A pair of housing advocacy groups sued the city of Los Angeles, claiming it reneged on a commitment to make enough land available to meet a goal of building 255,000 new homes.
Two organizations, YIMBY Law (the acronym stands for Yes In My Backyard) and the realtor-sponsored Californians for Homeownership, said the city should have changed its zoning rules to allow more housing in 16 neighborhoods, some of which have mainly single-family homes. So far, the city has only done so in two of these areas, according to the homeownership group backed by the California Association of Realtors.
The two groups sued the city in Los Angeles County Superior Court for moving forward without clear plans to meet the target of developing 255,000 homes. They want the court to force the city to designate more land for growth.
The city is obligated by state law to approve a plan every eight years that shows how it will provide adequate housing. If it doesn’t have enough land designated to meet the demand, it has to change its zoning in enough parts of the city so the necessary number of homes can be permitted. The city determined it needed to provide 255,000 new housing units, including 130,000 affordable to people with low incomes, by 2029.
The city council approved a plan this month that calls for building housing on major streets that have transit service. The plan largely excludes areas that are mostly single-family, a change from a 2022 city proposal to rezone the 16 neighborhoods. The main focus of the plan is a program to give developers incentives to create more housing along transit corridors by allowing larger and taller multifamily buildings if they include some affordably priced units.
“The city of Los Angeles has pulled a bait-and-switch on the residents, advocates, and state regulators that supported its high-quality housing plans,” Matthew Gelfand, an attorney at Californians for Homeownership, said in a statement. Incentives “can be useful” but are insufficient to meet the need for more homes, he said.
While the city said in an email it wouldn’t comment on the lawsuit, it added that the incentives it will offer developers should result in more housing production on transit lines and in areas with low poverty rates as well as greater job opportunities.
“The Los Angeles City Planning Department is proud of the transformative program, driven by extensive, multilingual community engagement, which will significantly increase housing production throughout the city,” according to the email.
A recent UCLA study found the plan would generate only 30% of the homes the city needs without including single-family areas, a designation that makes up more than 70% of the city's residentially zoned land.
Sonja Trauss, YIMBY Law’s executive director, added that the recent wildfires in adjacent Los Angeles County should lead the city to redouble its efforts to produce more housing in all neighborhoods.
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The state Department of Housing and Community Development is considering a delay in enforcing its requirement for the city to have a proper housing plan given the recent wildfires, the lawsuit said. But the city doesn’t need to delay, according to the suit, since the plan the council approved was really completed before the fires occurred.
