Two years ago, policy

creators of Los Angeles City Hall came up with a plan to dramatically increase the number of new homes that could be built downtown

Los Angeles

LA, part of their larger strategy to address the region’s rapidly rising housing costs.

The city’s planning department has released DTLA 2040, a 20-year growth roadmap that, if approved by the City Council, would increase downtown housing by up to 100,000

new

units. That’s enough to meet one-fifth of the entire city’s needs, planners say.

But a key element of that plan has met fierce opposition from some of the inner city’s lowest-paid workers, who fear new apartment blocks and tower blocks will displace clothing companies. Those workers, and their organized labor allies, managed to add new language to the plan last week in hopes of securing “no net loss” from sewing factories and other fashion-related businesses.

Organizers at the downtown Garment Worker Center say those last-minute changes will protect thousands of people jobs, in an industry fueled by working-class Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants.

In contrast, business leaders warn that the new restrictions would make as many as 12,000 housing units in the DTLA 2040 plan financially unfeasible, at least for the foreseeable future, undermining efforts to expand housing supply and make progress in the region’s affordability crisis .

“Every one of those 12,000 units matters,” said Nella McOsker, CEO of the Central City Assn., a downtown business group. “If we start chipping in on [the plan] Little by little, with these last-minute decisions undermining the plan’s larger goals, we are diminishing the downtown’s ability to alleviate this crisis.”

Daisy Gonzalez, campaign

S

director

past

the Garment Worker Center, said the fashion industry in LA has been neglected for too long

,

and deserves the kind of care and attention that policy provides

creators have dedicated themselves to the entertainment industry. Gonzalez, whose group seeks to protect the wages and working conditions of garment workers, argued against the idea of ​​housing and jobs as an either-or proposition.

When it comes to downtown, Gonzalez said, keeping workers in their homes means keeping them at work.

“Clothing workers really need their jobs to afford housing. The two things are connected. We try not to pit the two things against each other,” she said.

That back and forth reflects the city’s larger, ongoing debate about how to build more housing without also causing severe displacement. And it has drawn attention to a sector of the economy overshadowed by the entertainment industry.

The city council will vote on the DTLA 2040 plan on Wednesday, along with a second, major growth strategy: the long-delayed update to the Hollywood Community Plan, which was blocked by a judge in 2013 and later rewritten.

Those two documents will contain the rules for developing new homes, offices, sound stages and other projects in Hollywood and downtown. Both plans have new provisions aimed at reducing displacement, boosting the production of affordable housing and extending the life of those affordable projects.

The downtown plan extends from the Convention Center east to the Arts District and north to Chinatown. However, much of the debate in recent days has centered on the Fashion District, home to an estimated 20,000 clothing jobs. The most contested area is part of the fashion district roughly bounded by 7th Street to the north, 17th Street to the south, Crocker Street to the east, and Santee Street to the west, an area city planners now refer to as the IX3 Zone.

The DTLA 2040 plan would prohibit industrial buildings in the IX3 zone from being converted into lofts or hotels. However, developers would be allowed to build mixed-use development buildings that have apartments as well as space for “productive” use, such as sewing workshops or other forms of light manufacturing.

Until recently, the proposal called for developers in the IX3 zone to provide 5,000 square feet of productive space for every 10,000 square feet of land. But last week, the Garment Worker Center worked closely with Unite Here Local 11, the politically powerful hotel workers

‘

Union persuaded a city council committee to rewrite that provision, doubling the production space needed.

Those groups argued that such changes would help protect communities from “luxury commercial development.”

“Hospitality and garment workers need more affordable housing, not more development that could threaten where we live or work,” said Juan Muoz

-Guevara

a researcher at Unite Here Local 11, at a meeting last week.

Hours later, the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee voted to double the amount of manufacturing space needed for new housing projects proposed in the IX3 section of the Fashion District. The five-member panel also approved a provision requiring new development projects in that area to include freight elevators, loading docks and loading bays of the kind that can accommodate heavy machinery and large rolls of fabric.

Council member Curren Price requested that the required production space be increased. Councilor Kevin de Len pushed for the inclusion of the freight elevator requirement, saying in a letter it would “ensure efficient operations” for clothing manufacturers.

Those two changes, if approved by the council, would make about 12,000 of the planned housing units in the DTLA 2040 plan financially “unfeasible,” at least for the foreseeable future, according to city planning staff. While market conditions for residential development could eventually change, the expanded requirements for elevators and manufacturing space would prevent builders from earning a “reasonable profit,” they said.

McOsker, the director of the Central City Assn., said as many as 2,000 of the 12,000 units sought by the city in the IX3 zone were reported to be affordable. She also argued that the DTLA 2040 plan already had safeguards to protect garment jobs, balancing housing and industry.

“We don’t have any evidence that changing the [plan] saves jobs,” McOsker said. “We know, and strongly believe, that it will kill housing projects before they even begin.”

Anthony Rodriguez, executive director of the LA Fashion District Business Improvement District, also spoke out against the changes to the downtown plan, saying they would risk the loss of housing units amid a citywide housing crisis. Manufacturing and warehouse space in the IX3 zone already has an 18% vacancy rate, indicating a lack of demand for new apparel-related businesses downtown, he said.

Price spokesperson Angelina Valencia-Dumarot said on Tuesday that her boss only learned this week that some of the late changes to the DTLA 2040 plan could lead to a reduction in new housing. The councilor plans to obtain a report on the matter while the city attorney’s office conducts its legal review of the downtown zoning plan, Valencia-Dumarot said.

“The fact is that we have six months to a year before the plan is finalized,” she said in an email. “There’s still plenty of room for the conversation to evolve.”

Gonzalez, the campaign director for the Garment Worker Center, said she already considers the downtown plan a compromise, as council members did not agree to all of the changes requested by her group.

“We understand that housing production is extremely important,” she said. “But that also applies to jobs. So we really have to find a balance.”