We all come to housing advocacy from different places, literally and figuratively. As I take on the role of Director of Policy and Research for Abundant Housing LA, I wanted to take some time to introduce myself, in the context of the five neighborhoods where I have lived. This is the fourth installment of the “Housing Lessons From My Neighborhoods” series. You can read the previous post here. I’m excited about this post. Koreatown is kind of my happy place. Even though I don’t live there anymore, I still go back sometimes when I want to feel hopeful.
Koreatown, Los Angeles
The author at Wilshire/Vermont Station shortly after an Abundant Housing LA job interview. Photo: David Barboza.
Having returned to the states with a history degree under my belt, I had to figure out what to do with my life, a process that never really ends, and is never easy. The first challenges were finding a job and a place to live. I got into substitute teaching, which, for the record, probably isn’t the best way to decide if you want to be a teacher. I also did a bit of nonprofit fundraising for Greenpeace, which was interesting, but also challenging, particularly since the venues where we would try to approach people to get them to donate to the cause weren’t always a fan of us being there. These gigs weren’t the steadiest or most lucrative, so moving back in with my parents was key to making my budget work. As much as that stung my pride at the time, I realize in retrospect that I was fortunate to have that option. Many people don’t have the privilege of a housing safety net.
I decided to get into city planning because it seemed like a way to tackle the big problems I had become concerned with, like housing affordability and climate change. I didn’t have much background in the field at the time, but I started reading, started applying to programs, and decided to keep studying in LA, this time at USC. That meant I needed to move out of my parents’ house again, and get myself an apartment. The lesson I take from getting accepted to grad school in a field I didn’t have much background in, is you shouldn’t let anyone intimidate you into silence on the issues that are important to you. Your voice matters, and what you don’t know now, you can learn if you apply yourself.
Koreatown came to mind pretty quickly as a place to live. It’s close to the main USC campus and close to subway stops. I wanted to live without a car for environmental reasons and Koreatown seemed to embody a lot of the urbanist ideas I was reading about in books like Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking.
Studying planning at USC was a great experience that’s hard to sum up. I learned about demographic analysis with census and American Community Survey data, dove into planning history, law, public participation, urban design and the environmental impacts of different land use patterns. One of my favorite assigned books from grad school was Getting to Yes, which contains wise advice on negotiations such as “separate the people from the problem,” “focus on interests not positions,” “invent options for mutual gain” and “insist on using objective criteria.” Another great book is Planning Theory for Practitioners, which outlines different ways of thinking about the role that planners play, which can be summed up as centralized rationality, incrementalism, advocacy planning and communicative action. Really, planning can be a bit of all of these. We proffer ourselves as experts, but the planning “experts” of the past had many blind spots and often caused great harm in their exercise of power. We are constrained by politics in everything we do and that often limits ideal policy outcomes. We can and should advocate on behalf of groups that have not traditionally had access to power, but existing power dynamics can make this difficult. Planning communication can also be viewed not just as a part of the process, but the essence of the process, where planners attempt to shape and direct, but do not completely control, public opinion.
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1920s apartments in Koreatown with no off-street parking, similar to my old place. Photo: Bing Maps.
I got myself a tiny studio apartment in a four-story brick apartment building from the 1920s. I could walk to shops and restaurants, ride the subway, and commute to school very conveniently on Vermont Avenue’s frequent bus service. My metro stop was Wilshire/Vermont, and I loved living in a dense, urban neighborhood. Despite the neighborhood’s name, Koreatown really seemed to capture the full racial diversity of Los Angeles County, to a greater degree than any other neighborhood I have lived in. My building had no off-street parking, but that was fine for me. The lack of parking made the rent cheaper, and meant I took on less student debt, which was great. The apartment was also small, under 300 square feet. Zoning codes often set minimum unit sizes, which meant my humble studio may be illegal to build today, but for me, at that time in my life, as an unmarried young guy with no kids, it worked: I cared more about cheap rent than about having a big apartment. People should be able to make that choice, even as we strive to ensure that people don’t have to overcrowd into housing.
I did see a lot of overcrowding in my building as I walked down the halls. Not everyone was living in these small apartments as a single person. Sometimes it was families, and I’m sure they would have opted for bigger places if they could have afforded to do so.
Koreatown is certainly not a perfect place. As I look back on it now, particularly from my perspective as a parent of young children, I think one of the neighborhood’s weaknesses is a lack of park space within walking distance. The neighborhood does dense urbanism really well, but open space is part of the mix of uses too. Since we want to convince more cities to go along with accepting more housing density, getting these kinds of urban design details right matters. We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace a nuanced perspective on urbanism. It’s badly needed and we must always strive to improve it.
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