LOS ANGELES – A Los Angeles city commission unanimously approved amendments to the city’s Site Plan Review Ordinance Thursday with the goal of streamlining and increasing affordable housing projects.
A site plan review is a planning process that requires discretionary actions for certain types of developments, Jeanalee Obergfell, city planning associate, told the Planning Commission during Thursday’s meeting. The current review system can limit the number of dwelling units and projects due to the length and cost of the process, she added.
For multi-family housing developments, site plan review is required for projects that create a net increase of 50 units or more on a site, prior to any density bonus. The process requires a decision-maker to make various findings such as General Plan and local plan compliance and compatibility with neighboring areas, along with an environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, and an appeal period, which would require a public hearing.
“An unintended consequence of a site plan review is that the process can significantly expand project review timeliness for projects that otherwise conformed to zoning, causing delays averaging 165 days to process the entitlement, and often longer due to appeals and litigation risks,” Obergfell said.
The amendments OK’d by the commission would exclude restricted affordable units from the calculation of the 50-unit project threshold and address any redundancy in language within the ordinance.
City planners defined a restricted affordable unit as a “housing or guest room subject to a covenant or regulatory restricting rents or housing costs,” while not exceeding 30% of the maximum gross income of each income category, and covering a period of at least 55 years for rental units or at least 45 years for for-sale units.
“The primary objective of the proposed amendment is to streamline 100% affordable housing projects,” Obergfell said. “While the exemption could also apply to affordable units, mixed income projects, the vast majority of mixed income projects would not be affected.
“We expect the exception to be for a small subset of projects proposed near the unit threshold for adding affordable housing units.”
Victoria Senna, director of housing development for Hollywood Community Housing, a nonprofit real estate developer and owner of affordable housing throughout Los Angeles County, expressed her support for the amendment.
“This amendment will directly reduce the cost and time required to build affordable housing while freeing up nonprofit and city resources to address the housing crisis,” Senna said. “It will free up affordable housing developers’ resources to fast track the development of 100% affordable housing units.”
Other members of the public expressed concerns about the potential loss of trees as a result of the proposed amendments. They urged the City Planning Commission to consider further protections to prevent significant tree loss.
After a brief discussion in which commissioners pondered how the amendment would impact mixed-use developments, they moved to approve the amendments.
The proposed amendments will now move to the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management for further consideration.