An eight unit apartment will be demolished to create a loading ramp for a proposed eleven story hotel complex at Sunset and Doheny. The Planning Commission allowed the demolition of this rent controlled building as part of its approval of the massive 9040 Sunset Project without a word of dissent, indeed without any discussion of the issue.
In a City that loudly proclaims that protection of tenants is a core value, this cavalier betrayal of residents reveals a strange fissure in our community’s supposed commitment to preserving affordable housing.
When it comes to the issue of housing, the most important home in West Hollywood is the one you live in. The issue of being able to keep your apartment was the primary reason we incorporated as a city twenty five years ago.
In face of skyrocketing rents, tenants quickly embraced the notion that having your own city would mean that the new city could impose meaningful tenant protections.
In the last few years, tenant insecurity has been at a all time high. While the current economic situation has stalled residential development, even as late as 2007 scores of tenants were threatened with eviction as the City encouraged the development of luxury condos to replace our aging rental housing stock.
While the wolf is not immediately at the door, the public comments made at the General Plan community meeting in West Hollywood Park last year revealed an ongoing concern that long term tenants fear for the future of their homes.
While our City has a progressive reputation, largely based upon our Council’s loudly trumpeted commitment to affordable housing, the “rights” of tenants have historically been sacrificed to revenue generating development.
Now that the majority of our City Council members have morphed from being tenants to home owners, their sympathy for protecting middle and working class tenants has sharply eroded.
The attitude at City Hall seems to be “we got ours, why haven’t you done the same.”
At the first meeting of the newly minted General Plan Committee last month, the consultant told the group that West Hollywood had built nearly a thousand new housing units since 2000.
What the consultant failed to mention is that the City had lost approximately 600 rent controlled units during the same period. This is not a great statistic if you are a tenant reliant upon rent control.
Like most residents, I always assumed that the City would put a premium on protecting West Hollywood.
I remember meeting with a group of tenants from Flores whose 1920’s Spanish apartment was slated to be converted to a bed and breakfast. While few of the tenants would qualify as “low income,” most of the tenants were middle class working people living paycheck to paycheck, who relied upon the stability of having rent controlled units.
They told me that they had met with the other four City Council offices and no one had been able to help them. Indeed the last office they met with discouraged them from even meeting with me.
I immediately figured we could save the tenants simply by amending our zoning code to prohibit the conversion of multi-unit buildings into bed and breakfast facilities. Seemed like a simple and clear cut solution.
But nothing is simple on the third floor of City Hall. Only tenant Sal Guarriello backed my measure and I really had to work to get the third vote. Most Council members opined that they loved bed and breakfasts
Eventually I brought them around and we stopped the evictions, but the fact that I had to pressure them to do something for the good of tenants was disconcerting.
Another sad example to the Council’s lack of commitment occurred in 1993, when Staff had proposed a “commercial overlay” along Santa Monica Boulevard, moving the commercial zoning boundaries two lots into the residential area.
This would allow for large scale development on the east side but also would have resulted in the demolition of hundreds of rent controlled units. The City’s appointed an “East Side Task Force” to investigate the issue.
When the item was presented to City Council, Staff buried the task force’s recommendations at the end of the report. Staff had recommended adoption of the over lay despite the fact that the community task force was vehemently against the proposal, citing the demolition of housing.
Ultimately the City Council rejected Staff’s recommendation on a three to two vote, with John Heilman and Abbe Land, the supposed “renter’s rights warriors,” voting in favor of the over lay.
In 2007 after months of denial that West Hollywood faced a crisis due to the demolition of rent controlled apartments to build luxury condos, Council members John Duran and Jeff Prang introduced a moratorium on the demolition of multi-unit buildings.
Abbe Land was disdainful and remarked that the problem was over blown. John Heilman aggressively opposed the measure. Only when it became apparent that Sal Guarriello would vote for the proposal did they change their tune. Ultimately the moratorium was approved.
But when the moratorium expired in 2009, the City only adopted cosmetic measures to “protect tenants.” Only the current economic situation has temporarily halted the destruction of more rent controlled units.
While the loss of eight rent controlled units on Doheny may seem minor, I doubt if the residents of the building feel the same. Their lives will be completely disrupted and long term tenants will find it impossible to find affordable rents in West Hollywood.
So the steady drip by drip erosion of our housing stock continues and it is not offset by the creation of “affordable units” created by the City. Most West Hollywood tenants don’t think this situation is critical, at least not until their building is slated for demolition.
Twenty five years ago our City was founded on tenant’s rights. We need to re-capture the idealistic sense of community and collective welfare that brought about incorporation of West Hollywood.
The irony of the City’s claim of a thousand new housing units being built is that hundreds of them have remained vacant as the market for luxury condos has collapsed.
We may actually be facing a net loss of housing until these units are sold and occupied.
We need to see a change of attitude at City Hall so that the tragic loss of the homes of our residents is stopped.
The constant chase for development dollars by the City represents a Faustian pact and the residents are paying the price for purported “progress.”
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