Center for Food & Justice

The Progressive Los Angeles Network’s 21 Point Agenda


Social and Economic Justice • Livability • Democracy

The Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN) is a new alliance that brings progressive organizers, activists, researchers, and policy practitioners together across issues, constituencies, geography, class, race and gender to forge a common public policy agenda for the Los Angeles region. Hundreds of PLAN participants have met over the past year to develop action plans on issues ranging from transportation, the urban environment, and food and nutrition, to economic development, housing, and workers’ rights. This 21 Point Agenda provides a list of priority actions that the City of Los Angeles should take to make LA a more just, livable, and democratic place.

1. Ensure public investment yields quality jobs and community benefits. LA’s economy has grown in the past few years, but the number of working poor has risen even faster. Seven of the 10 fastest growing occupations in LA pay an average of less than $8.50 an hour—less than a living wage. The City should ensure that the 24,000 jobs that will be created by major, publicly subsidized development projects currently underway or in the pipeline in LA are quality jobs that provide living wages and health care, and hire from local communities. As a concrete step, the City should expand its living wage ordinance to require employers in projects subsidized by the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)—including commercial tenants—to pay their workers a living wage. New, subsidized, large-scale developments also should provide such community benefits as child care and affordable housing units. The City should make its business subsidy programs more transparent so residents can participate in identifying community needs.

2. Gear job training towards quality jobs. Each year the City of Los Angeles spends upwards of $150 million dollars on job training, most of it federal money channeled through LA’s Workforce Investment Board (WIB). To better meet residents’ long term needs, the City should require businesses taking part in publicly-funded training programs to pay a training wage that leads to self sufficiency; improve services for job-seekers with limited English proficiency so that all residents can take advantage of public training programs; target workforce investment funds to placing residents in high wage industries with growth potential and career ladders; and appoint labor and community representatives to the WIB executive committee.

3. Consolidate all economic development functions. Making our economy stronger and fairer will require a coherent vision as to how the City can target public funds to promote economic development and better coordinate City economic development efforts. The City should consolidate all economic development functions, including the Community Redevelopment Agency, into one Economic Development Department organized around five key functions: Industrial Development, Commercial Development, Finance, Workforce Development, and Policy and Research.

4. Increase urban parks and clean up contaminated brownfields. Los Angeles has less neighborhood park space than most large American cities. It also has numerous underutilized and contaminated sites and buildings that need to be inventoried and cleaned up to meet neighborhood needs. The City should double park space in park-poor neighborhoods, inventory and map existing brownfield sites, and double the number of brownfield sites rehabilitated. The City also should include communities in site assessment, land-use planning and decision-making processes regarding the location of parks and rehabilitation of brownfield sites, so that these efforts start with community recommendations, not developer proposals.

5. Inventory toxic health risks, and reduce pesticide use. LA residents face numerous toxic health threats, from air and water pollution to lead poisoning, with the heaviest burdens falling on low-income neighborhoods. The City should inventory health risks in the City from toxics in the air, water, land, and buildings, including cumulative risks and risks to vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly, and create a public database showing risks by neighborhoods. The City also should adopt a City Pesticides Reduction and Integrated Pest Management Policy to reduce annual pesticide use by 75 percent by weight within 5 years, with at least a 10 percent reduction within one year, while also bringing its leadership to bear in ensuring that the LA Unified School District completely phases out toxic pesticide use on school grounds.

6. Promote clean fuel vehicles and green energy. Cars, trucks, and other motorized vehicles are responsible for two-thirds of the region’s smog, and a majority of the cancer risks from air pollution. The City needs to convert its fleets so that half of all City vehicles in all categories are alternative fuel vehicles within four years; ensure that the MTA phases out all of its diesel buses; and push the LAUSD to phase out all diesel school buses, which pose a special threat to children. The City also should increase municipal use of energy from green power sources such as solar and wind by at least 50 percent, measured as a share of all power used.

7. Institute a Livable City Plan. Environmental policy making at the city level is fragmented between different agencies, without a pro-active and community-based strategy for addressing environmental, transportation, and land use challenges. Other cities, such as Seattle and Santa Monica, have taken the lead in establishing “Sustainable—or Livable—City Plans.” The City should institute a Livable City Plan designed to measure current environmental conditions, get broad community input on the kinds of changes needed to improve quality of life, and then set goals, strategies, and timetables for making this vision a reality.

8. Boost the Housing Trust Fund. LA is facing a serious affordable housing crisis, with rates of homeownership far below the national average and rents rising beyond the reach of average working families, but the City spends almost nothing to alleviate this crisis. New York City, for example, spent $265 million of its own money last year on affordable housing programs, while LA spent just $5 million. The City should dedicate $100 million annually to its Housing Trust Fund to finance affordable housing programs to help low and middle income residents rent and own homes. The City should consider a number of revenue sources, including a linked fee on new non-residential development, a portion of the City hotel tax, and a portion of increases in property tax receipts.

9. Require developers to build affordable housing units in all new residential developments. LA will need at least 4,000 new affordable housing units every year to keep up with population growth. The City should adopt an inclusionary zoning policy to require builders to make at least 15 percent of units in all new residential developments affordable to low and middle income residents. Developers should only be able to opt out of this requirement if they pay into the Housing Trust Fund the difference between the affordable housing price and their units’ market price.

10. Crack down on slum landlords. More than one of nine apartments in LA—150,000 units—are substandard. To transform unsafe and crowded housing units into decent, affordable housing, the City needs to expose slumlords, enforce safe housing laws, and empower tenants. The City should require registration by owners of all rental properties to give tenants, regulators, and the public the name and business address of the real owners of apartment buildings. The City should also promote state receivership legislation to allow cities to transfer control of housing that violates safety rules from slumlords to community groups and non-profit housing organizations. Further, the City should advocate for creation of a Housing Court to focus on these problems.

