LCI Streamlining Plan

The Mayor’s Housing Innovation Advisory

The Need: There is a broad consensus for the need for streamlining and cutting red tape for housing because it can significantly reduce the cost of housing so more projects “pencil out” and can get built. LA City and County has several programs to reduce delays and red tape for small multi-family buildings, but we can go even further by looking to model cities, states and countries where it is standard to take 60-90 days to approve a project (Salt Lake City, Utah is a model for best practices).

The Innovation: The streamlining plan is to create a Mayor’s Housing Innovation Advisory to further reduce delays, based on and inspired by a successful program from the Los Angeles Unified School District.  This Streamlining Plan was created by a long-time LA City Planner, who implemented a similar program with LAUSD and was able to approve dozens of schools in the early 2000s after decades of paralysis. The core idea is to bring the 10 relevant agencies to the table under the Mayor to work out problems in real time, and address the friction so housing can be built as fast as possible, using model cities and states as a metric to hold ourselves accountable. 

This level of streamlining can apply to housing that Los Angeles wants and prioritizes, such as net zero carbon buildings, high quality, family-sized units, affordable rentals and attainable home ownership, located where zero carbon mobility is possible, and aligned with AFFH. It can be combined with Standard Plans to create a best-in-the-country process to urban planning and planning and approvals. 

Mayor’s Housing Innovation Advisory will also be an iterative group that seeks to reduce friction and waste at every step, constantly improving until it reaches a “systems approach” level where it runs smoothly, efficiently, with high quality measurable outcomes that meet the latent demand for housing. 

The Goal: To combine Standard Plans with best-in-the-country approvals. 

Background: Case Study – LAUSD: For 30 years, LAUSD was unable to build new schools despite skyrocketing enrollment. There were multiple reasons – but when billions of dollars of bonds were approved by the voters, the Mayor created a Director of School Facilities position and assigned the planner to run it. She brought representatives from all of the involved city agencies to the table to work through problems in real time. The result: all schools were built quickly and efficiently with no impediments caused by the city of Los Angeles.

Case Study – Pre-Approved ADUs in LA: The city of Los Angeles has “pre-approved” architectural designs for stand-alone backyard ADUs. They are listed on the LADBS website. This eliminates the entitlement process, and cuts down on the approval process.  

Case Study – Vienna Social Housing: Vienna is held up as one of the best cities to build housing – both subsidized and unsubsidized. The key success factors for Social Housing: once a site is identified, the city has a process for stakeholders and experts to choose a design, and then pre-entitles and pre-approves plans and issues a Ready-to-Issue permit (RTI) – so developers simply bid on building the project, and do not spend any resources on approvals. This brings costs down by 50%.  LA could replicate this is Standard Plans that are pre-entitled and batch-approved; and for public land, issues an RTI.

Case Study – a Model Design: A final model to look at (which has been used all over the world) is for a city to pick one style – height, vernacular, and a specific architectural drawing – for the entire street. Every parcel owner is given the design and encouraged to use it. This brings down the costs because the city has already entitled and approved the building. It also allows for high-quality designs to be reused. It allows for the design of an entire street, and when it is high-quality, people can find it calming, inviting, and broadly appealing. This creates broad stakeholder support for housing, and high quality homes for new residents. Many of the most beautiful streets in the world are pre-approved designs – such as Paris and Brooklyn Brownstones.  

A Model for LA: LA can combine these Case Studies under the Housing Element Program #131 – Livable Communities. 

(1) Mayor’s Housing Innovation Advisory: The Mayor will issue an Executive Directive to form an Advisory Board with two members from each of the city agencies that deal with housing construction. The Advisory will expedite the process, while also partnering with builders, unions, the city departments, and stakeholders to further streamline the approval and permitting process – with the goal for Los Angeles to be “best in the nation” when it comes to building in terms of cost, speed, affordability of units, safety, quality, sustainability and livability — taking best practices from across the country and the world. 

(2) Standard Plans: The city works with communities to designate a variety of designs as Standard Plans. Alternatively, the neighborhood can hold a design competition. The chosen design(s) are then pre-entitled by the city for every parcel on the street. Standard Plans can be required to include critical city and state priorities: net zero carbon, family sized units, high quality, affordable rentals and attainable home ownership, aligned with AFFH, located to allow zero carbon mobility (walking, transit, bikes, etc). 

The process guarantees approvals under 90 days.

How it Will Work: The Mayor’s Advisory will resolve conflicts among departments and eliminate unnecessary “stops.” The Mayor’s Advisory is an action-oriented entity to consolidate all of the requests, hearings, and requirements involving the ten key departments into one hearing with either the General Managers from all of the ten departments, or their top deputies, present and empowered to make final decisions.  Relevant Departments:

• Department of Planning
• Department of Building and Safety 
• Department of Engineering (DOE)
• LADWP
• LAFD
• Building & SafetyHCID
• City Attorney
• Parks and Rec
• Public Works

The Results: This combined approach brings stakeholders into the process at the beginning, building a pro-housing consensus and eliminating friction and political pushback. The cost of building a project could  be reduced by ⅔, while increasing quality. By eliminating excess costs, red tape and delays, the city can increase the number of projects that “pencil out” and can get built in more areas across the city.