Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass introduced new limits this week to her administration’s program to streamline affordable housing. The changes will further restrict where low-income apartments can be fast-tracked in the city.Included in the long list of new restrictions is a prohibition on fast-tracking affordable housing in the city’s designated historic districts, anby some city council members.
“It's just turning something that was really remarkable into another status quo type tool,” said Jason Ward, an economist and co-director of theLAist reached out to the mayor’s office to ask what prompted the latest round of changes to ED1. Bass spokesperson Clara Karger responded in an email, saying, “Mayor Bass believes that policies should be constantly evaluated and improved upon. That’s what this revision seeks to do.
But with all those new proposals has come fierce opposition from homeowners and neighborhood groups who feel ED1 has taken away their ability to slow down or kill projects they believe will harm their communities., which says its mission is to “protect neighborhoods” and “ensure local control.” Her group has been lobbying the mayor’s office for changes to ED1, a program she says has been harmful to many neighborhoods. Kalban said Bass seems to have taken many of their concerns to heart.
Kalban cheered changes Bass made to ED1 regarding how many waivers and incentives developers can request. Developers typically rely on a number of concessions — often involving increased height, less required open space and smaller setbacks from property lines — to make their projects pencil out financially., which make up 74% of the city’s residential land. The new changes further shrink the areas where developers can propose ED1 projects. But Kalban thinks L.A.