LA City Council FINALLY Approves Density Bonus Ordinance

The Los Angeles City Council finally passed a Density Bonus ordinance on February 20, nearly four years after the State Legislature passed SB 1818 requiring them to do so and after an earlier 12-2 city council vote seemingly had approved it but was overturned by the City Attorney on technical grounds.

SB 1818 amends state density bonus law which required localities to give a 25% density bonus to developments with at least 20% of the homes designated as affordable. While affordable developers always qualified for the density bonus, they often couldn't use it because other planning restrictions - height, parking, floor-area ratio (FAR) - made it impossible. At the same time, the density bonus did not incentivize many market-rate developers to build affordable homes.

SB 1818 makes available a sliding scale density bonus - up to 35% depending on the percentage of affordable homes included in the development. In addition, SB 1818 requires localities to give developments up to three planning concessions, again depending on the percentage of affordable homes included in the project. The intent was for the density bonus and incentives to be granted by right. Cities and counties throughout the state were required to enact SB 1818 implementing ordinances.

Requiring at least 10 votes for passage, the city council had twice considered the ordinance the previous week. But due to the lack of enough councilmembers who supported the ordinance present at last weeks meetings, the council decided to hold the vote over until this week. There are 11 votes in favor of the Density Bonus ordinance on the full city council.

With the full city council meeting today, the city council voted 11-4 in favor of the ordinance. (YES VOTES: Reyes, Greuel, Weiss, Cardenas, Alarcon, Parks, Perry, Wesson Jr., Smith, Garcetti, Huizar and NO VOTES: Zine, Hahn, Rosendahl, and LaBonge).

SCANPH was instrumental in making key improvements to the City's implementing ordinance. Initially, the density bonus and a menu of concessions were subject to an abbreviated appeals process (although with no time limits placed on the process). Any concession a developer requested that was not on the menu was subject to a conditional use permit process, which can take over a year.

Due to SCANPH's advocacy efforts, density bonus and parking incentives are granted by right, and any appeals of concessions on the menu must be heard within 60 days of the last day of the appeals period.

In addition, the version of the ordinance that passed out of the Planning and Land Use Management and Housing and Community Economic Development committees included improvements to the parking incentives, as well as to the concessions on the menu. These improvements ensured, for instance, that the height concession allowed a development an extra story of height, that 40% of the parking for affordable units may be compact spaces, and that the FAR concession could accommodate the additional density.

In addition, SCANPH had secured a new FAR concession - a 3:1 FAR in commercial zones in height district 1 near transit stops - that made it possible to build housing in the parts of transit corridors that were zoned for commercial (the FAR in the zoning code is 1.5:1 in those areas).

In June 2007, however, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky started to fight against the incentives in the ordinance, reaching out to council offices, neighborhood councils, and other homeowner groups. As a result, the final ordinance does not allow any height increase next to or across an alley from properties zoned R1, unless the development is within 1500 feet of a transit stop, in which case there must be a 50 foot setback from the R1-zoned property for the extra story. Transit stops for 100% affordable developments include any rail stop and any bus stop along a Rapid Bus line.

While the Supervisor's efforts has curtailed the effectiveness of the ordinance for properties located next to R1 zones, the ordinance will still be an effective tool in creating more affordable homes for the people who live and work in Los Angeles.

SCANPH Policy Director Lisa Payne, community members, and LA housing advocates deserve much of the credit for their efforts in educating and mobilizing the community to write letters, make phone calls, and come to hearings as well as organize meetings with the Planning Department and council and Mayor's offices. They demonstrated that affordable developers beleive the Density Bonus ordinance will help get more affordable homes created for the working families of Los Angeles that need them.