A few months ago, my apartment building manager knocked on our door, looking for help. In her Eastern European accent that I still haven’t been able to pinpoint, she asked if I could attend a land use board meeting to tout the virtues of our apartment building. “Tell them that you enjoy living in the building. Also say that you have no problem parking, and that everyone has a spot that wants one.” As a land use lawyer on sabbatical, this peaked my interest. I decided to probe for what was really going on under the surface. “The city is giving us a hard time,” she replied. To me, this meant she wasn’t quite sure what was happening.
On the day of the meeting, the manager collected me, and led me to a silver luxury SUV, and introduced me to the owners of my building, a pleasant couple in their sixties, clearly New York transplants who left for the sun of Los Angeles long ago. As they told the story on the way to the meeting, in between their bickering as to what was “the real story,” I learned that back in the seventies they had decided to subdivide a few of the larger units in the building, something they, of course inadvertently, neglected to tell the city. The added units created additional parking requirements that they could not supply with the spaces they had originally allocated for the building. A city building inspector, during his periodic investigation, had discovered the oversight. “What they really want is an affordable housing set-aside, which is what they can demand whenever an older apartment building is improved,” the husband informed me. “They can do whatever they want,” the wife added.
When we reached the meeting room that morning, we found a single planner stationed at the head of the space. The owners’ lawyer was there, and he filled me in on some of the nuances of practicing land use law in Los Angeles. The multiplicity of boards across fragmented Los Angeles County, the politics of working with city officials, and the other day-to-day hurdles that I remembered fondly from my days in New Jersey. The hearing was a straightforward affair, and the owners gained their approvals (yes, approvals, since they did the same thing at another building they owned), subject to their affordable housing concessions – the pound of flesh that the city was after. I like to think I played a small role, confirming that parking was not really an issue (despite an angry neighbor who voiced his view to the contrary – there’s always one). With a triumphant air, I congratulated the attorney, idly suggesting, “I wish they were all that easy.” The attorney responded, “Easy? Well, not if you count the year of work it took to get to this point.”
At then it hit me: the memories of the real work it takes to navigate through the process. The back and forth, give and take procedure behind the scenes is critical in putting on a good show at the public hearing. If this initial ground work is not there, then you face the wrath of an ornery board. Of course, this luxury of setting the foundation, and getting a board behind a development, is not always possible. Pubic hearing requirements often forbid board members from discussing pending projects out of the earshot of the general citizenry. I have distinct memories of applications that dragged for over a year because of the stops and starts of the approval process. Board chairs wielding power to stall applications at a particular meeting if they don’t meet their very specific requirements.
But my indoctrination in Los Angeles land use reminded me of the beauty of the system, and the personalities and politics that drive it. Sure, it’s a maddening process. Yes, it suffers from the need for a more regional oversight. But is there a better way to do it? Does it have to be a little “messy” for it to work at all? I vacillate on this question, especially when things go south on an application for seemingly silly reasons. But this is the nature of land use, especially since it can often be a very emotional affair. The owners of my apartment building lived and breathed every day with their applications for nearly two years. This emotion, oddly enough, has been a great source of drama in fiction, particularly the movies and television. This is where we turn next time.
On the day of the meeting, the manager collected me, and led me to a silver luxury SUV, and introduced me to the owners of my building, a pleasant couple in their sixties, clearly New York transplants who left for the sun of Los Angeles long ago. As they told the story on the way to the meeting, in between their bickering as to what was “the real story,” I learned that back in the seventies they had decided to subdivide a few of the larger units in the building, something they, of course inadvertently, neglected to tell the city. The added units created additional parking requirements that they could not supply with the spaces they had originally allocated for the building. A city building inspector, during his periodic investigation, had discovered the oversight. “What they really want is an affordable housing set-aside, which is what they can demand whenever an older apartment building is improved,” the husband informed me. “They can do whatever they want,” the wife added.
When we reached the meeting room that morning, we found a single planner stationed at the head of the space. The owners’ lawyer was there, and he filled me in on some of the nuances of practicing land use law in Los Angeles. The multiplicity of boards across fragmented Los Angeles County, the politics of working with city officials, and the other day-to-day hurdles that I remembered fondly from my days in New Jersey. The hearing was a straightforward affair, and the owners gained their approvals (yes, approvals, since they did the same thing at another building they owned), subject to their affordable housing concessions – the pound of flesh that the city was after. I like to think I played a small role, confirming that parking was not really an issue (despite an angry neighbor who voiced his view to the contrary – there’s always one). With a triumphant air, I congratulated the attorney, idly suggesting, “I wish they were all that easy.” The attorney responded, “Easy? Well, not if you count the year of work it took to get to this point.”
At then it hit me: the memories of the real work it takes to navigate through the process. The back and forth, give and take procedure behind the scenes is critical in putting on a good show at the public hearing. If this initial ground work is not there, then you face the wrath of an ornery board. Of course, this luxury of setting the foundation, and getting a board behind a development, is not always possible. Pubic hearing requirements often forbid board members from discussing pending projects out of the earshot of the general citizenry. I have distinct memories of applications that dragged for over a year because of the stops and starts of the approval process. Board chairs wielding power to stall applications at a particular meeting if they don’t meet their very specific requirements.
But my indoctrination in Los Angeles land use reminded me of the beauty of the system, and the personalities and politics that drive it. Sure, it’s a maddening process. Yes, it suffers from the need for a more regional oversight. But is there a better way to do it? Does it have to be a little “messy” for it to work at all? I vacillate on this question, especially when things go south on an application for seemingly silly reasons. But this is the nature of land use, especially since it can often be a very emotional affair. The owners of my apartment building lived and breathed every day with their applications for nearly two years. This emotion, oddly enough, has been a great source of drama in fiction, particularly the movies and television. This is where we turn next time.
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