There are many causes it’s troublesome to construct housing for homeless individuals in Los Angeles. One among them shouldn’t be metropolis officers standing in the best way of a undertaking — particularly one already authorized twice by the Metropolis Council.
However that’s the outrageous state of affairs that has trapped the Venice Dell undertaking in pre-development hell since 2017.
After a aggressive course of, metropolis housing officers selected nonprofit builders Venice Group Housing and Hollywood Group Housing Corps to take a 2.65-acre expanse of metropolis parking zone in Venice simply blocks from the seashore and switch it into housing for homeless and low-income people and households. It was a really perfect piece of surplus metropolis land discovered at a time when metropolis officers had begun scouring their stock for heaps that might be used for inexpensive housing, notably homeless housing.
Since then the builders have accomplished every thing required: They held quite a few public hearings, did environmental research, designed and reconfigured the now-120-unit undertaking, designed and redesigned the parking storage to accommodate metropolis officers’ issues and to permit loads of room to maintain a preferred boat launch.
The Metropolis Council authorized the undertaking in 2021 and once more in 2022 when the builders have been awarded a growth settlement.
As a substitute of being fast-tracked by the remainder of the method, they’ve been slow-walked by the officers who needs to be serving to them. Beginning within the spring of 2023, on the course of the newly elected metropolis lawyer, Hydee Feldstein Soto, who had been overtly important of the undertaking since earlier than she took workplace, metropolis departments have been instructed to cease working with the builders as a result of there was pending litigation (which was resolved final yr). A former official within the mayor’s workplace who was acquainted with the undertaking stated that the order was uncommon and that that they had not beforehand seen a metropolis lawyer cease work due to a lawsuit.
Since then, the departments have labored solely on and off with the builders, which has jeopardized their funding and delayed by greater than a yr their Coastal Fee approval.
However the undertaking has survived, prevailed in two lawsuits from a nonprofit Venice group that opposes it, and eventually acquired the required Coastal Fee allow in December that can enable them to maneuver ahead. (That was regardless of town lawyer attempting to persuade the fee to not approve the undertaking.)
But metropolis officers discovered extra obstacles to place within the undertaking’s manner. The most recent hurdle was a evaluation by the Board of Transportation Commissioners, which town lawyer argued is a obligatory cease for the undertaking — even years after the Metropolis Council authorized it. The commissioners — an advisory physique to town’s Division of Transportation — declared the undertaking unsuitable for the lot. As a substitute they really useful a close-by smaller (extra awkwardly configured) lot for housing and advised the Venice Dell web site be was a “mobility hub.”
It seems that town and the builders have been already sued on the grounds that town uncared for to place the undertaking earlier than the Board of Transportation Commissioners. In that case, town lawyer together with counsel for the builders argued that the commissioners might have management over buying and managing metropolis parking heaps, however the Metropolis Council didn’t delegate its energy over the usage of metropolis property — together with parking heaps — for housing to the transportation commissioners. The choose agreed and dominated for town and the builders.
Now town lawyer is arguing in any other case? That is absurd — and nothing greater than one other ploy to kill the undertaking.
Councilmember Traci Park, who succeeded the undertaking’s champion, Mike Bonin, within the council district together with Venice Dell, is a longtime opponent of the undertaking. She declared it lifeless and launched a movement to discover the feasibility of the smaller lot that the Transportation Fee really useful for housing. That movement has already been by one Metropolis Council committee.
Now it should go to town’s Housing and Homelessness Committee. To this point, Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs that committee, is rightly uncomfortable shifting ahead with a movement that she says “appears to be an implicit endorsement of a bad-faith effort to cease an inexpensive housing undertaking that town has already authorized.”
Venice Dell is just not a rogue undertaking on a chunk of land haphazardly turned over to the builders by town’s Housing Division and Metropolis Council. This can be a vetted, considerate housing undertaking in a well-resourced space of town the place there may be little everlasting housing for low-income and homeless people and households. If Park and others imagine that the close by smaller lot could be appropriate for housing, nice. Construct housing there, too. The Westside wants all of the inexpensive housing it might get. And if town desires a mobility hub, that may be arrange alongside the housing on the Venice Dell web site.
That is nothing greater than the present Metropolis Council attempting to return in time and invalidate a call made by a earlier Metropolis Council — a call that gave builders a contract to construct Venice Dell in partnership with town.
In the meantime, Mayor Karen Bass, who has made housing homeless individuals a precedence, says solely that she helps inexpensive housing on the Westside and across the metropolis. However she has in any other case been woefully silent on Venice Dell specifically and wouldn’t touch upon the most recent twist within the saga of this undertaking. Distancing herself from this debate (for no matter political causes) as an alternative of supporting an already authorized undertaking solely makes it tougher to construct homeless housing within the face of any type of opposition that crops up.
Will probably be as much as this Metropolis Council and the mayor to point out metropolis residents that they’re severe about constructing inexpensive housing and getting homeless individuals off the streets. Killing the Venice Dell undertaking says the alternative.
And the opportunity of an alternate lot — which is able to entail feasibility research, selecting a brand new developer, public hearings, Coastal Fee approval — is not any substitute for a undertaking that’s by that course of and now securing the remainder of its financing.
Metropolis officers decry homeless individuals dying on the road as disgraceful. Letting a undertaking die that may home a few of them is simply as disgraceful.
