I still have that tagger instinct to leave a mark in conspicuous & faraway places.
#APACA2017 #PlanningMonth #EmbeddedPlanning #Sacramento #LosAngeles
We Cannot Plan From Our Desks!
Category Archives: Planning
Designing Housing Solutions workshop @ #APACA2017
California’s housing crisis is at a breaking point. We need new ideas and strategies — now! Planners, urbanists, policymakers, designers, students: you’re invited to this innovative workshop where we’ll tap into your memories and experiences to design new housing solutions.
Designing Housing Solutions
2017 APA CA Conference Sacramento
Tuesday, Sept 26, 2017
8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/311978272598475
OVERVIEW: The workshop will tap into the diverse experience and expertise of attending planners to collaborate and design comprehensive housing solutions. The facilitated exercise will bring together a diversity of perspectives to explore new housing typologies that expand choice, encourage affordability, and specifically address the risk of informal dwelling units.
ABSTRACT: The lack of affordable housing in California has reached crisis levels. Among the many consequences is the rash of hazardous incidents happening in unpermitted dwellings. As the tragic warehouse fire in Oakland recently illustrated, unpermitted housing happens across the State at various scales. With no sign of housing demand softening, there is an urgent need to investigate housing supply. While Los Angeles’ recent Proposition JJJ creates a de facto inclusionary zoning policy, no blanket approach exists to address the regulatory, cultural, design, and financing issues associated with housing policy.
The Designing Housing Solutions workshop will facilitate two interactive engagement activities where professionals design and prototype new and diverse housing typologies (co-housing, farm worker housing, artist housing, garage conversions, senior housing, ADUs, etc). The workshop creates a safe space for attending planners to nurture ideas, communicate through storytelling and collaborate. Participants will engage through memory, art and play to better understand themselves and the State’s housing assets, needs and challenges.
This input will launch a conversation that will inform future research, as well as generate ideas that address spatial values impacting housing’s urban design, zoning and planning. The workshop will consider how shared ideas can help create more inclusive spaces.
FACILITATORS:
◦ Gunnar Hand, Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, LLP
◦ Jonathan P. Bell, County of Los Angeles, Dept. of Regional Planning
◦ James Rojas, Place It! & Latino Urban Forum
◦ Fay Darmawi, Affordable Housing Finance and Consulting
◦ Connie Chung, County of Los Angeles, Dept. of Regional Planning
◦ Cathy E. Creswell, Creswell Consulting
#APACA2017
How to fix Pasadena’s Accessory Dwelling Unit ordinance
Read my latest public comment letter to Pasadena City Council on the proposed amendments to the ADU ordinance.
The Council caved to NIMBY pressure and rejected the Pasadena Planning Department’s proposal for a more equitable ordinance.
More to come.
ADU Ordinance Update-Public Comment 19 June 2017-Jonathan P Bell
The invisibility of code enforcement in planning praxis: The case of informal housing in Southern California
Pretty cool to be published old school style: in print!
Read the latest from me and Jake Wegmann on #InformalHousing in Los Angeles: “The Invisibility of Code Enforcement in Planning Praxis: The Case of Informal Housing in Southern California,” (2016) FOCUS Journal, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Dept of City & Regional Planning
Abstract: More and better engagement with working class neighborhoods and communities of color are urgent imperatives for the planning profession as the United States transitions to a “majority minority” population. Code enforcement personnel are already doing much of this work, normally in a much more collaborative and less heavy-handed manner than the name of their profession would suggest. However, at present the planning profession largely holds code enforcement at arms’ length. Using the example of the informal housing market in Southern California—managed on a daily basis by code enforcement officers, yet largely unaddressed by planners—we draw on survey and interview data and our own professional experiences to make four propositions about code enforcement work. These are that code enforcement work is unusually cumbersome; it is chronically understaffed; its personnel cope by working reactively rather than proactively; and the profession suffers low prestige as a result. We argue that ending the estrangement between code enforcement and planning would offer numerous benefits to the latter, including inculcating cultural competence in planners through “learning by doing” and working at street level, and injecting sorely needed “community data” into efforts to address vexing issues such as housing unaffordability.
An Open Letter to the Pasadena City Council Urging a Comprehensive Overhaul of the Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance
Read my “Open Letter to the Pasadena City Council Urging a Comprehensive Overhaul of the Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance,” published on UrbDeZine.
The Pasadena City Council will consider an amended ordinance tomorrow, Monday, Jan 30th at a 7pm public hearing. The amendment does the bare minimum to comply with the state’s relaxed standards for building an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) in your backyard. While the Pasadena Planning Commission removed some of the problematic standards, many “poison pills,” as I call them, remain in place.
Among the many ridiculous hurdles codified into the ordinance is a minimum lot size of 15,000 square feet to build an ADU in a backyard. So unless you’re a wealthy estate owner, no granny flats here. The inequality is real af.
The original Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance was broken from the start. The amended ordinance remains unfair and unfeasible. There’s no date for the “anticipated comprehensive review” of the ordinance as part of Pasadena’s Housing Element Implementation Program. So my call for a comprehensive overhaul of the ADU ordinance remains unfulfilled.
http://losangeles.urbdezine.com/2017/01/29/pasadena-overhaul-second-dwelling-unit-ordinance/
Latino Informal Housing session featured in APA Latinos & Planning December 2016 newsletter
After many years of ignoring unpermitted housing in the U.S., the planning field is finally coming around. The *unaffordable* housing crisis and rising incidents of fires in unpermitted dwellings pushed this issue into the spotlight. California found the audacity to pass AB 2299 and SB 1069 facilitating construction of safe and legal accessory dwelling units in all local jurisdictions. At long last, even the strictest Second Unit Ordinance laws are getting overhauled.
