The City of Los Angeles is launching a new program to encourage the construction of starting homes on small plots, an effort to provide relatively low-cost housing housing and to show how Los Angeles can stay strong without becoming Manhattan.
Called “Small plots, big impact,” the initiative began Wednesday with a design competition to create innovative plans for architects and others, creating innovative plans for multiple small homes in a batch, hoping that these units will be cheaper than the larger options that developers have built today.
The purpose of winning design is to end up being used as a pre-approved city template that all developers can use. Government officials also plan to start selling some small city-owned lots to builders to demonstrate the possibility of design in real life.
The vacant lot owned and planned for sale in the city is located at 5501 Echo St.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“Angelenos should be able to buy their first home and raise a family in our city,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “The launch of the small plot is a step forward in the future.”
The initiative is a partnership between the city, public-private program LA4LA and UCLA's CityLab Research Center, which found that there are about 24,000 vacant lots in Los Angeles, a lot less than a quarter of the quarter acre of housing currently allowed. The city owns approximately 1,000 plots and plans to sell about 10 of them as part of its demonstration project.
Today, depending on the neighborhood, a large number of builders usually build large single-family homes or three to five large townhouses.
Other times, nothing is built because high construction costs mean developers won’t make enough money unless they combine neighboring lots to build a large apartment building, said Azeen Khanmalek, who once worked in the mayor’s office and now the Advocate Group’s rich housing executive director.
The goal of small plots is that a big impact is to offer another option: selling a home is smaller and cheaper than McMansion or 2,000 square foot townhouses.
“That's not on the market,” said CityLab director Dan Cuff.
To get there, designers are encouraged to use innovative building materials and methods that prevent fires and reduce the cost of overall building.
Officials say the design could help Pacific Palisades rebuild after hell in January.
The city council must finally approve plans to sell the city lot. Currently, officials want to sell them to developers who can use winning architectural designs to build and sell homes.
The city will use the proceeds from the batch sales to provide down payment assistance to home buyers who purchase new units.
According to the city housing department, the final project may range between four and 20 units, with the building heights mostly ranging from one to three levels.
The city owns and plans to sell aerial photos of the vacant lot 5501 Echo Street.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Architects have been asked to design multiple homes on a batch, but competition organizers want them to do so while giving the final homeowner access to outdoor activities, natural light and “comfortable relationships with neighbors.”
Cuff said she hopes the design competition and subsequent buildings in urban lots will show developers that they can make money on the land they are now privately owned. She also hopes this will show the public that Los Angeles doesn’t have to rely on skyscrapers to grow.
“I think these projects will really prove that having more family life on the site would be a good arrangement,” Kuf said.
