Renters priced out of Los Angeles

In spite of the depressed housing markets situations such as this still exist. With the cost of fuel increasing no doubt commuting from places where rent is cheaper becomes problematic as well.
With the rise in oil prices everything that is transported will cost more and everything made from oil products such as plastics will go up so that there will be increased inflation making it more difficult for people to make ends meet. Where I live one could live quite well on 38k U.S. a year but then there are not that many jobs around here that are vacant at that salary!


Renters priced out of L.A.

David Lazarus
The Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2008

Deanna Corbin, 46, would live in Los Angeles if she could. But she
can't, at
least not with a modicum of space and safety, not on her $38,000 salary
as
an administrative secretary.

So Corbin gets up at 4 a.m. every day and hustles her 11-year-old
daughter
out the door by 5 for the two-hour drive from their apartment in
Lancaster
to downtown L.A.


Most days, they don't return home until 8 p.m., when Corbin tries to
devote
some time to her daughter's homework before they both collapse into
bed. It
all begins again at 4 the next morning.

This is the harsh reality for thousands of working-class people priced
out
of one of the priciest cities in the world. From housing and food to
energy
and entertainment, Los Angeles is increasingly out of reach for those
living
paycheck to paycheck.

"It's a crisis," said Gil Duran, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa.
"We have to have a city of mixed incomes with affordable housing for
workers."

Easier said than done. But planning and public-policy experts say steps
can
be taken to protect the city's social and economic diversity. It's just
a
question of priorities.

Any discussion of getting priced out of L.A. has to begin with housing,
by
far the biggest expense for most people. Never mind buying. Even with
the
real estate market on the ropes, buying a house or condo remains a
fantasy
for the majority of Southern Californians.

The real story here is rentals. About 60% of L.A. residents are
renters,
according to the National Multi Housing Council, an industry group.
That
compares with a nationwide average of 32%.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development says families shouldn't
spend more than 30% of their annual income on housing. But here, many
people
pay up to 50% of their income for an apartment.

Runaway housing costs, in turn, tend to push wages higher, which can
cause
the price of just about everything else to climb as businesses seek to
recoup their expenses.

One reason housing prices are so high is a requirement that newly built
multiunit dwellings (and condo conversions) provide at least one --
usually
two or three -- parking space per unit. This inflates the cost of each
apartment and discourages construction of smaller, more affordable
units
because developers would be required to provide even more parking.

"The fixation on parking in Los Angeles has driven up the price of
housing
and increased congestion on our streets," said Donald Shoup, a
professor of
urban planning at UCLA. He said including two spaces with a unit can
add
about $45,000 to construction costs.

One solution would be to waive the parking requirement for smaller
apartments, thus creating an incentive for developers to place more
such
units on the market. And because there'd be no parking cost built into
the
rent, such units would (in theory) be cheaper than apartments that come
with
extra room for vehicles.

This could have the added benefit of increasing demand for public
transportation -- presuming, that is, people would trade car ownership
for
reduced rent. Increased demand would hopefully spur development of
commuter-friendly projects like a long-delayed Westside subway line.

But Gail Goldberg, L.A.'s planning director, said any proposal that
includes
cutbacks in parking tends to go nowhere. "People feel like there's
already
not enough parking and that people are intruding into their
neighborhood.
This is a difficult discussion to have."

Meanwhile, a coalition of community, religious and business interests
called
Housing L.A. is pushing City Hall to require developers to include
affordable housing in new projects and to slow the conversion of rental
units into condos.

These are worthwhile goals, but they're strongly opposed by
deep-pocketed
developers and real estate firms. So good luck with that.

A more politically practical remedy may be to ease zoning requirements
for
mixed-use properties, thus allowing creation of urban villages
featuring
retail outlets at street level and moderately priced living spaces
overhead.

This is already happening to some extent above a handful of subway
stations,
such as the Wilshire Vermont Station project in Koreatown. But creation
of
dynamic transit villages throughout L.A. remains a distant prospect at
best.

Instead, we're forced to settle for tacky strip malls and soulless
commercial zones. You get in and you get out. There's little incentive
to
stroll the neighborhood or just hang out.

Large swaths of Santa Monica, Pico and La Cienega boulevards come to
mind
for their character-free approach to neighborhood ambience.

"We've emphasized separation of land use," said Raphael Bostic, a
professor
of urban planning and real estate at USC. "We keep residential with
residential and commercial with commercial. It's very hard to get both
on
the same parcel."

One place that's changing is downtown, where renovations of
once-moribund
buildings are bringing in new residents, resulting in more of an East
Coast
atmosphere where commercial and residential properties co-exist side by
side.

The trade-off for increased housing stock, though, is higher density,
and
that won't win you many friends among neighborhood activists or at City
Hall. Adding more people per city block can be a tough sell in a city
that
seems overcrowded to begin with.

"Density is like a four-letter word these days, and that's a real
challenge," Bostic said.

The upshot is that more and more people are being pushed farther from
their
jobs, farther from the city they'd like to call home.

That's what happened to Corbin, who moved from Torrance to Lancaster
after a
2005 divorce.

"I looked for a place in Los Angeles," she said. "But there was nothing
affordable in a decent area for a single mother with two daughters.

"My choice was either a drug-riddled, gang-infested neighborhood or a
place
so small I couldn't even get my furniture in."

Corbin pays $975 monthly for a two-bedroom apartment more than 70 miles
from
where she works. Her younger daughter attends school in L.A. so that
Corbin
can get to her quickly if something goes wrong. Her older daughter is
18 and
stays most days with friends in Torrance while attending a community
college.

Corbin isn't sure what awaits her older child once she graduates. She
only
knows that she doesn't want her daughter to have to spend four hours
commuting every day like she does.

"I'm telling her that she has to stay in school and get an education,"
Corbin said. "That's going to dictate where she lives. It's going to
dictate
how she lives."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus9mar09,0,3625243.column