And over at the American Planning Association, I’m finally seeing a genuine interest in understanding the on the ground realities of informal housing. Not only did APA CA host my group’s Latino informal housing session at the 2016 conference in Pasadena, APA’s Latinos and Planning Division invited us to write a “Conference Spotlight” piece summarizing the session and its outcomes. My resulting article is published in the APA Latinos and Planning December 2016 newsletter. It’ll be of interest to planners, housing advocates, code enforcement inspectors, academics, and others working in the realm of housing and planning.
We’ll continue to elevate the informal housing debate going forward.
An Open Letter to the Pasadena Planning Commission Urging a Comprehensive Overhaul of the Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance
On December 14, 2016, the Pasadena Planning Commission will hold a public hearing to consider an amendment to the Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance. The update is required to comply with the relaxed standards in AB 2299 and SB 1069.
As proposed, the revised Ordinance achieves only minimum compliance with the new housing laws while leaving in place several “poison pill” criteria that discourage new accessory units. This is unacceptable.
Read my Open Letter to the Pasadena Planning Commission urging an overhaul of the Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance [published at UrbDeZine.com]
http://losangeles.urbdezine.com/2016/12/12/an-open-letter-to-the-pasadena-planning-commission-and-city-planning-staff-demanding-a-comprehensive-update-to-the-second-dwelling-unit-ordinance/
South Central Los Angeles: History and meaning in the historically proper place name
By: Jonathan P. Bell, @c1typlann3r
Decades ago the @latimes uncritically accepted L.A. City’s “South LA” rebranding. Recall that L.A. City’s elected officials wanted to sanitize images of “unrest” that they claimed were associated with “South Central.” So they dropped “Central”… brilliant 🙄. The L.A. Times went along with it wholesale.
We hadn’t seen “South Central L.A.” in an L.A. Times headline for many years until Angel Jennings’s Nov. 22nd story on #TheReef. While it’s in reference to the Historic South-Central district within L.A. City, seeing the historically proper place name was still exciting for many South Central Los Angeles advocates. It was one long overdue step away from revisionist history.
#SouthCentral #LosAngeles #OccasionalCritique #InstaEssay#MicroEssay
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNh-XSihMg7/?taken-by=c1typlann3r
South Central Los Angeles: Embrace, don’t erase, local history
By: Jonathan P. Bell, @c1typlann3r
Remember that this geography is still, and will always be, South Central Los Angeles. The “South LA” rebranding was City of LA’s attempt at revisionist history after the 1992 Uprising (much like the City’s embarrassing 2014 “SOLA” proposal that’s thankfully fizzled).
Invest in place erasure and hope the world forgets: that went nowhere. Stakeholders young and older still call it South Central LA. History matters.
And, for the record, none of the City’s revisionism ever applied in the unincorporated communities: Florence-Firestone, Willowbrook, East Rancho Dominguez, West Rancho Dominguez, West Athens, and Lennox.
💛✊🏽 [Location: Slauson Av @ Hooper Av]
#SouthCentral #LosAngeles #OccasionalCritique #InstaEssay #MicroEssay
Latino Informal Housing panel at APA-CA 2016 in Pasadena, Sat 10/22/16
Interested in informal housing? Los Angeles? Latino Urbanism? Attend our talk, “Crafting mi casa: Lessons of Latino Informal Housing Practice in Los Angeles” at the 2016 APA California Conference: Crafting our Future – The Art of Planning in Pasadena, Saturday, October 22, 2016.
Mark Vallianatos, James Rojas, Vinit Mukhija, and I will examine the visual, spatial, policy and regulatory implications this practice has in planning multicultural Los Angeles.
https://planning.org/events/activity/9107473/
OVERVIEW: Latino homeowners renovate their homes based on imagination, needs, and know-how — sometimes without proper permits. This cultural practice has been happening for decades, producing some of the most innovative housing typologies and construction practices, and redefining the basic dwelling unit in Los Angeles. Despite its ingenuity, Latino informal housing development runs into considerable urban planning obstacles. Rigid municipal codes imbued with middle class values render informal units illegal. Rising numbers of tragedies resulting from fires in substandard garage conversions underscore legitimate safety concerns. NIMBYism stifles efforts to build accessory units in Single-Family Residential zones. And in the midst of an acute housing crisis, restrictive zoning and land use laws both discourage and obstruct opportunities to build legally in communities. Planners can learn a lot from the lessons of Latino informal housing practice. This panel will examine the visual, spatial, policy, and regulatory implications Latino informal housing practice has in planning multicultural Los Angeles County.
AICP CM 1.5 units, Course No. 9107473
#APACA2016 #LosAngeles #InformalHousing
Informal Housing and Safety Risks to Occupants: The Case of the Aviles Sisters
Capt. Patrick Wills and I thank everyone who attended our talk today, “Informal Housing and Safety Risks to Occupants: The Case of the Aviles Sisters.”
Please read up on the City of Long Beach’s Aviles Law and ACR 32 addressing unpermitted housing in California.
#InformalHousing #CityofLongBeach #SouthCentral #LosAngeles #ADU #AvilesLaw #CodeEnforcement
ADU ordinance overhaul in Pasadena has begun
TONIGHT: I joined housing advocates for a frank discussion of accessory dwelling units and informal housing with Pasadena Planning Director David Reyes and staff. Shout out to City of Pasadena Planning Department. The struggle to enact a fairer ADU ordinance has begun.
Latino Informal Housing panel at 2016 APA CA in Pasadena
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