Rebooting the General Plan for Culver City
By: Mark Lipman
Tags: Housing, Homelessness, Development, Culver City

When it comes to housing and homelessness, for too long we’ve been stuck between two competing false narratives. The first is the status quo argument of do nothing and let the police sweep away the signs of poverty. This is a practice that has failed over and over again. The second is the status quo argument of let the for-profit developers do whatever they want… pointing to homelessness as the reason to build more, build bigger, denser, more expensive and less affordable, while ignoring the fact that this likewise failed practice is exactly what has caused the homelessness crisis we face today.

In fact, I would argue that homelessness is an essential and deliberate part of the speculative investment and real estate development plan. Yes, the investor class and their developers have purposefully created the homelessness crisis, specifically so they could point to it in order to beat back community objections to over-development.

From 2005 to 2015, throughout the entire region, they displaced and evicted low income tenants at a break neck speed, in order to tear down affordable housing and replace it with luxury units at three to five times the price, much of which has remained vacant for years.

This, along with the vacation rental bubble, which stripped hundreds of units off the market locally, and tens of thousands of units regionally, has created the artificial appearance of a housing shortage, when in fact all the housing we need already exists in plenty.

Here in Culver City, by the official numbers, we currently have 236 people who are living homeless in our community, while at the same time we have 830 vacant housing units. In the City of Los Angeles there are 41,000 people homeless and 93,000 vacant housing units. In LA County, there are 63,000 people homeless in total and a whopping 231,000 vacant units. And this trend is repeated in every major city throughout this country.

It’s not a question of not having the housing. Moreover, it’s not even a question of not having the money. At market rate, it would cost on average $25,000/year to simply pay the rent for people experiencing homelessness. In comparison, we spend $75,000/year for every prisoner we lock up. Additionally, by LA County’s own numbers, it costs on average $32,000 less per year, in all related expenses by housing people than it does to just leave them on the streets.

So it is not a question of not having the units or the money, but of needing the excuse to keep the development going. That is why we have homelessness.

But wait, the profits don’t stop there.

The third leg of this trifecta is the tech industry. Major corporations have carved up communities, taking over square blocks and entire neighborhoods, threatening to import thousands of high paid employees (and no new jobs for local residents), to create even greater rent wars and overburden local infrastructure. Municipalities are being treated like acquisitions in a hostile takeover. These companies take no financial responsibility, while local jurisdictions are left to clean up the mess they create, as the people who are being stepped on and over the most are told that they need to be more welcoming.

This is the situation on the ground and the one thing that connects all of this together is that the only ones truly benefiting from what’s happening are the Wall Street investors bankrolling the steamrolling of our communities.

Now that the preamble is complete, we can look at some of the real solutions to the problems we face.

Please remember as we go forward that just because something hasn’t been tried before, doesn’t mean that it’s not the right answer.

Too often I hear from establishment figures that we can’t try something new, “because we’ve never done that before.” Yet, if that was the driving logic behind our decision making process then Culver City would still be a sundown town and women would still not be allowed to vote. The best ideas are quite often the ones that have never been tried, specifically because they rub up against the status quo.

But to put all this into context, in the year 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic that isn’t going away any time soon, the abject failure of business-as-usual has been laid bare. The capitalist economy of putting profits above people and all else has imploded before our very eyes. There is no going back to “normal.” Too many people are suffering now, too many people are facing eviction and foreclosure, as tens of millions have lost their jobs and the healthcare that was tied to it.

We need a different path forward.

Tax the Rich and Major Corporations

There’s been quite a lot of handwringing at the local political level the last few years over why we can’t tax the Major Corporations moving into our community. We are being forced — strong-armed — into redeveloping our entire city — over the objections of a great many people in our community who do not like the vision that is being presented to them. We are literally taking the one thing that everyone loves about Culver City — the small town feel — and actively destroying that as fast as we can. And there are three reasons for that: Apple, Amazon and HBO.

These corporations with a current combined wealth of over $2.5 Trillion are creating a footprint in our community that is so oversized that it covers the entire map. We are literally discussing re-zoning the entire city in order to accommodate these three corporations, and they’re not even being asked to pay a single dime to help do it right — to community standards that we decide for ourselves. No, we are being told to just leave it to the market and let our future be decided for us. Which begs the question of why are we even doing a General Plan Update in the first place?

From all the evidence I’ve seen, with the ever increasing flood of building permits that are being rushed through, before the public even has the opportunity to review or make its concerns known, it looks like the plan has already been made and is simply going to be imposed upon us.

So, if the goal is truly for the public to have a say, then it is imperative that at the very minimum we pass a Major Corporations Tax, so that we can start self-financing our own housing and infrastructure projects and free our hands from the grip of Wall Street speculators.

Joining a Public Bank

In October 2019, Gov. Newsom signed AB 857, the Public Banking Act, into law, allowing city and county governments to create, or sponsor, public banks. The City of Los Angeles is currently in the process of creating its own public bank and Culver City can join this.

Public banks, unlike for-profit banks, are specifically designed to allow local jurisdictions the ability to self-fund community-based, publicly owned projects with little to no interest.

