The Beverly Hills City Council voted unanimously at its Oct. 10 meeting to revise affordable housing guidelines by clarifying occupancy priority standards and adding a definition of “displacement” in the Beverly Hills Municipal Code.
The Beverly Hills affordable housing program places income-qualified tenants into deed-restricted units in private developments. The guidelines and priority standards were adopted in 2016 and 2019, respectively, and have since been reviewed by city staff, who’ve identified areas where guidelines are unclear. Staff also consulted HouseKeys, the administrators of the city’s affordable housing program. The ensuing revisions follow recommendations made earlier this year by the Planning Commission.
The first part of the revisions concerns the affordable housing guidelines for rental units. The revisions remove the time limit for vacating a rental unit and instead added a definition of a “noncompliance event.” The second part of the revisions target occupancy priority standards, which dictate the order in which tenants are placed into the units if qualified. City staff reassessed occupancy priority standards and how the term “displacement” is defined and interacts with these standards.
Currently, affordable housing applicants are prioritized by tiers. After the application period for affordable housing closes, the developer uses a lottery system to rank all applications within a specific tier, except for tiers that require ranking by lowest annual income.
Tiers 1-3 include those displaced due to redevelopment from the site where new affordable units will be located. Tiers 4-6 are those displaced from other properties in the city but maintains a time limit on how long these households are considered qualified. Tier 7 consists of senior citizens and tier 8 qualifies households based on income only.
Historically, only those in Tiers 7 and 8 have been placed into existing affordable housing rental units in the city because no applicants have qualified for Tiers 1-6.
Over the years, public comments have expressed concern that the tiers were too limited and that time limits for being considered “displaced” were inconsistent across tiers.
The revisions include new proposed occupancy priority standards as follows: Tier 1 consists of those displaced from the site where affordable units are available and provided first right of refusal under state law (SB 8). Tier 2 consists of those displaced from other sites in the city, with subcategories of priority in the order of seniors, then households with BHUSD students, then all remaining households. Tier 3 is comprised of senior citizens and Tier 4 of those working in a private or public entity within the city.
Under the new revisions, the lottery-based system will be managed by HouseKeys. The lottery system will assign a randomized number to each applicant who have entered the affordable housing drawing. After being randomized, the applicable City Occupation Priority List will be added, and the applicants will be resorted into their specific tiers.
Some council members expressed concern for the lottery-based system instead of using time on the list for affordable housing as a way of choosing to place qualifying residents in affordable housing units.
“On the whole, I can support the Planning Commission and staff’s recommendations to the lottery system, but I recognize for people who are displaced a while ago it seems less fair, because they’ve been out longer,” said Councilmember Craig Corman.
City staff stated that a lottery system was the fairest way to randomize the applicants that they consider first, citing the difficulty of determining how long a household has been displaced.
Mayor Lester Friedman expressed similar feelings about the lottery-based system. “I also had some discomfort with the lottery versus the amount of time that a person has been displaced, but for similar reasons, as Councilmember Corman stated, it’s probably the fairest way of looking at it instead of looking back and trying to check why a person was displaced over many years.”
Additionally, the new guidelines expand definition of “displacement” to include households displaced because of redevelopment, as well as those who voluntarily vacate housing due to new development (such as accepting cash for keys from a landlord), and involuntarily vacate due to substandard conditions or natural disasters.
The time frame for qualifying as displaced would be increased to 10 years as consistent with rights granted under California’s Ellis Act.