11. Attract food markets, farmers’ markets and community gardens to under served neighborhoods. Hunger and diet-related illness in L.A., such as diabetes and obesity, are heightened by the lack of healthy, affordable food markets in lower income neighborhoods. The City should set a goal of attracting at least four new full service markets and four new farmers’ markets to low-income neighborhoods over the next four years by, among other things, easing parking requirements, aiding land acquisition, and working with community organizations. The City also should help community organizations acquire land for at least ten new community gardens over the next four years and immediately create and fund at least one city staff position responsible for organizing and instituting community gardens and new farmers’ market sites.

12. Launch an annual report, plan of action, and policy council on food, hunger, and nutrition. The City currently does not have a Department that addresses food and nutrition issues nor a mechanism to establish distinctive food, hunger, or nutrition policies, despite major concerns and community interest in a healthy food approach to meeting peoples’ needs. The City should produce an Annual Report examining the state of food, hunger, and nutrition in LA. To address findings from the Report, the City should prepare and implement a Plan of Action and help establish a joint City-County Food Policy Council to identify the issues and help develop policies on food, hunger and nutrition issues.

13. Improve public transit. 76 percent of riders on MTA buses have no access to a car and depend on buses to reach jobs, schools, and health care, and meet other daily needs. The City should ensure that MTA improve its on-time bus service by 5 percent per year and guarantee free passes for riders when buses are more than 30 minutes late. The City also should ensure that the MTA expand its plans to buy new, clean buses and develop 20 new rapid bus lines and more bus lanes. Further, the City should ensure that bus fares are lowered, that a universal fare card that allows easy transfer between buses and trains is developed, and a widely available map of the entire public transportation system is created.

14. Promote safe, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods. 203 pedestrians were killed by traffic in LA County in 1999, and over 5,000 were injured, in part because City streets are designed solely for cars, with little attention to the needs of walkers and bikers. To make neighborhoods more safe, walkable, and vibrant, the City should dedicate at least 5 percent of MTA funding to pedestrian safety, amenities, and design improvements. Specific improvements should include increasing traffic calming features, instituting pedestrian zones; broadening sidewalks, and building a shelter at every bus stop. The City also should give a boost to biking by implementing the City Bicycle Master Plan and ensuring that MTA spends at least $25 million per year on cycling projects like bike lanes and paths and bike-friendly transit facilities.

15. Promote smart growth land use. Sprawling development hurts the environment, siphons resources and good jobs out of the central city, and creates stressful commutes. The City should overhaul its zoning code to promote smart growth, so people can drive less and live nearer to where they work, shop, study, and play. The City should create mixed-use demonstration projects in all City Districts, adopt a main street preservation ordinance banning new “big box” retail stores which undermine local retail and community activity, and steer future development to locations near existing and planned transit stops.

16. Promote workers’ rights to organize. Union workers in LA make an average of 20 percent higher salary and are 30 percent more likely to have health care than non-unionized workers in the same industry. To ensure that every worker has the right to join a union, the City should promote card check neutrality among all businesses with any kind of beneficial financial relationship with the City. The City also should prohibit any business that receives public subsidies or operates within zones that have benefited from significant public investment from violating a neutral stance regarding union activity.

17. Strengthen protections for low-wage workers. Approximately 5,000 sewing shops are concentrated in the Los Angeles area, employing upwards of 140,000 men, women, and children; only one in three of these shops are in compliance with Federal minimum wage and overtime laws. 22,000 day laborers look for work each day in LA, and, with street vendors, are among the workers most vulnerable to harassment from local law enforcement, employers, merchants, private business owners, and residents. The City should double the number of official day labor sites and designated areas for street vendors in the City, and establish clear purchasing criteria regarding the labor practices of companies that provide products to governmental entities. City procurement policies should give preference in contracting to companies that pay a living wage, provide health care benefits, hire locally, and have a clean history of abiding by labor regulations on child labor and sweatshop conditions, and also should bar repeat violators of labor laws from bidding on contracts.

18. Strengthen public sector union job opportunities. Privatizing City services can reduce quality of service and hinder public accountability, as profit becomes the prime motivation in service delivery. The City should collaborate with City workers to improve public services, not privatize them. The also City should promote unionized public sector employment as a route out of poverty. Specifically, the City should expand the its City Jobs Program (that has successfully helped low-income residents and created new unionized public sector jobs) to include more City Departments and double the number of public union jobs created through this program.

19. Institute a health care fund or purchasing pool for employers. 30 percent of all workers in LA, and 59 percent of LA’s working poor lack health care, compared to a national average of 16 percent and 38 percent. The City should create a health care purchasing pool partially funded with local dollars, and encourage businesses that do not offer heath care to their workers to participate in the purchasing pool. The City should focus on including businesses covered by living wage ordinances that do not offer health insurance, small employers, and large employers of temporary and part-time workers.

20. Promote increased electoral participation. Only 32 percent of registered voters went to the polls for the last Mayoral election in 1997, and just 18 percent showed up in 1999 when the new City Charter was approved. To boost voter turn out, the City should institute a system of early voting, using touch screen technology, for at least seven days in advance of final voting day; allow permanent absentee voting; and either institute an election-day holiday for City elections or allow for weekend voting.

21. Ensure full participation on commissions and neighborhood councils. City Commissions and the new Neighborhood Councils have been unrepresentative of the city’s demographics, to the detriment of such constituencies as immigrants, workers, tenants and low-income communities impacted by Commission and Neighborhood Council decisions. The City should ensure full and fair representation on and participation in these decision-making bodies, and, in particular, should develop clear criteria for denying certification (and public funding) for Neighborhood Councils that are not representative of their intended constituencies.