You Can't Build Your Way Out of Greed, Apathy, and Policy Failures

Let me be perfectly clear on the subject of ADUs: For the most part, I approve of them - and I happen to live in one.

Infill housing, in and of itself, is a good thing - and a time-honored tradition in many older neighborhoods. However, it is important to build responsibly.

It’s also important to actually FILL new housing, not just leave it sitting empty indefinitely. Otherwise, why build it at all? (More on that in a minute.)

Renters in Koreatown are fighting to keep their parking spaces from being taken away for ADUs. If you’ve ever been to Koreatown, you know why. While it’s a good neighborhood for car-free transit riders, not everyone has the option of going carless.

(And even if they did, Angelenos will never embrace mass transit until and unless it becomes safe enough, clean enough, reliable enough, connected enough, and fast enough to truly compete with car trips. You know it and I know it. Get on that, city and county leaders.)

Landlords in Long Beach are also taking away garage spaces for ADUs, stuffing even more people (some of whom will undoubtedly be bringing cars with them) into neighborhoods where trying to find parking is already difficult. I have also lived in Long Beach, and the city has been parking-impacted for so long that there is an old law on the books stating that garages can only be used to store vehicles. While Long Beach is relatively walkable and transit-friendly, it’s a huge mistake to assume that everyone has the option of just getting rid of their car.

Taking away parking doesn’t magically make cars disappear. It just makes parking even harder than it already is. Alleys, streets, and driveways will be blocked by desperate (or exhausted) drivers with nowhere else to park, especially if (like me) they sometimes get home from work late at night when all of the legal parking spaces are long gone. That’s a safety issue waiting to happen.

Also a safety issue waiting to happen: women who are forced to park far away from their apartments after dark (or very early in the morning) are potentially vulnerable to attack while walking home. Carrying a weapon or stashing an electric scooter in the trunk may or may not be enough to escape a determined predator. (I really lucked out here: I can park right outside my door when I need to.)

There will also be fights over parking spaces (something I have personally dealt with as a property manager).

The worst part? At least some of those converted parking facilities are NOT, in fact, filling up with renters. Boy, with all this demand, they should be.

A Redditor reached out to me recently to let me know that their building lost four parking spaces to ADU conversion - and all of those ADUs are still empty almost a year later.

This is the smallest available unit. Took 4 parking slots to make 3 dystopian ADUs + 1 more where we used to have our boiler room. 🙄 All supposedly tagged for low income housing, all sitting vacant since they were finished almost a year ago.

https://northoakprop.appfolio.com/listings/detail/c7089d76-8880-4aa5-a0d7-14072f967a27

The building next door (1760?) also has several units sitting vacant for almost 2 years now! I’m certain this “Housing crisis” is completely manufactured.

Well, I couldn’t tell you why these four units are still empty almost a year after conversion (that’s a question for the property manager). The one pictured is REALLY narrow (no joke: my closet is wider), but it has in-unit laundry, a dishwasher, air conditioning, and better lighting than my old apartment, so somebody should want it.

And I’ve got news for you: the property owners doing this to their tenants are not converting their own garages at home. Oh no. Street parking is for mere mortals like you and I, not for them. If it was really about housing more people, they’d be consistent and build out their own lots, too. And I have yet to come across ONE landlord who is adding housing on the lot where they personally live. (I will not be doxxing anyone, so don't ask me.)

If you’re a Times reader, you may have already seen this article dissecting whether ADUs are helping with the housing crisis (paywalled, but worth a read if you know a subscriber). Basically, it depends - and some families are building ADUs or converting their own garages to give their own families more space. It’s not unlike adding on to a house as a cheaper alternative to buying a bigger one and moving.

I’m not against building. But I am a firm believer in common sense.

You can’t build your way out of greed.

You can’t build your way out of apathy.

You can’t build your way out of policy failures.

Regular readers already know that the city RARELY, if ever, enforces its own laws, and that these routine failures have made the housing situation worse. Now we’ve got parking spaces disappearing, in car-dependent Los Angeles (and Long Beach), for imaginary renters who may or may not ever move in and a transit system that may or may not ever catch up with commuters’ needs (and if it does, it’s going to take far too long to do much good for someone who’s already lost their badly needed parking space for an empty ADU).

What’s wrong with this picture?