Aids Charity Funds Anti-Spot-Zoning Legislation in L.A.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, with a $1.4 billion budget for 2017, has been known to front various political campaigns that ultimately will provide service to or advocate for AIDS patients. Its new investment totaling more than $4 million in an anti-spot-zoning legislation in L.A. has many perplexed, though.
A municipal ballot up for vote on March 7 calls for a halt on most major real estate projects by putting a temporary moratorium on exemptions for projects that exceed density or height restrictions of current zoning laws, otherwise known as spot-zoning. Critics of spot-zoning argue it allows a "mishmash" of randomly tall and dense development in neighborhoods that cannot support it.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is also in a lawsuit to stop the development of two 28-story luxury residential towers that are planned near its headquarters. Developers are unsure of the motivation of the AIDS charity group, but say that a moratorium on the ability to approve denser buildings will only exacerbate housing affordability problems.
Says Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California’s Lusk Center for Real Estate: “If food is too expensive, what do you do, make it harder to grow food?”
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