The special interest plan introduced at today’s news conference at L.A. Trade Tech is a remarkably bad idea. What is this proposal’s tone-deaf answer to Angelenos’ plea for relief from overdevelopment? To give developers new ways to super-size their projects.
“This proposal is not the medicine L.A. needs,” said Jill Stewart, campaign director for the Coalition to Preserve L.A. “It just doubles down on spreading the disease.
“If you want more congestion, more traffic misery, more concrete, more air pollution, more noise – more attacks on L.A.’s quality of life, then you should support this special interest plan,” said Ms. Stewart. “But that’s not what the public wants. They want relief from development — not more development.”
Coalition supporter Grace Yoo, a prominent Koreatown attorney and social justice activist, said the special interest plan is masquerading as a “gift to people who need affordable housing units. But in fact it gives the City Council and the developers more license than ever to destroy communities with overdevelopment.”
“While we sympathize with the need for more affordable housing, the real agenda behind this special interest plan gets it wrong,” said Ms. Stewart. “The Coalition to Preserve L.A. has an honest plan that restores our right to create balanced development shaped by communities — not by developers and their City Hall pals.”
The Coalition to Preserve L.A. is supporting the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. This proposal is being circulated to obtain signatures to make the ballot.
The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative pushes the pause button’ by establishing a temporary moratorium on inappropriately over-sized development projects. The initiative also slows the destruction of affordable housing by developers, who displace the poor and create homelessness — with consent of the developer-influenced L.A. City Council. A moratorium on huge developments that steamroll past the city’s zoning laws will give Angelenos an opportunity to catch their breath and adapt – if possible – to the tremendous strains already placed on communities by overdevelopment.
L.A. must first create the infrastructure needed to make bearable the existing overdevelopment before piling on more development, Ms. Stewart said. “The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is real overdevelopment reform. It will put the brakes on the rigged system at City Hall and give Angelenos a real say in shaping their communities.
“Special interests are frightened to death by the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative,” said Ms. Stewart. “Their answer is a plan that would keep the developers in the driver’s seat and let them super-size their projects wherever they please, whether the people like it or not. That’s taking the current broken system and putting it on steroids. That’s a bad idea.”
