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Monkkonen Analyzes San Diego Housing Plans

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen was mentioned in a San Diego Union-Tribune opinion piece about the need to enforce housing regulations in San Diego. Every eight years, California cities are required to adopt a state-approved plan that includes rules about regional housing targets, sanctions and zoning restrictions. San Diego is currently out of compliance, but it is unclear how California’s Department of Housing and Community Development will enforce the rules. State law says that cities that lack a compliant housing plan forfeit authority to deny or downsize affordable housing projects. Monkkonen and his students studied San Diego’s housing plan and identified grave shortcomings. For example, they found that 65% of the sites San Diego identified for low-income and multifamily housing are located in the poorest third of the city’s neighborhoods, and the plan fails to open up neighborhoods reserved for single-family homes to multifamily housing.

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Mukhija Highlights Difficulties in Fixing Unpermitted Housing

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Urban Planning Professor Vinit Mukhija shared his expertise on unpermitted housing units in Los Angeles on KPCC’s “Take Two” and in an LAist article. In 2019, there were more than 2,700 violations associated with unpermitted housing, but citations for these units plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving tenants in unsafe living conditions. “Unpermitted housing is very common in the city of L.A.,” Mukhija said. “People end up in illegal units because public housing assistance is extremely limited and L.A. wages haven’t kept up with skyrocketing rents for legal units.” Mukhija said many people end up “living wherever they can find housing they can afford.” The Unpermitted Dwelling Units program, created to bring units up to code, has failed to make a large difference. “I am very happy that instead of shutting down the units, the city is trying to preserve them,” Mukhija told “Take Two” in a segment beginning at minute 22:20. “But this is a difficult task.”

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Manville Examines Impact of Gentrification on Rent

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Urban Planning Associate Professor Michael Manville was featured on KCRW’s “Greater L.A.” in an episode about the impact of housing supply on rent prices. “It’s important to separate this big question of gentrification with the question of what happens to rent,” Manville said. His research has shown that adding to the housing supply lowers nearby rent, but he explained that the trend is “not always easy to see because developers like to build in places where rents are already rising.” Considering neighborhoods where housing demand is already increasing, Manville asked, “Do you want newer residents moving in and displacing residents in the existing housing, or do you want them to be in brand-new housing where, while they will change the neighborhood by their presence, they don’t put as much pressure on the existing housing stock where a lot of the current people live?”

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A Case for Removing Minimum Parking Requirements

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A Los Angeles Daily News op-ed written by UCLA doctoral student Nolan Gray featured Urban Planning faculty members Donald Shoup and Michael Manville. The piece focused on minimum parking requirements mandating that homes, offices and shops include parking spaces, as well as on Assembly Bill 1401, which would prohibit California cities from imposing these requirements within half a mile of transit — an area where residents, shoppers and employees are least likely to drive. Nolan pointed out that developers already have an incentive to include parking in order to lease or sell a space. Shoup noted that minimum parking requirements are a key culprit in the state’s affordable housing crisis because the cost of including parking gets added to rent and mortgages. Manville added that providing off-road parking is associated with a 27% increase in vehicle miles traveled and a significant increase in emissions, since people are encouraged to buy and drive cars instead of choosing more sustainable transportation options.

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Yaroslavsky Urges Action to Uplift the Most Vulnerable

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to KPCC’s AirTalk about findings from the 2021 UCLA Quality of Life Index. The annual survey of Los Angeles County residents showed that 40% suffered a drop in income over the last year as the region was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Those are the people who are pessimistic, those are the people who are threatened with losing their apartments because they can’t make their rent payment at the end of the month,” said Yaroslavsky, who called on policymakers to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable. As one example, he noted that office space vacated as businesses downsize after the pandemic is “going to have huge implications for land use.” He asked, “What do you do with that empty office space? Can you repurpose it for housing, for example?” Several media outlets covered the Quality of Life Index, including the Los Angeles Times, KABC7 News and RealClear Politics.

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During the Pandemic, More Seek Shelter in Public Transit Systems

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A Transit California article put a spotlight on research from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies that showed a noticeable increase in people seeking shelter in public transportation stops, stations and vehicles during the COVID-19 pandemic. A team led by Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris surveyed 115 transit agencies to produce a report investigating the intersections of the pandemic, transit and homelessness. Over half of the agencies said that they see at least 100 unhoused individuals per day on their systems, while 14 agencies reported 500 or more. “Homelessness in transit environments is a major challenge in the U.S. and in Canada, but especially in California,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. She noted, however, that the absence of reliable data makes it difficult to measure the magnitude of the problem. Loukaitou-Sideris’ team will continue its research into policy solutions to help people experiencing homelessness.

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Lens on Expanding Middle-Income Housing

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Michael Lens spoke to the Long Beach Post about increasing the availability of middle-income housing. While many tax breaks and credits are available to developers building low-income housing, there aren’t many incentives to build homes for middle-income earners. A new state program will issue bonds to investors who buy existing market-rate buildings and transform them into units that are affordable for middle-income households. Lens said creating new housing for any tier is a good thing. The need for lower-income housing remains great, but the housing market has become so unaffordable that a program like this may have been necessary, he said. “It only happens when you’re so worried about the affordability of housing driving those kinds of people out of the state,” Lens said. “I think we’re there, but whether or not we’ll find a bunch of money to do something about it, it remains to be seen.”

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Millard-Ball on Twin Concerns of Fire Safety and Housing Access

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Adam Millard-Ball spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle about housing developments planned for parts of California that are prone to wildfire. The state Attorney General’s Office has opposed some of these developments, arguing that they pose grave danger in an era when uncontrolled wildfires threaten the state. The article notes that devastation in places like Santa Rosa, Paradise and Redding, in the so-called wildland-urban interface, has underscored how suburban sprawl is not only a target of fire but fodder for it, hastening the speed and intensity of blazes. Limiting development, however, can frustrate growth plans of small towns and cities and undermine progress on the state’s housing crunch. “There are really these twin concerns coming into conflict now,” Millard-Ball said. “The state’s housing crisis makes it an imperative to make it easy to build housing. At the same time, there’s the threat and tragedy of wildfires.”

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Vestal on L.A.’s Long History of Homelessness

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Marques Vestal, incoming assistant professor of urban planning, co-authored a Los Angeles Times opinion piece about lessons the region can learn from its long history of grappling with homelessness. One key to finding a durable solution to the housing crisis is recognizing the power of self-determination among the unhoused, wrote Vestal and Andrew Klein, members of a research team that produced a report on the history of homelessness in Los Angeles for the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. “Homeless people are actors and make decisions on their own behalf that city policy cannot fully control,” the authors wrote, encouraging support for this self-determination instead of focusing on top-down strategies. They called on leaders to advance grass-roots homebuilding initiatives and ensure access to water, bathrooms, trash collection and other services in existing encampments. “Without dignified and healthful alternatives, encampments will continue to serve as homes for thousands of marginalized people, as they have now for over a century.”

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Upzoning Alone Won’t Solve Housing Crisis, Manville Says

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville was featured in a Marin Independent Journal article about new design standards for housing in Marin, California. County planning officials will soon unveil the standards, which are intended to preserve the look of the area while complying with state laws mandating denser housing. While changing zoning requirements to allow more units per acre would increase the number of housing units in the county, newly built units would not necessarily be affordable for people with low incomes. “It’s never been the case that you would expect new construction to be affordable to very low income people,” Manville said. The two ways to create affordable housing are through subsidies or by “building housing and letting it get very old,” he explained. While any increase in housing supply in high-demand areas should lower prices across the board, upzoning alone won’t solve the housing crisis, he said. “But you can’t not do it.”

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