Update on LA's Housing Element

Oct 29

Written By

Dear Friend,

On Wednesday 10/27, LA City Council’s Housing Committee approved the city's draft housing element without amendment. This means our fight to bring more homes to West Los Angeles isn't over. If you haven't, could you send a message to the city council about this (it takes mere seconds!)?

Under the current plan, Westside neighborhoods like Brentwood, Westwood, and Venice would only accommodate 7% of the citywide rezoning plan. This doesn't make sense. Westside LA is home to many regional employers offering good-paying jobs. It is also an emerging tech and media hub. Thousands of workers commute daily into the area, spending hours on the road and emitting harmful greenhouse gases into communities. Building more homes where jobs are should be a no-brainer, as this relieves workers of stressful commutes, reduces traffic, and eliminates unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.

Westside LA deserve more homes. The next opportunity to make our demand heard is at Tuesday's Planning and Land Use Committee meeting. We need your help to make this a top priority for council members:

1️⃣If you haven't, send a letter to the city council using this tool (it takes seconds!). If you've already send a message, share this with a friend 💕

2️⃣Provide live testimony at Tuesday's meeting:

Date & Time: Tuesday 11/2/2021 2:00 PM👇🏼

Members of the public who would like to offer public comment on the items listed on the agenda should call 1 669 254 5252 and use Meeting ID No. 161 644 6631 and then press #. Press # again when prompted for participant ID. Once admitted into the meeting, press *9 to request to speak. The housing element is Agenda Item 14; committee meetings take public comment at top of the meeting, so you don't have to wait (YAY!). To ensure your voice will be heard, dial in 30 minutes earlier.

Sample talking points (please condense; you have 1 minute):

The housing element update is our opportunity to build a Los Angeles with lower housing costs, a growing regional economy, greater access to opportunity, and greater socioeconomic diversity. I commend City Planning for the good work on this thus far. But additional improvements and commitments are still needed to make the housing element update successful. For example, the City’s current plan would yield little housing growth in many high-resource Westside neighborhoods, where housing costs are especially high.
I urge the City to amend the housing element’s rezoning plan and rezone more parcels in high-resource Westside neighborhoods to allow more housing. One approach could be to legalize 8 homes on more R1-zoned parcels in these neighborhoods, outside of environmentally sensitive or very high fire risk areas. This would also help to achieve the creation of 300,000 new homes through rezoning, a target set by Council President Nury Martinez and six other council members.
Every neighborhood needs to do its fair share to fix Los Angeles’ housing crisis, and that includes affluent Westside neighborhoods too. As the City Council prepares to finalize and approve the housing element, let’s not miss this chance to boldly encourage housing affordability throughout our city.
Westside Los Angeles is a regional employment center. Thousands of workers commute daily into the area. Building more homes on the Westside will relieve these workers from stressful commutes, reduce traffic, and reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions.

>>👋Let us know you will be there!<<

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