Written by Jack Skelley

ULI Los Angeles presented a day-long program examining temporary shelters, bridge housing, permanent-supportive housing and other solutions to the homeless crisis in Los Angeles. Homelessness: Confronting the Land-Use Challenges to Housing the Homeless, on March 4, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles, featured high-level speakers, panels and intensive workshops, and built upon ULI’s 2018 national technical advisory report.

“With nearly 60,000 individuals experiencing homelessness, and encampments proliferating, Los Angeles requires the most-effective possible solutions,” said ULI Los Angeles Land Use Leadership Council Co-Chair and Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP Partner, David P. Waite.

Opening remarks were by ULI Los Angeles Executive Director Marty Borko, and ULI Los Angeles Chair and Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing Managing Director Kevork A. Zoryan. Waite introduced keynote speaker CBRE President Lewis C. Horne, who engaged conversation with Dan Shea, Partner, Paradigm Investment Group, about successful private-sector initiatives in San Diego.

Framing the issue was Leigh M. Ferguson, Director of Economic Development, Downtown Development District of New Orleans, and Co-Chair of 2018 ULI Advisory Service Panel on Los Angeles homelessness.

The event featured two significant expert panels in the morning followed by breakout workshops for different policy and market sectors.

Panel 1: Defining Demographics: Who & Why.

Moderating these stories from the front lines of the crisis was Mike Alvidrez, External Ambassador & CEO Emeritus, Skid Row Housing Trust. The speakers addressed: What are the practical next steps in helping individuals navigate the transition to permanent housing? How can land-use professionals pair with faith communities, school districts, property managers, and neighborhoods to better understand the needs and opportunities?

• Benjamin F. Henwood, Associate Professor of Social Work, USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging, disclosed the latest County homeless count, including which groups are becoming unhoused quicker. Among the statistics: African Americans make up 8% of the county but 33% of the homeless. And almost ¼ of people living unsheltered became homeless for the first time in the past year.
• Kevin Murray (ret.), President & CEO, Weingart Center Association, exposed problems with recent Proposition H emergency funding for transitional developments: “We decided the 250-square-foot bedroom is the only solution. Housing vouchers only work for this. We in the affordable housing community need a multi-modal approach. Not everyone fits this model. The rooms I have to provide in my transitional housing development are better than my daughter’s dorm room. Now that we have the money from Prop H, we have to get out of our own way to have the correct policy to make it work.”
• Dhakshike Wickrema, Assistant Senior Deputy for Mental Health and Homeless Advocacy, Office of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, reported how rental assistance slowed as the need rose. “We housed more people than ever but there was still a rise in homelessness,” she said.
• Gary Blasi, Professor Emeritus, UCLA Law, addressed the issue of embracing interim camps: “10 years ago we would not have accepted interim camps because the can become inter-generational, like refugee camps. But the current situation is a crisis.”

Panel 2: Challenges of Creating Supply: Land Use & Finance

Tim Kawahara, Executive Director, UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, introduced this panel with an anecdote about demonstrating how difficult it is to get “buy-in” for increased density from neighborhood groups: The Westside Pavilion is becoming a huge Google job center. It is two blocks from the Expo Line. “This is the exact area that should be upzoned,” he said.

