Tag Archives: Los Angeles

NIMBY notes from all over

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Fresh news of NIMBY opposition to affordable housing comes out of … well, our own backyard.

From North Country Public Radio, we learn that residents in Plattsburgh managed to persuade the planning board to reject a proposed four-building residential complex, alleging familiar sorts of adverse effects that low-income people would have on traffic, safety, property values. plattsbugh Affordable housing is a permitted use in that district, but…

 “It is transient housing,” one resident complained. “ They put people in there who are just out of jail, prison whatever until they can get back on their feet … I don’t want it in my area.”

“This concept of us serving transients is so far from reality,” countered the director of the housing organization that would be referring tenants. “The majority of the people that we serve are disabled. They are the veterans in your community. There are elderly people in your community that we serve…”

She might have also cited reports, like this one, that affordable housing can have an uplifting impact on economic development and property values.

Oh well. The developer is appealing the rejection in court. “The thrust of it was, they did not want ‘these people’ moving into their neighborhood,” the developer’s lawyer said.

Plattsburgh is in good company. Upper Saddle River, a toney community in New Jersey, is being sued for rejecting a multi-family housing complex, and thus, by proxy, new residents who happen to be black or Latino. Another interesting case of NIMBY opposition to multi-family housing recently arose in Arizona, where the “backyard” in question belonged to a mortuary! Apparently the mortuary and the developer resolved their differences, though.

NIMBYism gets some of the credit, or blame, for California’s housing-affordability crisis, and it certainly comes in many forms, as this entertaining catalogue attests. Among our favorites are “mega-mansion NIMBYs.” 

Vermont dreaming … in California

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Vermont fantasies can take many forms, but one has to wonder: Where are the Vermont brand police when you need them? Not in California.

Consider “The Vermont,” a luxury, high-rise apartment complex in L.A.’s Koreatown that promises “sky-high decadence.” Here’s the web page’s come-on (“bask in paradise seven stories up”):

vermontcover

Hmm, doesn’t look much like Vermont (come on, we have only a handful of buildings higher than six stories in the entire state!) , so where might the name have come from? Perhaps from Vermont Avenue, which runs alongside and is one of L.A.’s longest thoroughfares.

Why that street is named for Vermont is another question. A quick Google search didn’t provide an answer, but it did turn up this 1874 photo of an area where Vermont Avenue was later platted:

vermontave1

That’s more like it.

Now, you may consider all of this off-topic for a housing blog, but bear with us…

 

 

 

There’s another curious Vermont vestige in L.A. that’s more than a century old, called Vermont Square. It’s a section of south Los Angeles (Vermont Avenue runs through it) that’s among the city’s most densely populated areas.

Vermont_Square,_Los_Angeles,_California

 

 

 

 

 

“Vermont Square” apparently was a developer’s name for what, in the early 20th century, was a huge subdivision — “the largest ever put on the market in Los Angeles,” according to this 1909 newspaper ad, “comprising fifty-two city blocks – a town in itself.”

vermontsquaread1909

That doesn’t seem particularly Vermont, either.

Back on Vermont Avenue, we learn that one of its southern segments is known as “death alley,” with one of the highest homicide rates in the city.

That’s certainly not very Vermont, so we’ll retreat to “The Vermont,” on the corner of Vermont Avenue and Wiltshire Boulevard. What are apartment rates?

A corner two-bedroom-two-bathroom suite, about 1,000 square feet, “starts” at $2,890.

vermontcorner

Finally, an unmistakable Vermont quality! Unaffordability!