Livable Places is also redeveloping the W.P. Fuller Building, a 131,000 square foot 1920's era, cast-in-place concrete industrial building, into 102 for-sale live/work and loft housing units in Lincoln Heights, a historic neighborhood of Los Angeles just north of downtown. Fuller Lofts is located within a short walking distance from the Lincoln Heights/Cypress Park Metro Gold Line station, which will incorporate commercial workspaces in the basement as well as a new parking structure. Construction on Fuller Lofts is expected to begin in mid 2006.

Both of the developments are aimed at first-time homebuyers, with many homes reserved for low- and moderate-income households.

Working for More Livable Public Policies

In January 2005, the Los Angeles Housing Department launched their website, “Building Healthy Communities 101: A primer on growth and housing development for L.A.’s neighborhoods,” which was developed by Livable Places and Karin Pally Associates.

The Mayoral election, and subsequent change of administrations, overshadowed local policy making in Los Angeles. Livable Places worked with other advocates to survey the six leading mayoral candidates on homeless and affordable housing issues and publicized the results in English and Spanish on-line and in 15,000 copies of a four-page pamphlet.

Livable Places continued to play a key role in the LA Inclusionary Zoning Coalition whose purpose is to get the City of Los Angeles to adopt a requirement that developers make some homes in every new residential development affordable. Unfortunately the proposal got bogged down first in public hearings – 17 public hearings in all have been held by the City Council, the Area Planning Commissions and the Affordable Housing Commission – and then in the administration change at City Hall. Advocates are still hopeful that with the new Mayor’s interest in creating affordable housing that the City will adopt an inclusionary requirement in the coming year.

Near the end of the year Livable Places reconvened the Alliance for a Livable Los Angeles, which Livable Places had launched with Environmental Defense in 2002. The purpose of the alliance is to advocate for more affordable housing, transportation options and neighborhood open space and ensure that residents have a say in decision-making processes, especially low-income residents who are too often left out. In March 2005, many Alliance members had pulled together an open letter to then-Mayor Hahn asking him to hold off on hiring a new Planning Director and expressing support for a broad range of livability principles. Mayor Villaraigosa was in the process of selecting a new planning director at the end of 2005.

Changes in the California State density bonus law are causing local governments across the state to update their local density bonus ordinances. Livable Places has worked closely with the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing to analyze, make recommendations for improving, and testify at public hearings on two separate proposals by the City and County of Los Angeles. Both are expected to be finalized and adopted in 2006.

The boom in converting empty office buildings to residential lofts breathed new life into downtown Los Angeles. But with nearly all of the vacant buildings downtown somewhere in the process of being converted, developers began to buy occupied office buildings and residential hotels where long-time downtown residents, including homeless people typically live. When the City proposed substantial zoning concessions to further “incentivize” market-rate residential development downtown, Livable Places and downtown housing and homeless advocates pointed out the need for incentives for affordable housing which is not being built, rather than more market-rate housing which is booming and doesn’t need more incentives. The City’s proposal was stalled at the end of the year as Livable Places worked with other advocates to craft a more comprehensive city policy for ensuring a mixed-income community downtown.

Comings and Goings

Jennifer Samson, who had been interning at Livable Places, became a full-time Development Associate working on real estate development. Jennifer Allen joined Livable Places in September as a full-time Policy Associate. Jaclyn Cardozo, our administrative assistant, left Los Angeles to try her hand at living in Europe with the hopes of opening a business there. Many thanks to the students who interned at Livable Places in 2005: Vanessa Luna, University of Southern California; Amanda Gerke, University of California at Los Angeles; Marla Alvarez, University of Southern California; Katie Peterson, University of Southern California; and Jason Kligier, New York University.

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