Yes, we have not tried this before. This is the evolution of our economy and is already set in motion. As we are building our General Plan with an eye on the future, for the next 25 years, we would be remiss not to include a plan for joining a public bank at the soonest opportunity into the update.

Build Public Housing

If we have to build, if our hands are tied and there is no other option, then let us build public housing.

It is true that traditionally public housing has been built through HUD, however there is nothing saying that we cannot build public housing projects ourselves.

The stigma that we need to break over public housing is that they don’t necessarily need to be these big bulky projects (like the for-profit development proposed for 11111 Jefferson). With publicly owned projects, we can tailor the design and scope to the surrounding area and neighborhood.

At the going rate of subsidies, ($500,000 per affordable unit), there is no reason why we should even be dealing with for-profit developers. If anything we should tighten the rules on developers and give them no variances at all.

Instead we should take that money, buy a house that’s for sale on the market, remodel it to 3 or 4 apartments, maintaining the original design to preserve the character of the existing neighborhood, and now we’ve created 3 to 4 new permanently affordable housing units for less than what the developers are trying to charge us, and on top of it that would create an ongoing income for the city, to be able to reinvest into new projects, without ever having to kowtow to Wall Street again.

It’s important to note that any public housing that is created would remain permanently affordable.

Reimagining Mixed-Use

Imagine building publicly owned community centers in every neighborhood. We can have art and music classes, literary events, film and editing workshops and all the things that make a community vibrant, and upstairs we can have truly affordable housing. That we can do. That’s easy and can garner a lot of community support.

Imagine too affordable store fronts where we make it easy to start your own small business, and then connect that to an affordable housing unit in the same building. That’s how we build community.

ADUs

Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADUs) are an ever increasing trend with the need for both new housing options and as potential sources of income for struggling homeowners. To date Culver City has issued 130 building permits for ADUs (2019/2020 combined). If this trend continues at the current rate we can expect on average 80 ADU building permits per year, however we should also take into account that at some point this should plateau as we reach near maximum potential and we should look to the estimate, if one exists, of what our full ADU capacity might be?

Following our current RHNA goals, at the current rate we should be able to add an additional 560 ADU permits to be issued by 2028, bringing us to a total of 690 ADUs in process towards our housing goals.

Additionally, we should look to expand the ADU/landlord incentive program, making grants available to homeowners for the construction of ADUs, with the 10 year covenant to maintain the ADU at a low income rate. Although 10 years is not as long as our other covenants, it helps us with short term housing needs, while aiding local homeowners.

Vacation Rental Conversions

At last count there were approximately 250 vacation rentals listed for rent in Culver City on virtual sites such as Airbnb. With the pandemic, many of those property owners may be open to considering the Landlord Incentive Program developed by our Housing Department. This could potentially put 250 new housing units on the market that haven’t been counted before.

Motel Reuse

Culver City’s Housing Department has been looking into Motel Reuse as a way to bring new affordable housing units to the city, with a focus on using this as housing for people moving out of homelessness. There are currently three motels being looked at, though it remains in question if the city may be able to acquire these properties or not.

Modular and Non-Traditional Housing

Modular units, tiny homes and other forms of prefabricated housing is an exciting option growing in popularity across the country as both a truly affordable option to the high costs of traditional housing development, and as an easy, fast and cost effective way to address homelessness.

A great many styles and options are currently available and on the market ranging in price from $10,000 to $40,000 per unit/home which can be built in a matter of days, a notable difference compared to the $500,000 per unit we’re paying in corporate subsidies for units that take 5 years and more to manifest.

Currently, an RFP is in process for what could be the first trial of this in Culver City at the community garden site, next to the former AmVets building on Culver Blvd. We are hoping to house there at least 6 homeless veterans and possibly expand this idea to other parts of the city.

These kinds of projects would also be perfect to be made through public financing options, especially if we’re looking to locate them on public land, so that they truly remain under community control.

Direct Housing (Housing First)

If our goal is to truly end homelessness, then by far the simplest and most affordable option is to just pay the rent. Even at market rate, we would save tens of thousands of dollars per person every year by directly housing people and giving them the individual wrap around services they need.

Today, we have approximately 236 people living homeless in Culver City. We also have 830 vacant housing units, with an average of 375 units available for rent on the market.

This is a solvable problem. It merely requires the willpower to do it.

An outline for a Direct Housing pilot program was introduced to City Council in February of 2020 by the Committee on Homelessness. The Committee on Homelessness is currently revising this proposal for reintroduction for the new budget cycle and has made creating a Direct Housing program a priority goal for the body’s work plan over the next 18 months.

The pilot program that we’re envisioning would request $3 million over two years to house 40–60 homeless individuals in permanent supportive housing with wrap around services, which we would then look to expand to house everyone who is homeless in Culver City in subsequent years.

A full Direct Housing program — to completely end homelessness in Culver City — is estimated to run around $6 million per year, with an estimated cost savings of approximately $11 million each year, giving the city an estimated $5 million surplus in cost savings each year in emergency service expenses.