Then there are California’s broad green building codes. “The standards in California are higher than anywhere else in the country,” Tong told me. “Not only do you need to build to standards, you also need to hire a consultant to confirm that you have built to standards. That adds to the cost.”
And then there are the cut-off reservations with planning boards and local competitors. Tong told me about a special affordable housing development near the freeway; To build it, the planning department emphasized that the developers had to install a much higher quality ventilation system than the standard.
Personally, this lot of standards and concessions and add-ons sounds good, and even good. Who will fight cleaner air? Who doesn’t want high construction worker salaries? But overall, the prioritization of building affordable housing quickly and affordably has resulted in a staggering failure, as the alternative is often people sleeping in tents or on street corners. Market-rate developers are “building brand new units for $250,000 one-stop,” Galperin said. “That’s less than half of what these units are costing.”
Galperin believes that the political class of Los Angeles is wrong to focus too closely on the use of HHH funds for permanent housing tied to these standards. “We want to have the best possible home for everyone,” he said. “But let’s stop making the perfect person the enemy of good, or good enough. How do we make multiple smaller units or shared units? What about dormitory-style units, where you may not have your own kitchen but you do have a place to eat in the building? Galperin also argues that more money should be spent on temporary beds and temporary housing. “These are not perfect approaches, but with so many people dying every day, you have to have a sense of urgency.”
This is one of the toughest battles in the Los Angeles housing debate: One side holds that permanent housing is the only real solution and everything else is Band-Aid. This is Los Angeles Times Editorial Board: “The North Star doesn’t have enough shelter for the city to wipe out everyone on the streets. It should be about having enough housing so people can move off the streets for good. “The other side says Band-Aids is needed when you’re bleeding. Los Angeles needs more of all kinds of housing solutions, but it specifically needs more solutions that can be built at speed. highest, at the lowest cost.
But the more time I spend talking to people involved with licensing and housing construction of any kind, the less important this gap becomes. Yes, micro apartments and dormitories and prefab homes may be cheaper, but if they do, they face heavier community resistance. That’s even more true for large shelter development projects, which communities go to war to prevent. In addition, choosing what to build is very important. But the inability to build cheaply or quickly is endemic. A world in which Los Angeles can quickly build many dormitory-style developments is a world in which Los Angeles can build any type of affordable housing quickly.
I wish I could tell you that, in reporting this story, I found easy solutions. I did not. Power is broken in the Los Angeles political system. The mayor is relatively weak and the City Council is currently in turmoil, as Nury Martinez, its former president, resignation after recordings of racist comments she made, and Kevin de León, another member of the panel and a participant in those recordings, was Hanging on with her fingernails. Power continues to be fractured between the City Council and the County Board of Supervisors, and neither side works well with the other.
