Aaron Barrall and I have evaluated the city of Los Angeles' proposed Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) reforms, with a focus on the Mixed Income Incentive Program (MIIP) and two Single-Family Options. In compliance with the city's housing element, CHIP was developed to increase zoning capacity by at least 255,000 units. State law also requires that local governments affirmatively further fair housing, which is generally understood to mean focusing new housing capacity and production in higher-resource areas.
The report is not yet available on the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies website, but you can read it on eScholarship: https://lnkd.in/gHidnanC
CHIP is being discussed by the LA City Council on Nov 19 at a special meeting of the Planning and Land Use Management committee, so we hurried to get this out with enough time for folks to review. Special thanks to Claudia Bustamante for making sure this could be published before the weekend.
Some key takeaways:
? We find that MIIP increases “net realistic capacity” — which we define in the report — by an estimated 380,500 units, nearly 30% above existing policy. MIIP likely satisfies the requirement to increase zoning capacity by at least 255,000 units.
? Relative to existing policy, MIIP also increases capacity most in “high resource” and “highest resource” census tracts, as defined by the state. Net realistic capacity rises by 67-84% in higher resource neighborhoods and by less than 10% in low and moderate resource neighborhoods.
? However, total realistic housing capacity remains concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods. Nearly 60% of the total net realistic housing capacity is in lower-tier housing markets, where a city consultant determined that mixed-income development is generally infeasible.
? We use the Fair Housing Land Use Score (FHLUS), developed by the Lewis Center, to evaluate existing policy and MIIP. Both receive negative scores, but MIIP improves the citywide FHLUS from –0.32 to –0.21.
??Finally, we evaluate two of seven single-family rezoning options introduced in a Planning Department report to the City Planning Commission. SF Option 1 dramatically increases net realistic capacity and improves the citywide FHLUS (with MIIP) from –0.21 to 0.05. SF Option 1 increases capacity and improves the FHLUS only marginally.
? MIIP represents a positive step forward, but Los Angeles will fall far short of its housing production goal unless SF Option 1 — or a similarly ambitious single-family upzoning policy — is also adopted. Failing to incorporate single-family parcels into its reforms will also delay progress on neighborhood desegregation and sustain rising rents and displacement of vulnerable households.
