Mayoral Candidates Air Housing Views.

The lack of affordable housing is one of L.A.'s most intractable problems. With rents out-of-reach for many low-income workers, the city has the most severe overcrowding of any major metropolitan area in the country, with four households vying for every unit of low-income housing.

Yet the issue has received scant attention during the long campaign for L.A. mayor. The six major candidates have only briefly mentioned it in public forums, focusing instead on the crises of the moment, most notably the LAPD Rampart scandal.

But in a Business Journal survey of the candidates last week, there was broad agreement that dramatic and even controversial steps are needed to alleviate the shortage of affordable housing.

One such step, proposed by state Controller and mayoral candidate Kathleen Connell, involves legalizing so-called "granny units," or additional living space on residential properties that can be rented out.

"I know granny units are controversial," Connell said. "But we're in a housing crisis here and we need to consider all options. Homeowners should have the option to build other units on their property."

None of the other candidates went so far as to advocate more granny units, but they did agree that the city's zoning laws need a major overhaul to allow for more affordable housing units. Previous attempts to do this have met with fierce opposition from homeowners' groups and even from some merchant associations that fear such units would bring what they say are undesirable elements into their communities.

There was also broad agreement on two other steps: lobbying Washington and Sacramento for more housing funds and slashing red tape in the city's bureaucracy to speed through affordable housing projects.

"The entitlement process for affordable housing will be red carpet if I'm mayor," said businessman, city commissioner and mayoral advisor Steve Soboroff. "I'm talking beyond streamlined; it will be greased. They (affordable housing developers) are doing God's work."

The candidates disagreed, though, on whether a fee should be imposed on developers to support an affordable housing trust fund. City officials last year unveiled a proposal for a $7 per-square-foot "linkage fee" on all new commercial development. The proposal, which drew sharp criticism from business and developer groups, is now under study.

Two of the candidates -- Connell and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa -- said they support a linkage fee, with some conditions attached. Two others -- Congressman Xavier Becerra and City Attorney James Hahn -- said they would look at a linkage fee only as a last resort. Soboroff opposes the linkage fee, saying it would deter developers from building in the first place.

The sixth candidate, City Councilman Joel Wachs, declined to comment for this story.

If enacted, a $7 per-square-foot linkage fee would generate between $24 million and $38 million a year and get the city's fledgling affordable housing trust fund well on its way toward the $100 million goal set forth by affordable housing proponents.

But if the linkage fee proposal fails to win approval, the city would have to find other revenue sources to boost the trust fund, which each of the five candidates contacted said is absolutely essential to begin addressing the affordable housing crisis.

The candidates all said that some of those funds must come from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and said that if elected, they would step up the city's lobbying efforts in both places. The federal government in particular also holds the purse strings to several billion dollars in grant monies for low-income housing.

But some affordable housing advocates said those funds are not likely to be forthcoming, especially under a Bush administration.

"You're not going to see any huge increases in federal housing monies, at least for the first two years," said Jan Breidenbach, executive director of the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing. "And what money there is will have to be matched by local funds. That's why the city has to come up with local funds, and I'm not hearing that commitment from the candidates."

No general fund dollars

None of the candidates said they would be willing to commit general fund dollars to the trust fund, especially with much of the financial fallout from the Rampart scandal yet to hit. And they were generally vague on where additional dollars would come from, although Villaraigosa suggested that a more aggressive crackdown on slumlords could generate some of the funds, as well as force the rehabilitation of rundown units.

But there was no shortage of ideas on how to create more affordable housing units.

Hahn backs loosening zoning restrictions on rundown commercial corridors to allow for mixed-use projects.

"Mixed-use would help bring back more people and commercial vitality to these streets," he said. "And they would be affordable for low-income and middle-income families."

Hahn and Soboroff said that moderate and low-income housing units should be part of mixed-use projects next to transit stations.

"That's the way they do it in Europe," Soboroff said. "You increase density while at the same time decreasing traffic."

Connell, who was the city's housing director under former Mayor Tom Bradley, suggested "inclusionary zoning," where developers are allowed to add on to their projects or proposals if they also include more affordable housing.

"It's a trade-off that can be a win-win for both sides: They get their bigger project and the city gets more affordable housing," she said.

She also backs, efforts to prevent many of the city's 19,000 units in the federal Housing and Urban Development Department's Section 8 program from being converted into market-rate units.

Expanding programs

The ideas went beyond the physical building and rehabbing of low- and moderate-income housing. Becerra and Connell said they want to expand current city subsidy programs to assist firefighters, teachers and other sought-after public-sector workers with buying homes in neighborhoods that need some revitalization.

"If you get professionals to move back into these neighborhoods, it will bring those communities back," Becerra said. "Then more people move from their low-income units into these neighborhoods." Then, theoretically, a chain reaction sets in that frees up more low-income units for others who live in overcrowded conditions, he said.

But Occidental College professor and former Boston Housing Director Peter Dreier said that the next mayor needs to tackle another serious problem that can stop this chain reaction in its tracks: the practice of "redlining" by lending institutions. Publicizing those lenders that are found to be refusing mortgages in certain less-desirable areas of town is something the next mayor can do, he said.

"The next mayor can name some of these institutions and shame them into making more loans in certain areas of the city. That in turn would make it easier for developers and nonprofits to come in and fix up those slum units and turn them into affordable housing," Dreier said.