build more affordable housing in the city, the

mayor's campaign is in retreat.

The affordable housing strategy, in essence, became a victim of the

Bradley Administration's faulty statistics and overheated rhetoric, which

triggered a potent backlash among homeowner groups citywide. As a result,

what began as a debate over housing policy is threatening to turn into a

bitter dispute over the rights of haves and have-nots.

The debate asks whether Los Angeles can make room for a population that is

expanding by more than 25,000 households a year, many of them poor, while

preserving the single-family neighborhoods and low-density apartment

districts that have been oases for the urban middle-class for generations.

The mayor's original housing strategy would have made it easier to build

apartments in many neighborhoods by relaxing environmental reviews of

proposed buildings, by permitting low-rise apartment complexes in

single-family neighborhoods, and by legalizing the construction of "granny

flats" or extra units next to single-family homes.

However, none of those provisions remain in the revised version of the

plan. After months of controversy, the strategy now is to focus on

building housing near commuter rail lines and other transportation

corridors and on preserving existing affordable housing.

As the latest plan heads for City Council consideration this week, neither

side in the housing debate has much good to say about the way the issue

has been handled. First, city officials exaggerated the shortage of

residentially zoned land and then Bradley picked a fight with homeowners

who make up one of the most formidable interest groups in the city.

"Suddenly, the mayor was attacking the bedrock of the city, the people who

vote and who pay for most of the improvements," said Barbara Fein, a

Westside homeowner activist.

"The approach they (the Bradley Administration) took on this thing was

wrong," said Ted Stein, a developer and member of the city Planning

Commission who is in favor of an aggressive policy on affordable housing.

Bradley blamed the housing shortage on the so-called "NIMBY" (not in my

back yard) phenomenon. Homeowners, he said, contributed to the problems of

homelessness and overcrowding by pushing through zoning laws that put

thousands of acres of residential land off limits for low-income

apartments.

In reaction to the mayor's comments, more than 150 homeowner groups

representing rich and poor neighborhoods joined in a federation to oppose

the mayor's plan.

The mayor's affordable housing campaign culminated years of work by a new

housing bureaucracy. An affordable housing commission, a housing

department and the job of housing coordinator in the mayor's office all

were created. Partly, it was a response to criticism that Bradley had not

done nearly enough about housing during the 1980s.

City officials estimate that only one in five families is able to afford

to buy a home, that nearly 200,000 families are doubled up and tripled up

in cramped quarters, that more than 40,000 families live in garages or

other "bootleg" units and that up to 150,000 families are homeless at some

point during the year.

No one disputes those figures. But when the Bradley Administration

unveiled its affordable housing strategy last summer, it chose to use

another statistic as the linchpin of its publicity campaign -- and that

proved to be a mistake.

Gary Squier, who heads the city's housing department, announced that under

existing zoning, the city had room for barely 100,000 more housing units.

In other words, the city was four years away from running out of

residentially zoned land. Clearly, the city was going to have to take

drastic action to avoid homelessness and overcrowding at record levels,

not to mention seeing its employment base disappear into the hinterlands

in search of affordable homes.

But Squier's figures did not hold up. Taken from a preliminary draft of a

city planning department study, the numbers were quite different in the

department's final draft. In the revised study, the inventory of building

space became 10 times greater. The city's residential building capacity

grew from a scant 100,000 units to over 1 million. According to the new

numbers, the city had enough potential residential capacity to house

25,000 new families every year for 40 years.

Before the second draft was released, the mayor's office embarked on the

second phase of its strategy -- blaming the housing shortage on homeowner

groups.

City officials contend that the shortage is a direct result of massive

court-ordered rezoning in 1985, which restricted or prohibited building on

200,000 parcels of land and reduced the city's residential capacity by 2

million people. The rezoning was the result of a lawsuit brought by a

federation of neighborhood associations arguing that the city was

permitting new development in excess of limits allowed under various

community plans.

In August, the mayor delivered two controversial speeches that emphasized

the theme of homeowner responsibility.

Bradley said a major impediment to affordable housing is that "those who

are already in place, those who have their neighborhoods very nicely built

up somehow seem to believe that they don't have a responsibility to those

who follow them. And so the NIMBY attitude takes over."

Homeowner representatives were furious. They felt that they were being

depicted as racists and elitists.

Aides to Bradley who draft his speeches insist that the mayor was not

trying to be provocative.

"We were trying to make the point that in some instances neighborhood

groups have opposed new residential development no matter how benign the

development is," said Michael Bodaken, the mayor's housing coordinator.