• Tricia Keane, LA City Planning, formerly with Councilman Mike Bonin, began with a positive announcement: The Venice Bridge Housing project faced much opposition but just opened. It serves 154 people. This former MTA bus yard is on Main Street, “closer to the ocean than Google’s headquarters. She emphasized that people calling the council office makes a difference in getting such projects approved.
• Angie Brooks, Managing Principal, Brooks + Scarpa, addressed housing typologies: “Nationwide only .08% of households are studio apartments, which does not align with the need” for these cheaper, smaller units. We need all types of alternative housing models. She advocated the repeal of the 1986, anti-growth, Proposition U. “Downzoning from Prop U lost 10,000 units.” On the problem with single-family R1 zoning, she said, “75% of City of L.A. is zoned R1. This has to change.” And she pointed out that “the same people who voted for housing are protesting housing in their neighborhoods. “If we can show people where the density will go and what the infrastructure will be, we can lead to better buy-in from the public.
• Charmaine Atherton, Senior Vice President, Community Development Banking, Bank of America – Financing, pointed to the acute and mounting crisis of funding for permanent supportive housing. “I am concerned about project-based Section 8 contracts being available to us in the future.” The method for assembling the capital for affordable-housing in general is a big part of the problem, she said. Every funding cycle is competitive with various applications that aren’t in-sync from a timing perspective, so assembling can take three years. Add the time for construction, which takes another two years, and crucial projects are taking five years to bring on-line. The $1.2B of Proposition HHH did help, she said, but that money went away quickly. As others have noted, the initiative resulted in 144 projects with 7,400 units, but the extended process, of which the HHH Funding is only a part, results in very high cost per unit.
• Michael Parks, President & CEO, Flyaway Homes: The company builds “by-right housing, using modular techniques to develop shared housing units, and use social impact equity or other private funding methods to do it.” Our solution is a replicable, scalable process across the entire development cycle…. By making the development side predictable, we can make the other sides predictable.
• Dora Leong Gallo, President & CEO, A Community of Friends: This is affordable housing development specifically for people with mental illness. “Community opposition is the biggest obstacle,” she said. “So we spend much time and resources meeting with political and community stakeholders. Opposition never goes away even when you get majority support.

The four-afternoon workshops addressed:

– Finding Sites
– Finance Solutions
– Expediting Land-Use Approvals
– Innovations in Design and Construction

The Innovations in Design and Construction workshop included some of the most significant leaders in innovating affordable housing. They included Dafna Kaplan, CEO of Cassette Construction Systems; Zach Prowda, Director of BAR Los Angeles, producing “housing at all scales and in all neighborhood”; Wade Killefer, founder of KFA; and Kwaku Gyabaah, Vice President, Clark Construction.

Killefer’s broad experience covers most housing types – including adaptive reuse of defunct buildings – and some technologies still being developed. One current project uses “butler buildings,” an inexpensive structural system often used with aircraft hangars that continues to evolve: “In five to 10 years, modular may be the only type we will use.”

Joining the workshop was Mike Alvidrez, CEO Emeritus, Skid Row Housing Trust, and moderator of the day’s first panel. He oversaw the development of Starr Apartments, the first modular project in DTLA. He pointed the out the costs and inefficiencies of manufactured housing, especially the lack of modular companies in the U.S. “If you had a factory that made modules all in one place it would work. But we’re not at a refined level yet. Meanwhile the estimated need is 1.5 million affordable units in California.”

Also participating was Erika Stubstad, Design Director with architecture, urbanism and landscape-design firm Studio One Eleven, currently producing a series of modular affordable housing projects around Los Angeles.

“Our group included developers, architects, contractors, and modular manufacturers all of whom expressed the concern with addressing nimbyism,” said Stubstad. “I proposed that we each find a way to stand up for one another to keep more positive voices of support for affordable and homeless housing within these public and private conversations.”

Among the other issues emerging from Stubstad’s group were the inefficiencies and unclear requirements of public utilities.

“Everyone is suffering from slow approvals,” she said. “Many of us have projects – sometimes with homeless people sleeping on the same street as an unopened community – just waiting for utilities to turn on the power. In the past year, we have collectively reached out to our public officials to create legislation to streamline the plan check process. We need to do the same with utilities. With inconsistent requirements from one property to another and disagreements between the utility design and installation teams, it’s not surprising there have been significant delays. We all want to play by the rules, but we also need to know exactly what those rules are.”

The event’s closing keynote, call to action and next steps featured Kayo Anderson, Minister of Culture, LA Community Action Network; and Daniel Dart, CEO, DEC Projects.

Jack Skelley serves on the Advisory Board of ULI Los Angeles and is president of JSPR Public Relations, Writing and Marketing.