72% of Residents Support Limitations on Developers

LOS ANGELES—The Coalition to Preserve L.A. completed a poll last month that showed 72% of residents supported a ballot measure that would require developers to adhere to the general plan without exemption, stopping many of the massive developments throughout the city. In an earlier story, GlobeSt.com talked to Michael Weinstein, the president of the AIDs Healthcare Foundation and the organizer behind the so-called Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, about the potential ballot measure and the goals of the organization. Now, his poll shows he has the support of the community.

"We have been very involved corporate citizens going back decades, and we have had our ears to the ground. No one has contested that we are trying to skew the results," Weinstein tells GlobeSt.com. "This is in line with how people feel about Wall Street and why this presidential election has turned into such a crapshoot. People are angry and they feel that the deck is stacked against them. Here in L.A., the developers rule, and people are very unhappy about that."

Conducted December 3 through December 7, the survey polled 557 Los Angeles residents online about their support for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, and concluded that two out of three registered Los Angeles voters would support the group's proposed measure, which would halt individual parcel-by-parcel or 'spot zone' amendments and/or building exemptions; enact a temporary, two-year moratorium on building or demolition permits for projects that do not adhere to existing city planning regulations and/or for which the city granted a General Plan amendment, or zone or height change; take the preparation of a project's required Environmental Impact Report out of the hands of developers; and limit a developer's ability to reduce required parking for building developments.

In the survey, residents seemed most concerned about the congestion and traffic resulting from these developments. "The traffic nightmare is what really came across the most in the survey that we did," says Weinstein, who adds that public transit is a non-solution for the group. "People do not take the subway. Show me evidence that people are taking the subway. Ridership is down on the subway, and there are a lot of places that you can't get to on the subway. It is a fantasy."

According to Weinstein, the real problem is our local government, which pushes through these developments and allows for exemptions. "It was really Mayor Garcetti who built the framework with his rhetoric about elegant density, which pushed this agenda forward," he explains. "There is much too much influence from the developers on the city council and the Mayor."

But, the group hasn't been without criticism from the development community, which, according to Weinstein, has been trying to block the ballot measure. One of the accusations is that the group is a nimby. "You could call us a nimby if we didn't want to see a school or a hospital or a homeless shelter or those types of projects being built," says Weinstein. "You can't call us a nimby for not wanting more luxury towers in the neighborhood."

Weinstein doesn't respond to the slights because the initiative has already seen so much success. "They have really been throwing whatever they can at us, and we have not been responding. This is a situation where they have to convince people to vote against what they really want."

We have reached out to developers to see how such a measure would affect the Los Angeles real estate market, and will continue to report as more news unfolds.