LA city looks to encourage development of larger apartments

Developers in Los Angeles may get bonuses for building three- and -four-bedroom apartments.

Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian has filed a motion to create a new density bonus incentive to promote the construction of large family units in new apartment buildings, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

The motion calls for the Planning Department to create a density bonus program to exempt the square footage of third, fourth and fifth bedrooms, as well as third and fourth bathrooms, from floor area calculations of large family apartments.

The program would also allow developers to add an additional story of height beyond current zoning restrictions, and take advantage of bonuses for developments of mostly large family units.

And it would require a 99-year covenant ensuring that the apartments would maintain the same unit mix and be set aside for households earning no more than 120 percent of the area median income.

The problem, Krekorian says, is a lack of larger apartments, which makes it difficult for larger families to find appropriate and affordable rental housing. Some 17 percent of the city’s renter households live in overcrowded flats.

He says encouraging the development of larger apartments would help the city adapt to changes brought about by a broad shift to remote work during the pandemic. 

At the same time, larger residential units can more easily accommodate multi-generational households.

“Fully a third of the households in the City of Los Angeles are comprised of four or more people, yet only 14 percent of the renter-occupied housing stock encompasses three- or four-bedroom units,” his motion reads. 

“Newly constructed rental units tend to be much smaller, and a majority are studios or one-bedroom units,” the motion added. 

The motion also clarifies that the large family unit bonus would be in addition to existing incentives through the density bonus and Transit Oriented Communities guidelines.

The motion comes when the city of L.A. is under pressure to add 255,000 new homes by 2029. 

As part of that effort, city planning officials are rolling out a citywide adaptive reuse ordinance, expanding upon a program which allowed for the conversion of dozens of older Downtown office buildings into homes.

L.A. County, a pioneer of single-family housing sprawl, has more overpacked homes than anywhere in the U.S.

For three decades, the county has led the nation in overcrowding, with 11 percent of homes now having more than one occupant per room, the Los Angeles Times reported in an expose in October 2022. More than 370,000 families in L.A. County live in overcrowded conditions.

— Dana Bartholomew

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