Dear Councilmember Bonin, California Coastal Commission, Los Angeles Planning Commission, Venice Neighborhood Council and LUPC:

I write to express my opposition to the massive Reese-Davidson Community on the Venice Canals. Venice has a long history of embracing people from all walks of life, and we welcome supportive and affordable housing in our community. In fact, despite its small size, Venice already provides more subsidized housing than any other part of Council District 11. As proposed, however, the Reese-Davidson Community—which is poised to become the largest development in Venice since the days of Abbot Kinney himself—would diminish Venice and place unfair burdens on people who live, work and engage in recreational activities here. You can find complete information regarding the project — including the L.A. Planning Department application, architectural plans and facts about the proposed building site — HERE.

More specifically, I object to the Community for the following reasons:

• Elimination of Precious Open Space: The 2.8-acre building site is the largest — and most prominent — parcel of zoned open space in Venice. Venice desperately needs this parcel to address our chronic parking shortage (for residents, visitors and businesses alike) as well as climate change risks — including sea-level rise which is already affecting properties and taking a toll on the shoreline and beaches in Venice.
• Excessive Number of Units with No Focus on Families: In 2016, Councilmember Bonin told Venice residents that the project would provide “up to 90 small units” for women and children. As proposed, however, the project calls for 140 units, few of which are suitable for families and half of which must be reserved under Proposition 2 for persons with severe mental illness or emotional disturbances. The typical subsidized housing project, by contrast, is less than 75 units.
• Mass, Size & Character: The City’s RFQ/P specifically states that the proposed site is unusually large and need not be developed in its entirety. Plans for the Reese-Davidson Community on the Venice Canals, however, not only call for using every square inch of buildable space on the site but also seek numerous exemptions from height limitations and set back requirements applicable to market rate projects in Venice, further crowding existing residences as well as the substandard streets and sidewalks in the area. The extensive canopied roof-decks and 70-foot bell-tower only compound that effect, and the prison-style architecture—with popcorn stucco finish—makes the entire edifice an eyesore completely divorced from sound architectural principles, out of step with the beach experience Venice is famous for, and not remotely “visually compatible with the character of surrounding areas” as required by Section 30251 of the California Coastal Act.
• Insufficient and Unworkable Parking: Existing plans call for a mere 360 parking spaces for beach parking and the new residences, businesses and community space in the Reese-Davidson Community, and 106 of those spaces will be for compact cars. Moreover, the parking spaces will be in tight, multi-level, switch-back parking structures surrounded by apartments on all four sides, “Texas Donut” style. The RFP/Q for the project expressly calls for solutions that will ease Venice’s chronic parking shortage. This ill-conceived parking plan — which involves an insufficient number of substandard, inaccessible parking spaces—will have the opposite effect, while significantly aggravating beach traffic on Venice Boulevard with lengthy waiting lines.
• Inexperienced Developer with No Respect for the Venice Community: Developer Venice Community Housing Corporation (“VCHC”) submitted the project application to the City without going before the Venice Neighborhood Council, has yet to provide the most recent set of plans for the project to the public and is seeking a categorical exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) after promising to conduct an exhaustive environmental review. Further, their website indicates that VCHC has never developed anything larger than 20 residential units, let alone a multi-use “community” of this scale and complexity in a high-profile, high-impact location. In fact, the vast majority of the VCHC portfolio comprises small repurposed apartment buildings.
• Indefensible Expense: The average size of a unit of supportive or affordable housing in the Reese-Davidson Community is 449 square feet and financial records prepared by VCHC show that, as of Q4 2019, VCHC was projecting building costs of $470,000 per unit of supportive or affordable housing (or $1,046 / sq. ft.), excluding parking, land and overages. Factoring in conservative estimates for land and parking results in building costs of more than $600,000 per unit—or nearly $1,400 / sq. ft — before overages. The sale cost of a condominium in Los Angeles in Q4 2019, by contrast, was $377 / sq. ft. Spending nearly 4x market rate on homeless housing is simply impossible to justify.
• Unfair Overconcentration of Homeless Housing, Shelters and Services in Venice: Depending on how you count them, there are currently 8-12 new or pending homeless projects in Venice, including Rose Avenue Apartments, the St. Joseph’s Housing Hub, 102 Navy Street, Bridge Home Venice, infrastructure for existing street encampments, the Marian Place Project, the Lincoln Apartments Project, the Thatcher Yard Project and the DCRC Project. In fact, virtually every usable parcel of publicly owned land in Venice has now been pegged for homeless housing. Venice also continues to see double-digit growth in its homeless population while homeless populations in neighboring CD11 communities go down. A project of the magnitude of the Reese-Davidson Community would irreversibly cement Venice’s identity as a homeless hub. It is time for other neighborhoods to start doing their fair share.
• Adverse Impact on Venice Beach, the Venice Boardwalk and the Historic Venice Canals: As local treasures and world-famous destinations, Venice Beach, the Venice Boardwalk and the historic Venice Canals should be protected from ill-conceived development of every kind and preserved for the benefit of all.

For the foregoing reasons, I strenuously oppose the Reese-Davidson Community on the Venice Canals and urge you to take immediate action to stop the project. Again, you can find comprehensive information regarding the project — corroborating all of the statements set forth in this email — HERE.

Thank you,