VACANT TO VIBRANT

Building Homes, Protecting Neighborhoods.

State law requires the city to plan for about 456,000 new homes by 2029. But Senate Bill 79 would blanket‑upzone huge portions of L.A., allowing big jumps in height and density, including in historic, walkable neighborhoods near major transit corridors, without real planning for streets or infrastructure.*

I oppose that one‑size‑fits‑all approach. Instead, I’ll push for a local alternative plan that meets or exceeds state housing goals with targeted growth along major corridors and transit‑rich streets. This plan will be developed with neighbors, renters, small businesses, and design experts, and submitted to the state as a community‑built, legally compliant alternative that help Los Angeles meet its RHNA goal by 2029.

*Earlier drafts of this page listed specific neighborhoods such as Windsor Square, Larchmont, and Silver Lake as examples. Those were based on preliminary SB 79 mapping conversations around future transit. Regional agencies, including SCAG, have not yet released final SB 79 implementation maps, and the exact affected parcels are still being refined. I’ve left this note up, rather than deleting it, so readers can see how the conversation has evolved.

Right now, development feels random - isolated projects with no trees, shops, or street plan. I want to replace that chaos with connected, complete neighborhoods.

We’ll:

Focus taller, mixed‑use housing on major streets like Vermont.

Use coordinated design standards for height, trees, lighting, and open space.

Pair new housing with safer crossings, better transit, and small‑business support.

Good housing should also be beautiful: human‑scaled, walkable, and welcoming. Beautiful design costs no more than bad design, and it strengthens local business corridors and community pride.

We’ll direct City Planning to adopt a new Community Plan Implementation Overlay (CPIO) for our area that actually implements this vision. A CPIO is a zoning overlay tied to our community plan that lets us set block‑by‑block rules for what can be built smartly.

By pushing the state to update Title 24 to safely allow single‑stair point‑access blocks over shops and cafes, we can unlock the kind of mid‑rise apartment buildings that are already common in European cities and places like Portland: more family‑sized, naturally lit homes on the small lots we already have. I back AB 2252 by Assemblymember Lee, which carves out an exception to the current building‑standards freeze so the state can write this single‑stair reform directly into Title 24 to allow city’s to build more immediately on our commercial corridors.

Done right, single‑stair residential over retail is how we move toward a true 15‑Minute City model in our district: more homes over neighborhood storefronts that drive steady foot traffic to small businesses, boost local economic activity on our commercial corridors, cut miles traveled by car, and strengthen everyday community life for our neighbors.

Our 15-Minute Model also includes green and public space, for play and gathering, stitched into dense neighborhoods. Right now, LA sits on millions in Quimby and park‑fee dollars that are idle instead of being deployed where renters actually live. We’ll target those funds to small‑scale pocket parks, parklets, and plazas along our commercial corridors.

Adaptive reuse - converting older, vacant, or underused, often office, buildings into housing - has just been expanded citywide, creating a clearer, faster pathto turn many existing commercial and office buildings into homes without full demolition or massive new towers. But in Hollywood and parts of Council District 13, adaptive reuse has technically been allowed for years through the Hollywood Community Plan and other Community Plans, and we have barely used it. That is not a lack of tools, it is a lack of will.

I will make adaptive reuse a core part of our Vacant to Vibrant strategy, especially in areas already identified in the Hollywood and Silver Lake–Echo Park–Elysian Valley Community Plans for mixed‑use, commercial, and corridor growth. That means focusing on underused office and commercial buildings on key streets, rather than disrupting stable, rent‑stabilized blocks or historic residential neighborhoods. When we convert existing buildings on planned corridors, we add new homes, support ground‑floor businesses, and reinforce the 15‑minute neighborhood model instead of playing whack‑a‑mole with one‑off projects.

We understand that office‑to‑residential conversions are not a one‑step process. They require careful design, structural and systems upgrades, and close coordination among Planning, Building and Safety, Fire, and DWP to make projects pencil. But cities across North America and Europe have shown that, with clear rules and proactive political leadership, these conversions can deliver thousands of homes while preserving embodied carbon and neighborhood character. My commitment is to use the new citywide adaptive reuse framework, together with the Community Plans that already guide growth in CD13, to turn underused buildings into real homes, quickly, predictably, and in places that strengthen walkable, 15‑minute neighborhoods.

Identify and publicly champion a priority list of vacant and underused buildings for housing conversions, and actively support the land‑use approvals those projects need.

Create a District Vacant to Vibrant Team in my office to shepherd serious projects through DWP, Building and Safety, Fire, and Planning, troubleshooting delays in real time instead of letting them sit for months.

Use council‑office resources to help community‑based and nonprofit developers with early pre‑development needs (studies, test‑fits, code questions) so they can compete with big, out‑of‑town players.

Work with Neighborhood Councils to adopt pro‑conversion principles for key corridors, giving clear political support to projects that add housing without displacing rent‑stabilized tenants.

Strengthen and fully implement adaptive reuse and conversion rules so more existing office, commercial, and industrial buildings can become housing by right in appropriate areas.

Create true fast‑track lanes for qualified conversion projects - clear timelines, coordinated reviews, and automatic escalation when agencies miss deadlines.

Target fee relief and smarter incentives at projects that convert vacant or obsolete buildings into housing with real affordability and tenant protections, not at speculative luxury knock‑downs.

Align city policy with new county and state tools so we can bring more public and mission‑driven capital into buying and converting underused properties, not just greenfield luxury projects.