L.A. County says state housing laws stand in way of rebuilding. Advocates disagree
County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Lindsey Horvath, who represent districts blackened by this month's wildfires, put forward a motion Tuesday with 41 steps they want department heads to take to speed up the recovery process.
That included an ask to Gov. Gavin Newsom to temporarily exempt the county from some of the state's most significant housing laws intended to speed up the creation of affordable housing, including parts of Senate Bill 330, aimed at preserving affordable housing, and the Density Bonus Law, which encourages developers to build new units.
Amy Bodek, head of the county planning department, said she believed the state laws could end up hampering recovery, incentivizing density at the expense of homeowners looking to rebuild what they had.
'In order to provide the community the ability to return and not face immediate displacement, we understand the need to pause some of these policies,' she said at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, adding that she wanted to ask for a five-year waiver for unincorporated areas, which include Altadena and some of the communities burned by the Palisades fire.
'We are not antihousing,' she said. 'To say that we are antihousing is someone that's not been paying attention.'
At the meeting, housing advocates contended that the county's waiver proposal would slash too many restrictions, bypassing laws aimed at solving the region's affordable housing crisis.
'This is just totally going in the wrong direction,' said Nolan Gray, senior director of legislation and research for California YIMBY, noting that the laws have spurred the construction of thousands of affordable units across the state. 'There's so much in here that has nothing to do with helping people rebuild.'
Chris Elmendorf, a law professor at UC Davis who studies California housing law, said the county was too broad in requesting a waiver in undefined 'fire impacted communities.'
'If the goal is to get people back to their communities as fast as possible, shouldn't the goal be to build as much housing in those communities as fast as possible?' he said.
Barger, who represents Altadena, said the accusation that the county was uninterested in ramping up housing 'could not be further from the truth.'
Bodek said it was unclear whether the governor would agree to the county's waiver request, but she hoped the letter would be a starting point for conversations with the state.
The remarks came as part of a larger discussion over how the county should prepare for an influx of new buildings in areas reduced to rubble. Bodek said the planning department, which is responsible for permitting in unincorporated L.A. County, is expecting as many as 8,000 permit applications from homeowners wanting to rebuild after the Eaton fire and 600 from the Palisades fire.
Without beefing up staffing, she said, 'it is going to be breaking our department.'
Mark Pestrella, the head of the county public works department, said his agency was similarly preparing for a mammoth undertaking in repairing utilities in fire-scarred areas.
'A small public works department needs to be created in particular for the Altadena area if we are to meet the needs of the community to rebuild,' he told the supervisors Tuesday.
The repairs and rebuilding are likely to cost the county billions of dollars, much of which county officials hope will come from the federal government. On Tuesday, the White House said it would freeze trillions in federal grants and loans that don't align with the Trump administration's priorities. The order was quickly blocked by a federal judge.
'We are very concerned about that,' said Fesia Davenport, the county's chief executive. 'We do need to know what the exact impact will be on the county.'
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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Politico
4 days ago
- Politico
Newsom blinks on fire rebuilding
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San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Alameda County adopts $1 billion plan to address homelessness after years of delay
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Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
California's economy is already getting hit by immigration raids
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And the population has deep roots, with nearly two-thirds having lived in the state for over a decade. Their total contribution in local, state and federal taxes is $23 billion annually, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. If California's undocumented workers were erased from the economy, researchers calculated the state's agricultural industry would contract by 14% and the construction industry would shrink by nearly 16%. The study projects a loss of $278 billion to California's economy as the upper figure of the financial damage. These numbers represent the most drastic scenario. It's difficult to know what the actual toll will be, said Abby Raisz, of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute: 'That's the million-dollar question.' How long the raids persist matters, said economist Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics. Take the example of a power outage, Thornberg said. If there's a power outage for two days, that's not a loss of two days of economic activity, since people just catch up on missed shopping and other activities. 'It is business delayed, not business canceled,' he said in an email. 'If the blackout goes for two months — well, now we can assume some of it will end up being business lost, and that's when the real economic impacts start to creep in,' Thornberg said. There are some industries in which the effects are clear, Thornberg said, citing car washes, which have been raided repeatedly. Early reports from farmers are also not optimistic, with groups reporting severe labor shortages during peak harvesting season for many crops. Bryan Little of the California Farm Bureau described how a strawberry producer in Ventura County lost most of his crop after workers stayed home. Little said these labor shortages are becoming more frequent and could drive up prices sharply on the produce California ships to the rest of the country. 'People were terribly upset over the price of eggs in the fall and winter,' Little said. 'It'll be interesting to see when you start getting prices like that on virtually every item.' Local hotels and other businesses that rely on tourism are bracing for adverse effects. Their customers are getting scared away by the raids. These businesses are also exposed to potential labor shortages because they are heavily reliant on the immigrant workforce. Visit California, the state's marketing agency, in May projected international visits would decline by 9.2% in 2025, due to negative sentiment toward the Trump administration's trade policies. Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva (D-Fullerton), whose district covers swaths of northern Orange County, said there has been low turnout at summer concerts, area car shows and other events. She described deserted city centers in downtown Santa Ana and low foot traffic in Little India in Artesia. Artesia's mayor, Ali Taj, said the impact on the city's sales tax revenue is going to be 'horrific.' 'The message here is please stop, stop, stop,' he told a news conference at Buena Park City Hall, where local officials and business leaders discussed the effects of the raids. 'Enough is enough.' Downtown L.A. business groups have said the Fashion District has seen a 30% drop in traffic. 'It will help tremendously when there are reduced ICE operations,' said Nella McOsker, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn., which represents the interests of more than 300 businesses, trade associations and nonprofits. 'That will help at least all of us who care about downtown to be in a position [where] we can change perception and really call for people to come back.' The Hispanic Construction Council estimates the country was already dealing with a nationwide construction workforce shortage of 500,000 workers. George Carrillo, chief executive of the council, said that construction projects were 14% behind schedule when Trump took office, but that lag has grown to 22% under the Trump administration, as deportation threats have weakened the workforce. Further labor shortages in the construction industry, in which the workforce is 61% immigrant and 26% undocumented, will hinder wildfire recovery in Los Angeles and work on other critical infrastructure across the U.S., including levies, bridges and dams, Carrillo said. In California, major airport expansion projects are planned in Sacramento and Los Angeles, as well as new soccer stadiums and medical centers. Undocumented workers do not have political representatives, so the business leaders that depend on their hard work need to stand up and let the White House know the economic cost, Carrillo said. 'When it came to tariffs and it was affecting the auto industry, guess what, the Big Three [automakers] called the president and said 'You need to stop this.' And he did, and he backed off of the tariffs,' he said. 'It's the same thing here, but for some reason, we feel like we can't stand up.'
