Focus
LA's massive new rezoning plan could lead to the construction of 255,000 new housing units by 2029
Spectrum News – October 14
The city of Los Angeles is short nearly 500,000 units, according to the Los Angeles Housing Department. But that’s poised to change with the city's adoption of a new Plan to House LA, which could lead to the construction of more than 250,000 housing units within the next eight years. "The city of Los Angeles faces perhaps the worst housing crisis in the country," LA City Planning Assistant Betty Barberena said during a Planning Commission meeting last Thursday to adopt the plan. The plan includes an inventory of available sites for possible housing. While the city said there’s capacity to build all of the housing units that are needed, realistically 230,964 are likely to be constructed due to development impediments. Meeting the area's housing needs, for affordable units in particular, will require rezoning.
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News
8 new real estate leaders align with ULI net zero goal
Facility Executive – October 18
Eight new real estate leaders, representing over 2,400 buildings, plan to reduce the operational carbon emissions of their collective portfolio under operational control to net zero by the year 2050, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Greenprint Center for Building Performance recently announced. The new Greenprint members publicly aligning with the ULI net zero goal are: AEW Capital Management, Brookfield Properties, CP Group, Clarion Partners, Lendlease (by 2025), SL Green Realty Corp., Tishman Speyer, and WashREIT. Companies that previously made the commitment include: Allianz Real Estate, Boston Properties (by 2025), City Developments Limited, CommonWealth Partners, Heitman, Hudson Pacific Properties (by 2025), Jamestown LP, Kilroy Realty Corporation (by 2020), LaSalle Investment Management, Morgan Creek Ventures, MultiGreen, NEO, Nuveen Real Estate, PGIM Real Estate, Rudin Management Company, Savanna, and The Tower Companies.
San Francisco mayor proposes converting defunct parking lots into housing
KTVU – October 13
San Francisco's Mayor London Breed pitched a new plan Tuesday to help create more homes in the city. The proposed housing ordinance, called "Cars to Casas," or cars to houses, would ease the bureaucratic process of converting sites like gas stations or parking lots into multi-unit buildings. The city's planning department said the ordinance would still require buildings to meet height bulk and set back requirements, but would allow developers to divide those into more units, and would shave years off the process to convert sites from commercial to residential usage.
San Jose looks at ending downtown parking space minimums
KPIX – September 12
The city of San Jose is in the final months of its nearly three-year long effort to study a proposal to eliminate the parking mandates for new real estate developments in the downtown area. Currently, developers of commercial properties and multi-unit residential complexes are required to build a minimum number of parking spaces, dependent on such factors as square footage or number of bedrooms. At a special meeting of the city's Downtown Parking Board on Tuesday, staffers projected that by 2040, the number of downtown residents would double, and the number of workers downtown would see a two-and-a-half fold increase.
Santa Monica City Council approves Housing Element Plan for 8,895 new units by 2029
Santa Monica Daily Press – October 14
After 15 months of planning, dozens of community meetings, and a six hour long council discussion, the Santa Monica City Council approved the city's 6th Cycle Housing Element Plan. This document outlines the city's plan for creating 8,895 new housing units, of which 6,168 must be affordable, by 2029. The plan includes incentivizing housing development on parking lots, rezoning commercial boulevards to allow for 100 percent residential use of buildings, and committing city-owned sites for 100 percent affordable housing.
LA's new reflective streets bounce heat back into space
Next City – October 13
When the scientists aboard the International Space Station direct their thermal camera at Los Angeles, standing out from the sweltering red and orange blob is a crescent of cool, blueish-white deep in the San Fernando Valley. In this area, the pavement has been painted with a special reflective coating as part of an urban cooling project led by the city's Bureau of Street Services (Streets LA). The satellite thermal camera shows that the reflective paint not only lowers the temperature on the road but "produces a cooler neighborhood" in general. Ten streets in ten Los Angeles neighborhoods have been treated with this cooling paint, and the next phase of the project has just started.
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