Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Housing Affordable topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Council sets TEFRA hearing after contentious public debate over Playa Vista bonds
Summary
After hours of public comment both for and against, the Los Angeles City Council set a Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) hearing on Playa Vista housing bonds for Oct. 2 and approved the motion to schedule the hearing by a recorded vote.
Los Angeles City Council scheduled a TEFRA hearing on statewide tax-exempt bond financing for the Playa Vista Fountain Park affordable housing parcel on Oct. 2, following an extended public hearing that featured developers, affordable-housing advocates and environmental and neighborhood groups.
The hearing date was set by an amending motion introduced for the record by Councilmember Joel Wax and carried on the floor with a 10-0 recorded vote. The council’s action does not itself award bond financing; it schedules the federal-tax-code hearing required if the city’s housing authority pursues tax-exempt bond proceeds for the project.
The debate centered on two opposing claims: supporters said the project would produce hundreds of affordable units on the Westside, while opponents said the development is a public subsidy for a large developer and raised environmental and public‑health concerns.
Proponents, including Playa Vista representatives and applicants, said Fountain Park would include a large share of permanently restricted affordable apartments. “Phase 1 of our project, 15 percent of the units — about 500 units — will be dedicated to affordable housing,” Tina Choi, vice president of public affairs at Playa Vista, told the council. Supporters at the hearing said the planned units would rent at rates far below prevailing market rents on the Westside and argued the city should allow the project to apply for state and federal financing tools.
Opponents urged a full committee hearing and asked the council to delay any steps while state and federal agencies investigate soil gas and contamination claims. Speakers from neighborhood and environmental groups pointed to prior bond issuances and to what they described as potentially undisclosed site conditions, including allegations of methane and volatile-organic compounds at or beneath portions of the site. “We have people getting sick,” said one resident who described respiratory and other health effects in nearby neighborhoods. Environmental advocates also cited prior city approvals and bond allocations and asked the council to require additional environmental review and disclosures before the project moves forward.
Speakers on both sides referenced prior financial actions. Opponents said the developer has already received Mello‑Roos and housing bond commitments and that additional tax-exempt bond authority would amount to a public subsidy; proponents countered that the financing would allow construction of permanently restricted affordable homes that the private market would not otherwise build.
The council’s action was narrowly procedural: it set the TEFRA hearing date and time (Oct. 2 at 10 a.m., City Hall, Room 1010) so the applicant may proceed with the federal hearing process. Councilmembers said scheduling the hearing does not remove other review steps, and that the TEFRA hearing itself is one step in a larger regulatory and financing process.
The council’s recorded vote on the substitute motion to set the hearing was 10 in favor, 0 opposed. The hearing is now on the calendar for early October; additional technical and environmental information is expected to be part of the public record before that hearing.
