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A Demographic, Housing and Economic Needs Assessment of Lincoln Heights

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A Demographic, Housing and Economic Needs Assessment of Lincoln Heights COMMUNICATING CHANGE: A DEMOGRAPHIC, HOUSING AND ECONOMIC NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF LINCOLN HEIGHTS A Project Presented to the Faculty of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts In Urban and Regional Planning By Brittany Taylor 2019 SIGNATURE PAGE PROJECT: DEMOGRAPHIC, ECONOMIC AND HOUSING NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF LINCOLN HEIGHTS AUTHOR: Brittany Taylor DATE SUBMITTED: Summer 2019 Department of Urban and Regional Planning Dr. Alvaro M Huerta Project Committee Chair Assistant Professor Department of Urban and Regional Planning Dr. Dina Abdulkarim Assistant Professor Department of Urban and Regional Planning Francesca De La Rosa Policy Director W.O.R.K.S. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the partnership and support of the W.O.R.K.S. team. Thank you to the Department of Urban and Regional Planning faculty and a huge thank you to the amazing URP cohort for your support throughout this entire process! iii ABSTRACT Lincoln Heights has benefited from being an affordable place for many residents to purchase a home, rent an apartment and/or run a business store front. Over the last decade however, the affordability of living and thriving in Lincoln Heights has decreased for many of those long-term residents, forcing them to find housing elsewhere. The city of Los Angeles recognizes that Lincoln Heights, like many other neighborhoods within the city limits, needs affordable housing. In response, the city has commissioned the non-profit organization W.O.R.K.S. (Women Organizing Resources Knowledge Services) to create a plan to convert five city owned parking lots into affordable housing complexes in the heart of Lincoln Heights. While the commission for new affordable housing has been celebrated, some resident groups in Lincoln Heights are opposed to the developments. W.O.R.K.S. has responded by directly reaching out to residents to understand their needs, fears and hopes for their community. The group has commissioned this report on the demographic, economic and housing needs of Lincoln Heights to use as a guide for their development plan of the affordable housing complexes and to create a communication strategy to build support for those developments. This report serves as a foundational study to support W.O.R.K.S. continued effort to build support for the Lincoln Heights 5 developments. From the report a presentation and leaflet has been created to communicate the research information to Lincoln Heights residents. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS SIGNATURE PAGE .......................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 ....................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2 ..................................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER 3 ..................................................................................................................... 35 CHAPTER 4 ..................................................................................................................... 38 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 40 APPENDIX: STORY MAP/LEAFLET ........................................................................... 45 v List of Figures Figure 1: Image of Lincoln Heights Location……………………………………….…....4 Figure 2: Image of Lincoln Heights 5 Location…………………………………………..7 Figure 3: Percentage of Residents in Lincoln Heights and Los Angeles County………….…...21 Figure 4: Ethnicity of Residents in 2010……………………………………………..….25 Figure 5: Ethnicity of Residents in 2017…………………………………………….…..25 Figure 6: Educational Attainment 2010……………………………………………….....26 Figure 7: Education Attainment 2017…………………………………….………….…..27 Figure 8: Number of Housing Units Compared to Population ……………………….....28 Figure 9: 2017 Subsidized Housing…………………………………………………..….29 Figure 10: Homeowners Compared to Renters in 2010-2017………………………...…32 Figure 11: Percentage of Rent Burden Population……………………………………....33 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Los Angles, like many other metropolitan cities in the United States, is concurrently experiencing both economic growth and exceptional challenges with housing costs. The project Neighborhood Data for Social Change through the University of Southern California estimates that as of 2013 “Los Angeles was the most rent-burdened city in the entire nation”. The project states that around 62% of the city’s renters spend more than 30% of their household income on rent each month effectively categorizing them as cost burden according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development standards. Residents who are particularly lower income (compared to the city’s median income level) are facing growing housing costs with little reprieve. Cost burden residents in Los Angeles have seen new luxury and market rate developments built throughout Los Angeles County; 10,000 new units were built in 2017 alone—many of those units being luxury units rented or sold at market rate or above market rate prices. (Goulding 2019). The city is working to respond to these challenges. Los Angeles, however, would need to construct around 5,300 affordable housing units each year to keep up with demand and so far since 2006 the city has developed around 1,100 per year (Goulding 2019). Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration has set the goal of permitting and constructing 100,000 new housing units by the year 2121 through streamlining the permitting process for new affordable housing developments (lamayor.org). The mayor’s office estimates that from July of 2013 through June of 2017 over 65,000 new housing units have been permitted. It remains to be seen, however, if the units permitted to be constructed will help to address 1 the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles. Neighborhoods experience a lack of affordable housing options and cost burden renting in different ways. Communities with more low-income residents are grappling with the best plan of action to combat resident displacement because of rising costs. Low-income neighborhoods are facing a duel challenge of rising costs and an environment for gentrification (Barragan 2016). Longtime residents cannot afford to remain in a neighborhood because of the rise in the cost of living, but newer residents find the same neighborhood cheap with low rents and purchase prices (Richardson et al. 2019). Ruth Glass, former sociologist and researcher from the University College London, described a phenomenon occurring in the neighborhoods of London as “gentrification”. Her work is entitled “London: Aspects of Change”, was written from her research at the Centre of Urban Studies. In 1964 she coined the term gentrification to describe changing working-class neighborhoods to middle and upper middle-class neighborhoods, resulting in the displacement of original members of the community and replacement by a new population. Urban Displacement is often an effect of gentrification. In the recently published study on gentrification and displacement in multiple American cities, Richardson et al describe neighborhoods that experience gentrification see an increase in investment and changes to their built environment. The increase in investment and changes to the environment leads to an increase in home values, income and education of residents (Richardson et al. 2019). One of the Los Angeles neighborhoods experiencing gentrification is Lincoln Heights (Mejia et al. 2018). Longtime residents in Lincoln Heights are afraid the housing and economic changes they see happening, however slowly, in their community will lead to their displacement from the community, (Meija et al. 2018). “The process of 2 displacement can take a range of forms and usually involves low-income, longstanding households being placed in situations that makes it exceptionally difficult if not impossible for them to retain their footing in the area concerned” (Hartman et al. 1982; Marcuse 1985; Newman & Wyly 2006). Lincoln Heights is in a prime location, it is minutes away from downtown Los Angeles, an area that has seen a growing economy and the development of new jobs pulling in new residents. Lincoln Heights is also located near other gentrified Los Angeles neighborhoods including Chinatown, Highland Park and Eagle Rock (Mejia et al. 2018). The Los Angeles Times recently published (between March 29 through April 6, 2018), a four-part series about the Lincoln Heights neighborhood and residents’ fear of displacement because of gentrification (Mejia et al. 2018). The reporters spent months collecting demographic and economic data on the Lincoln Heights community and stories from current and former residents about their experience living in the neighborhood. They found that older residents who have retired from working and longtime residents who live off a fixed income have few options in response to rising rental costs other than to move away from their community (Mejia et al. 2018). Los Angeles city
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