The question of housing
The seeming ubiquity of the unsheltered and the unrelenting increase in property prices and rents comes back to the unreconcilable tension between a private property market (and land) and the human need for shelter. It does not seem possible, under current conditions, to house people as long as there are no regulations around profit and housing, or no provision of quality public housing for multiple income tranches. We know that even teachers, policepersons, healthcare workers and bus drivers can’t afford the current property market.
Under US market conditions, sufficient quality housing will not be produced in desirable locations, much less in locations that will ensure that everyone can have access to public transportation, good schools, jobs and more. Current residents fight any kind of densification, even low rise, and distributed commercial services. The result in LA is that vast swaths remain both car dependent and low density. Attempts to densify have resulted in the piling of giant, largely unattractive and high rent apartment buildings along transportation corridors (with loads of parking) that are still dominated by automobiles (going ever faster, as traffic deaths show us), and anemic commercial. Fortress walls surround the still sacrosanct and unaffordable single-family zone, though there are a few ADUs diversifying the homogeneity. Proposition 13 in CA further calcified our current situation, and property has become for many, the only asset they have, not savings. Hence a fear of change, a fear of loss of wealth (despite the irony that there is no place to go if one wanted to capitalize on one’s accumulated wealth in one’s house, everywhere has become expensive it seems).
Los Angeles is now proposing to use city-owned properties for shelter and permanent housing for the unsheltered, parcels distributed across the landscape in a haphazard way. A city property here and there. This approach will likely incur vocal opposition in those places where they are found (like so many other efforts to find locations for the unsheltered, or those in need of assistance), unless in areas where no one would want to live.
Between boulevard densification (the path of least resistance at the time in the late 1980s) and the sad opportunism that remnant public parcels provide, one wonders who is looking out for city making, for diverse and safe neighborhoods, for livable spaces. Instead, our patchwork approach is reinforcing segregation by income, by race, by age, and by transportation mode.
It is obvious that the private property market has failed miserably in providing healthy, decent places to live, in creating neighborhoods where people can walk to services, where people can afford to live with dignity. Places like Singapore or Vienna can manage this, but only because not all land is privatized, and there is much – and sought after -- public housing. The catastrophic situation we find ourselves in today means we need something dramatically new. I suggest that we begin by acknowledging that a private land market will never produce affordable, diverse and safe neighborhoods, with local parks and distributed commercial commerce that has rents that encourage small businesses. Thus, moving toward greater public land ownership is necessary, and housing built by the public, for the public. There is a lot of space in the region for more housing, especially if we can begin to build medium density housing, up to 3 floors, are clever with interstitial spaces, create opportunities for small scale neighborhood commercial, and are willing to give up most parking, and build robust bike infrastructure. This could be the city of the twenty first century, convivial, lower energy consuming, housing diverse populations in all senses of the term, and using the region’s land as its commonwealth.
