Publications
Fall 2001 Newsletter
New LAUSD Housing Program Offers Framework To Aid In Improving
Both Communities & Homeownership
New
development impacts neighborhoods. And despite LAUSD's attempts
to minimize it, sometimes there are no alternative sites. However,
if you must create impacts, why not relocate those impacted into
better situations and improve their quality of life. NSBN was
pleased to talk with Mott Smith, Director of Housing and Relocation
re: how the District is dealing with that issue, how he is helping
that process evolve and how joint-use may be a product of this
new paradigm.
Mott, NSBN has continuously covered the challenges L.A.
Unified faces in building new facilities in this dense basin.
Please update our readers on where the district stands in meeting
the well-discussed challenge of building more than 100 new schools.
We went through a revolution about a year-and-a-half ago where
we adopted much more of a "can-do" philosophy, hired
new senior staffers and implemented some new approaches to our
mission of satisfying the enormous and growing need for new school
facilities.
The fruits of that restructuring are evident in the 137 projects--85
new schools--currently underway throughout the District. Nearly
all have preferred sites. Many are only months away from completing
the state toxic review and the CEQA processes. That translates
into an acquisition schedule beginning later this year moving
through next summer. Our target is to have most of our new school
funding applications into the State by June of next year.
What this restructuring has clarified is that the development
process is no longer the biggest challenge. Identifying adequate
funding streams today and into the future probably is.
A court decision last year guaranteed the the State Allocation
Board provide matching grants for all projects meeting a June
2002 deadline. What happens to those that don't make the deadline?
Where might possible sources of funding come from?
This is something our high-level administrators are working on
right now.
I can't say what strategic courses we will pursue. But I can
say that, in general, our money comes from three different sources:
First, there's general fund money. Sometimes it is appropriate
to spend GF money on facilities, but when we do, it means diverting
it away from programs, teacher salaries and other things that
are vital but are not capital assets.
Next there's local bond money. To access more of this, we will
have to successfully float a school bond measure on a future ballot.
Finally, there is a hybrid option--certificates of participation--where
we incur debt and pay off the interest with general fund money.
To pay down the principal would require either more general fund
money or some other source of revenue, like a future bond issue.
In talking about school facilities and funding you mentioned
Sacramento and the facilities funding allocation system. A recent
report from the Legislative Analyst's Office suggests that the
school facilities funding process is dysfunctional not merely
in relation to L.A., but statewide. It suggested that the Legislature
create an ongoing revenue stream for school capital outlay in
an attempt to give predictability and control to the districts
so that they might be better positioned to deal with the challenges
faced by suburban and urban districts re: finding sites and building
schools. The Legislature seems uninterested in the LAO's findings.
Is state funding a problem?
The biggest problem with the financing issue is that we have to
concentrate perhaps more than we should on Sacramento, where the
big money decisions are made, than on our own backyard, where
we're actually building schools.
The Facilities Division at LAUSD has a specific mission to fulfill
L.A.'s growing need for school seats. That's our job. And we measure
our success or failure by the number of seats we build. Some have
observed, however, that we have been forced by the State's current
allocation structure to meet sometimes arbitrary rules which divert
our attention from that mission. The more time we have to spend
in a process that was not designed for the urban realities of
places like L.A., Santa Ana, Oakland or San Francisco, the less
time we have to focus on our core mission of constructing additional
seats.
That said, there's a real opportunity for retooling the system
as the next State school bond takes shape over the coming months.
The LAO Report went on to say that "instead of placing
more school bonds on the state ballot and allocating funds on
a project-specific basis, we recommend the Legislature develop
a new blueprint that offers all school districts the practical
capacity to build and modernize school facilities on an ongoing
basis." Will such as reform meet with LAUSD's approval?
Los Angeles is adding a population the size of two Chicagos, while
other parts of the state are losing residents. Why limit school
funding options to a one-size-doesn't-fit-all statewide system
when each locality has different needs?
We in California have created a process that can only be likened
to someone hitting a piñata--a school bond is passed and
all the school districts in the State dive on the pile to scramble
for whatever money they can grab before it's gone. This causes
the most impacted school districts to focus on fighting for every
dollar when all of their attention should be on children and schools.
We're in the business of providing facilities and educational
opportunities. Our focus should therefore be the rhythm of the
demographics and facility needs in the District. A system that
allocates funds on an ongoing, as-needed basis would help alleviate
some of this in-fighting and finally direct resources to the schools
districts that need it most.
Mott, you obviously have a firm grasp of the challenges
that face an urban school district like LAUSD. Because of that
knowledge, you've recently been made Director of LAUSD's new Office
of Housing and Relocation. Why don't you give our readers a bit
of an orientation of what the mission of that office is, and what
you see as your priorities going forward?
Building schools isn't a simple real estate endeavor. At the heart
of it, school construction is really community building. And the
more we've learned about housing, particularly affordable housing,
the more important a concern it has become for us at the District.
Because of that we have made it a priority to choose school sites
that attempt to avoid the demolition of housing. In fact, of those
137 projects, only 35 involve displacement of residential tenants.
To break that figure down into specifics, over the next two years
LAUSD expects acquire and displace multifamily buildings with
about 950 tenant households as well as 225 single-family homes.