Others disagreed.

"There are people around the mayor who felt they needed a stick to hold

over the homeowners. They felt they needed to create a crisis to get their

program through," said a highly placed city official who is involved in

the housing debate but who asked to remain anonymous.

Bradley's invective was accompanied by an eight-point strategy on

affordable housing, much of it aimed at the teeth of the homeowner

movement.

Especially galling to homeowner groups was a proposal to eliminate

environmental reviews for small- and medium-sized apartment buildings.

Such a waiver would cut developers' time and costs but would deprive

neighborhood groups of a hard-won right to make sure that new buildings

match the character and quality of their environs. It would have affected

an estimated 50% of all new apartment buildings.

Homeowner representative Fein called the mayor's plan "a developer's wish

list come true."

She and others noted that more than 85% of all apartment construction in

the past five years has been market rate projects in affluent

neighborhoods where there has been little population growth. Many of those

projects were fought by homeowner groups, and Fein argued that the mayor's

proposals would do little to redirect development toward overcrowded,

lower-income neighborhoods.

Neighborhood groups had another bone to pick with the mayor. Accused of

keeping affordable housing out of their neighborhoods, groups pointed to

their efforts to preserve moderately priced apartments in several parts of

the city -- only to meet resistance from City Hall.

An especially bitter battle has been fought in the Fairfax and

Mid-Wilshire area, once home to the city's largest concentration of

elderly renters. The area has been changing, according to neighborhood

activists, because developers supported by the Bradley Administration and

City Council have succeeded in tearing down 50 apartment buildings and

replacing them with complexes that rent for an average of $500 more per

month.

"It's been a case of real estate rape and pillage in our neighborhood, and

we have yet to hear a peep of protest from the mayor's office," said

activist Denise Robb.

The mayor's housing strategy began to come unraveled in late August with

the release of the planning department's second set of figures on housing

space.

Housing chief Squier said he was blindsided by the new numbers. Not so,

say planning department officials who insist that they told Squier that

the first set of statistics were "preliminary" and subject to change.

Some of the strongest advocates of the housing strategy argue that the

first set of numbers paints a more realistic picture of housing space than

does the later version. For example, planning commissioner Stein still

insists that there are only about 100,000 vacant residential plots where

housing could be built any time soon.

Any larger figure, Stein said, counts property that is developed, though

not to its fullest potential. Reaching that potential is unlikely, he

said, because it would necessitate tearing down thousands of older

apartment buildings to make way for larger complexes.

However, Stein and Squier conceded that the confusion over the figures has

made the housing plan seem less urgent and made it an easy target for the

newly formed homeowners federation.

"Instead of looking for more housing opportunities, we had to shift into a

defensive mode where we focus on trying to preserve what we have," Stein

said.

Much of what the homeowner groups objected to in the housing strategy was

deleted.

"They went through and edited out a big chunk of our concerns," said

architect William Christopher, one of the organizers of the new homeowners

federation.

Squier talked about the lessons he has learned from the episode.

"I learned that there exists a number of neighborhood groups that have

fought hard against unplanned, wanton development, and I learned that we

can't succeed unless we have those groups on our side, knowing that they

aren't going to be victimized in the process.

"It's also clear to me that we don't need any more NIMBY rhetoric," Squier

said.

Squier said that when the remains of the housing strategy come before the

City Council, he hopes to win approval for several important provisions,

including proposals to pay for the rehabilitation of homes and apartments

in low-income neighborhoods, to establish a slumlord task force to target

slum properties for criminal prosecution, and to identify city-owned land

that could be used for housing.

Despite Squier's conciliatory tone, he maintains that the slow-growth

tactics of homeowner groups -- curbing development through lawsuits,

downzoning and building delays -- are the main obstacles to new affordable

housing in the city.

Some homeowner representatives agree that their efforts to protect their

neighborhoods have limited the number of renters.

Jerry Bonar, who heads a Silver Lake residents association, talks about

the balance a neighborhood must achieve between homeowners and tenants to

preserve safe streets and good schools.

He estimates that his association has reduced multifamily zoning in Silver

Lake by 30% to 40%, at the same time ensuring that most apartment

buildings are comparatively small, with 12 to 24 units.

"Where a massing of units is allowed, and we've had some of that, we

predict there will be slums," he said.

Bonar is an architect and much of his work is with nonprofit groups

building apartment buildings for poor people in downtown Los Angeles. Yet,

away from work he shares the apprehension of many homeowners about any

program that would inundate his neighborhood with apartments.

"It scares the hell out of us."