In recent years the State of California and the City of Los Angeles have passed multiple new zoning laws and created numerous other programs that streamline the entitlement and permitting process in order to facilitate the development of new residential units. This has created a new paradigm in the development world that until less than a decade ago mostly viewed residential development through the lens of “by right.” Today, real estate professionals can look at a particular parcel and navigate through a number of options on how to build it, using various state-wide, city-wide, and neighborhood-wide, zoning laws. To add to the discussion is the significant new landscape of developing affordable units, either as part of the City of Los Angeles’ Transit Oriented Community menu’s, or, by building a 100% affordable project to help solve homelessness and other affordability issues surrounding housing.
This program will enumerate most of the major state-wide and local changes to zoning that override previous “by right” zoning laws and discuss the overall application of each, taking a look at this topic from the standpoint of both market-rate and affordable housing.