I'm not sure we've ever seen a standoff as bizarre as the one that unfolded in Venice Beach, where a proposal to replace a parking lot with 120 housing units for low-income and homeless people has been:
- Approved unanimously twice, in 2021 and 2022, by the Los Angeles City Council.
- Approved unanimously in 2024 by the notoriously censorious California Coastal Commission.
- Unanimously rejected in 2024 by an obscure city board that oversees parking operations.
- Declared dead, therefore, by local councilwoman Traci Park, who promised during her campaign to put an end to it, despite having been elected after the project was approved.
- Declared, on the contrary, quite alive by the local county supervisor, Lindsay Horvath, who recently allocated 3 million dollars for it.
- It has been given $42.5 million by the state, which has threatened Los Angeles with the possibility of penalties, including the dreaded “builder's remedy” if the city does not allow the project to move forward.
“I don't think there's any precedent for a project to be this far along and then the city undo it,” said Becky Dennison, former executive director of Venice Community Housing, developer of the Venice Dell project along with the Hollywood Community Housing Corp. Dennison now works as a housing justice policy manager at the Legal Aid Foundation.
For nearly a decade, residents have discussed the project in at least 18 community meetings. Opponents have filed several lawsuits, all of which have been decided in favor of the development.
Venice Dell is currently at the center of three court cases. One, filed by Public Counsel and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, alleges that Park and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto have violated state fair housing laws by “covertly thwarting” the project. Another, filed by the developers, asks the city to pay $10 million for breaching its contract because, of course, the city has breached the contract. The absurd third lawsuit, filed by the city attorney, accuses the nonprofit developers of failing to build the project. (!)
“This project needs to move forward,” Horvath told me. “The litigation must end. We have to create housing, there are no two ways about it. And the state is making it clear that if we don't do it, they will pass legislation that will take away local control. At some point the issue has to be raised and the problem actually solved.”
Park has proposed instead using the Venice Dell site as a transportation hub and moving the affordable housing project a block east to a lot near the Venice Library that now hosts a weekly farmers market. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that this suggestion is made in good faith; The people who vehemently oppose Venice Dell are not going to accept a slightly scaled-down project a block away.
Park's hostility toward the project is actually kind of epic. She has called it “a huge, gruesome prison structure” that “looks like a fucking crashed cruise ship in the neighborhood.” He has compared the saga to a bad boyfriend who doesn't go away.
Interestingly, he also accused the developers of running a scam. “It was never about homelessness or creating truly affordable housing,” Park said in October. “This was a developer who didn't believe the rules should apply to them, one who will literally stop at nothing to get their hands on our land.” (I requested an interview with Park through her spokesperson, but was turned down.)
The north end of the Grand Canal at Venice Beach, with the public pier to the right. The proposed Venice Dell low-income housing project would straddle this part of the canal, which bisects a city parking lot two blocks from the beach.
(Robin Abcarian/Los Angeles Times)
It's a shame that Mayor Karen Bass, whose signature cause is ending homelessness, has refused to take any leadership here, instead allowing Park and Feldstein-Soto to block the much-approved project.
As a neighbor, I have always had mixed feelings about Venice Dell. The site is a drab urban parking lot bisected by the northern end of Venice's famous Grand Canal, with a sloping “public” jetty that is currently inaccessible. (With the exception of the annual Christmas parade, few people boat on the canals, which are very shallow at low tide.)
On the one hand, our city desperately needs housing and the types of support services that Venice Dell envisions. Although the beachside encampments that sprang up during the pandemic no longer exist, Venice Beach still has one of the largest homeless populations in the city. On the other hand, placing a couple of bulky buildings designed by a famous architect known for his brutalist aesthetic in the middle of funky Venice Beach seems, I don't know, out of place.
Plus, and this is the NIMBY in me, who wants to deal with traffic and construction noise for the two or three years it could take to complete the project and then, of course, with the increased density of neighborhoods it would create? In addition to housing, the plan includes a new parking structure, as well as studio space for artists, space for social service providers and a community room. And yet, we have a moral obligation to help put an end to a scourge that has an enormous effect on this beach neighborhood.
Critics, who have dubbed Venice Dell the “median monster,” say the cost, estimated at about $1 million per unit, is absurdly high. That it would decrease much-needed parking for beachgoers (during construction only) and that it is located in a potentially deadly tsunami zone (well, yes, but so is the entire neighborhood and that hasn't stopped anyone from buying or building).
Others criticize that low-income and homeless people do not have the right to subsidized housing in one of the most expensive areas of the city, an argument as misleading as it is elitist.
“The cost of keeping people homeless in this city is more expensive,” said Allison Riley, co-executive director of Venice Community Housing. “The cost per unit is not outside the scope of projects being built in this city, and the fact that we have had so many years of legal fights only increases the cost. Every day the cost of construction increases.”
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