Apartments coming to Lakewood Mall, churches & next door?
City staff and contractor give examples of what proposed zoning regs could lead to.
Apartment complexes may be coming to the Lakewood Mall, churches and even your next door neighbor’s house under a proposal to make Lakewood compliant with California housing mandates.
Lakewood received a mandate to make space available for an additional 3,922 housing units, officials explained at Wednesday’s public meeting. However, the state’s Housing and Community Development department is forcing cities to plan for an additional 15 percent of housing on top of what the law requires.
As a result, city staff’s proposed Housing Elements plan would need to provide accommodation for 4,510 new housing units in Lakewood. The plan gets updated every eight years and the housing units would only get built should a developer decide to do so.
“That’s really the core of the Housing Element, identifying capacity (for new housing),” said Emily Elliott, project manager from Michael Baker International, the contractor hired to create the updated plan.
Further complicating matters is the mandate by state law for the city to accommodate new housing units by income levels.
For example, developers must be allowed to build 1,296 new housing units for very-low income people, which the state identifies as households making between $35,450 to $59,100. Space must be made for another 637 new housing units for low-income people, identified as those earning between $59,100 to $94,600.
This is especially disruptive for Lakewood since 63 percent of the city’s residents are in the moderate and above moderate income levels. Los Angeles County, meanwhile, has 34 percent of people in the extremely low and very low income levels, while Lakewood only has 21 percent of residents in those categories.
Elliot acknowledged the question many were thinking, “What available land in Lakewood?” could be used for the new housing units.
The top answer staff and contracted personnel gave revolved around zoning regulations. The idea would be to allow for Lakewood becoming more crowded via an increase in density of people to one another.
Housing on current retail property, mixed-use buildings
At 1,909 units, nearly half of the city’s mandated housing units could be provided for via commercial mixed-use zones. These are areas where retail and residential units are put in the same building.
Aaron Barrall, one of the project leads, showed examples of such mixed-use zones: a sketching from a proposed San Diego development had a market and coffee shop on the ground floor, along with two stories of residential units above that.
An alternative would be to allow for even higher density mixed-use buildings. This would mean taller buildings, fewer parking spaces and relaxed development standards.
“This would essentially rely more on upzoning,” Barrall said, “allowing more housing in commercial.”
He showed an 8-storey development in San Diego with 125 units on about an acre of land. The development also included retail and open space.
Another example came from Santa Monica and it had a Vons grocery store beneath 296 apartments in a building 7-stories high with 374 parking spaces, or one space per unit and 78 guest parking spaces.
Just where would such mixed-use development go in Lakewood?
The Lakewood Mall area is being considered, Barall said.
Commercial centers identified for mixed-use will be presented to the planning commission along with the finalized numbers, said Paul Kukendall, senior planner for the city.
Abel Avalos, community development director, said there was no definitive list of properties slated for mixed-use zoning, adding it was premature to provide one at this time.
Lower-income housing on churches’ and religious orgs’ property
At 1,352 proposed new housing units—almost all of them for lower-income residents—religious institutions would be allowed to add new housing in tandem with existing churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.
Barrall showed a picture of a church in Berkley that redeveloped its parking lot for low-income housing, while it maintained its church building.
“It’s hard to see (the church building) in this picture,” said Barral, who noted that the building also held office space for members and support staff.
Another example showed a Los Angeles church that converted its old preschool building into housing, while maintaining its chapel.
Barrall addressed his May 5 comments when he said that the state was pressuring for low-incoming housing on religious facilities.
“I think that the better word would be encouragement,” he said. “The pressure or encouragement in this case is really from the state to cities.”
“It’s not from the city to religious institutions,” Barall added. “This is really pressure coming down from the state government to the city of Lakewood.”
The state is encouraging cities to allow churches and other religious organizations to build affordable housing on their parking lots, Barrall explained.
Houses possibly turned into apt complexes
Single family houses could be turned into 4 to 6 unit apartment complexes, under the proposed Housing Elements plan.
“This would have to apply to the whole city to make sure that everybody is treated fairly,” Barrall said.
He showed pictures from San Diego and Long Beach with the latter showing a single family home being turned into 3-unit apartment buildings.
Additional apartments, even on current apartment property
To achieve affordable housing production, state law has required cities to meet certain density requirements:
· Very low and low income housing units: 30 units per acre;
· Moderate income housing units: 12 to 30 units per acre, a typical smaller town home or 2-storey apartment building.
· Above moderate income housing units: 1 to 12 units per acre, a typical single family home that encompasses most of Lakewood.
Capacity for only 144 new housing units for lower-income people is projected in the city’s proposed plan for multi-family or apartment units. The rest, 806, were slated for moderate-income people.
More intriguing is the fact that current multi-family properties may be able to add housing units to existing development, further crowding already crowded apartment complexes.
Owners of multi-family properties could add up to 25 percent more housing units, Avalos said. For example, an 8-plex could get an additional two more housing units courtesy of accessory dwelling unit rules, explained more below.
Backyard living facilities
Accessory dwelling units, generally referred to as ADUs, were made legal in Lakewood thanks to a state law that gave homeowners the right to build cottages or miniature apartments in their backyards.
Many residents have already constructed ADUs and the proposed Housing Elements plan would rely on 260 additional ADUs to provide for lower-income and above-moderate income housing units.
J. Patrick McGuckian, assistant director of community development, called into the meeting and noted that two new ADUs were being processed each week. He added that many were built during the Wuhan Virus pandemic for family members and were likely being lived in for free.
This made it likely that more than 260 ADUs would be built through 2029. McGuckian reasoned planning for more additional ADUs could be used to help the city meet its mandate for lower-income housing units.
However, staff at the meeting said they were going with the previous three years’ data to justify only planning for 260 new ADUs. Barrall said that the state is asking cities to discount the number of expected new ADUs in their Housing Element plans.
The Housing and Community Development department was only willing to take so many ADUs since, according to the department, cities had suppressed ADU development for so long, Elliot later explained. The proposed plan allows for the city to claim as many ADUs as they believe the state will accept as going towards the city’s housing mandate.
NOTE: Click here for the follow-up story: More space for South Gate; congestion for Lakewood
- Article originally published May 28, 2021 and updated with the NOTE May 30.