To meet our dual objective of doing right by the impacted families
and doing right by the region with respect to its broad housing
needs, we are looking at some very exciting ideas.
Most agencies, when they do relocation, do the minimum required
under the law. The District, however, wants to leverage partnerships
with housing agencies, developers, finance organizations and tenant
groups to help us spend our relocation dollars more wisely, enhancing
the benefits to our displacees and freeing up resources, if possible,
for replenishment housing development. We've been working very
closely with the Housing Authority of the City of L.A., Fannie
Mae, the L.A. Housing Dept., the Southern California Association
of Nonprofit Housing and other organizations and individuals to
explore the opportunities.
Simply put, we're exploring how partnerships can help as many
of our displacees as possible--even those with very low incomes--into
homeownership or into long-term affordable rental situations.
We also intend to provide displacees with tools for financial
empowerment to make this difficult experience a potential springboard
into advancement.
We hope that crafting successful creative arrangements with our
housing partners will free up moneys they can apply towards new
affordable housing development.
Another innovative tool in the construction of schools
and revitalization of neighborhoods was a project you worked on
prior to your new responsibilities with the Office of Housing
and Relocation: the Land Bank. Tell us what that was about, what
need it fills and what value added it brings to building new facilities.
The number one problem we've had in our school construction program
is siting. Available sites are simply hard to come by in urbanized
areas like L.A. And, as you know, we have a tremendous near-term
need for new schools.
Under the standard District model, it takes about one to two
years from the date we identify a preferred site to the date we
buy it. During the intervening years--even with a willing seller--any
number of things can happen to vastly increase the District's
acquisition costs. It could be sold on spec, new development could
be entitled, or something could even be built. The practical result
is that the public suffers when we can't move nimbly enough.
Out of that need has come the Land Bank--a private corporation
owned by LAUSD that can move quickly to make prudent land buys
from willing sellers after investment-level due diligence and
hold the property until it is appropriate for the District itself
to buy it.
So far the land bank has been able to purchase several sites
to hold until the District has the ability to go ahead, purchase
the land from the land bank and build new facilities.
You spent a lot of time working with New Schools - Better
Neighborhoods and have frequently expressed your desire to see
more joint-use projects. Are innovations like the Land Bank and
the Office of Housing and Relocation going to help forward a joint-use
agenda at LAUSD? Are we going to see more projects take advantage
of the opportunities joint use projects presents in a dense metropolis?
The number one predictor of whether or not we're going to be able
to do joint-use is our prospective partners' ability to know for
themselves when a potential partnership would advance their interests.
When we've had partners who know their priorities and know what
it's worth to see them advanced, we've made some exciting progress.
One example is a deal we're working on a deal with New Economics
for Women (NEW) and EXED. NEW is working on developing 120 units
of affordable housing as well as an elementary school--which we
hope to purchase and lease back as a charter school when it's
complete--on a single property NEW owns in Canoga Park. It's a
fantastic union of schools and housing. It makes their housing
project stronger, it makes our school component stronger and it
means that we will have a new school that is completely integrated
with its surroundings.
That's one of our few success stories within the City of Los
Angeles. But outside the City we're seeing even more hopeful progress
on joint-use. The most exciting example is Belvedere Park, in
unincorporated East L.A. This project offers us the possibility
to build a high school in one of the most densely populated areas
of the region, on a three-acre parcel that the County currently
owns, and then use our remaining funds to turn a somewhat downtrodden
40-acre County park into a true showpiece for the wider community.
We'll impact no housing units at all, and a vital resource will
be revitalized. This is the kind of creative partnership we positively
must see more of. And it's only possible because the County, led
by Supervisor Molina's office, and the District are prepared to
do the hard work it takes to break down the barriers to this kind
of creative arrangement.
The interesting question is, if you have such positive
examples, why is joint-use the exception, not the rule?
We've had a lot of difficulty marrying the programmatic requirements
of a school with the legal requirements of parks and open space.
Our worst-case scenario is where a school believes that to satisfy
programmatic and security requirements it must have exclusive
access to a park. At the same time, the parks department believes
that any shared use in a public park--exclusive or not--means
that park has been lost to the community, in violation of the
Parks Preservation Act and the City Charter.
We have to find a middle ground. The District must realize that
it can share facilities without controlling every detail and the
Parks Dept. must realize that to allow school access actually
enhances the quality of the facility and creates a more vibrant
neighborhood center.
You've talked about changing paradigms throughout the
School District, City governance and the private sector. Tie those
ideas together and give us a set of benchmarks we can use to judge
your success at LAUSD.
We've convened two working groups of housing leaders in the region:
one to look into the business aspects our relocation program keyed
into the region's affordable housing development objectives, and
the other to identify opportunities available for our displacees
to leverage the resources we will make available to them into
financial empowerment, homeownership and long-term affordable
housing for themselves and their families.
We have an enormous opportunity to help our displacees achieve
these and other forms of advancement. And the working groups will
help us make sure we have the best program possible. We absolutely
owe it to our displacees to respect the disruption they are about
to experience to their lives--however badly we know need the new
schools.
We're very excited to continue our efforts with these expert
working groups how we can best achieve our commitments to provide
our displacees with opportunities for home ownership and long-term
affordable rental housing, and our commitment to explore partnerships
for new housing development in the region. Our success needs to
measured by those commitments.
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