Affordable Housing Only Zone

For the past six years I’ve been an actor/writer with the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), the oldest arts organization in Skid Row, and a docent with the Skid Row History Museum and Archive, a project of LAPD.

As we were developing The Back Nine (it’s the final nine holes of golf where the real decisions get made), a playable nine hole miniature golf course where each hole taught a different lesson about zoning, across the street from the Museum and Archive the Department of City Planning opened up their week long pop up for DTLA 2040. This was October 2016.

DTLA 2040 is the name for the process of updating the Downtown Community Plan. Community Plans set Land Use Policy with the zoning tools to implement the policy.

In June 2017, the Skid Row Now and 2040 coalition came together to engage City Planning and the Office of Jose Huizar. It was expected DTLA 2040 would be completed in 2019. Then it was expected DTLA 2040 would be completed in 2020. Then it was expected DTLA 2040 would be completed in 2021. Now it’s expected DTLA 2040 will be completed in 2022. I’m waiting for someone to hand me my honorary Masters in Urban Planning.

The LA Alliance for Human Rights lawsuit was filed in March 2020 against the City and County. Federal Judge David Carter was assigned to the case.

In April 2021, Judge Carter issued a Preliminary Injunction that would have effectively dismantled in Skid Row what’s known as the Policy of Containment. Months later upon appeal the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the Injunction.

Judge Carter then gave the LA Alliance the green light to re-file and they did this past November 3rd. This is from their 113 page filing:

“The most obvious and overt example of the continuing Containment Policy is the DTLA 2040 plan, recently approved by the Planning Commission and formally recommended to City Council, again with significant advocacy and support from groups like Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN). In creating the new plan for Downtown Los Angeles, the City created an entirely new zoning designation just for the Skid Row area, permitting only homeless housing developments. This the only such area zoned for this specific purpose in the entire City and County (and in fact the nation). This plan re-codifies the Containment Policy and flies in the face of decades of research demonstrating the harmful effects of centralizing poverty. Under both Federal and California law, cities are required to “Affirmatively Further Fair Housing” which includes “Replacing Segregated Living Patterns with Truly Integrated and Balanced Living Patterns” and “Transforming Racially and Ethnically Concentrated Areas of Poverty (R/ECAP) into Areas of Opportunity” such as providing “economic development strategies,” “prioritizing investment,” and “promoting mixed income development coupled with strong anti-displacement protections.” Instead the DTLA 2040 plan maintains the segregated living pattern of Skid Row and reinforces the most racially and ethnically concentrated area of poverty in the entire county (and likely the nation). Because of the Containment Policy, there has been an obvious disinvestment in the area with extremely limited or no access to grocery stores, pharmacies, drug stores, restaurants, transit, retail, and job opportunities, and an abundance of crime, violence, fires, death, and disease. With DTLA2040 the Containment Policy is reinforced, and homeless people are corralled and contained into a specified area of the city where they are effectively abandoned.”

That might have sounded really impressive unless you see the Achilles Heel and all you have to do is poke it for the entire argument to collapse. Here it is: “…created an entirely new zoning designation just for the Skid Row area, permitting only homeless housing developments.”

The “entirely new zoning designation” is the Affordable Housing Only Zone, known by its technical name IX1.

IX1 does not allow “only homeless housing developments” in Skid Row. It forbids Market Rate housing.

DTLA 2040 (Department of City Planning) created IX1 out of the extremely understandable concern articulated over and over by Skid Row that opening up Skid Row to Market Rate development will displace the residents of Skid Row. This wouldn’t happen immediately (though it might have if the Preliminary Injunction went through), but that’s the whole point — what will Downtown look like by the year 2040?

Affordable Housing includes several different income levels and so “reinforces the most racially and ethnically concentrated area of poverty” isn’t a legitimate part of the IX1 discussion. The Moderate income level in Affordable Housing for a household of one is $64,900.