News came out today that the folks behind the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative have retracted their initial submission, due to go on the November ballot, and are planning to put a new, condensed version of the initiative up for a vote in March 2017.

The original initiative was an embarrassment, something I described with no reservations as the Donald Trump of ballot initiatives. It was misleading, disingenuous, and would have accomplished the opposite of most of the goals it claimed to support. This new one is much condensed, and it's... well... hmm. It's still not good... but it's on the right track.

Here's a quick summary of what's changed, what's the same, and how I think city leaders and pro-housing, pro-inclusion advocates should respond.

What's Different

The most important change to the initiative is that they removed many of the restrictions on how communities could be planned in the future. This was the most dishonest part of the initiative, and it made clear that the goal was never to make City Council "follow the law" or "preserve affordability," but rather to freeze Los Angeles in time—to the detriment of affordability, sustainability, walkability, and all those other great "-abilities."

Now, gone is the language that prohibited any changes in the size (bigger or smaller) of "islands of density" within the city, and the requirement that all neighborhoods within 1/2-mile of rail be zoned the same, and that all parcels within 1/4-mile of any other parcel match the prevailing scale, intensity, and height of existing development. In other words, all the stuff that said neighborhoods could never, ever change.

That's great news, and a smart decision on the part of the initiative's backers, because it was completely indefensible.

What's the Same

Other than that, most everything in the initiative is the same.

The limitations on spot zoning have been retained, which in my view is fine. In the short or medium term we need a better solution than ad hoc interventions like spot zoning. Basically everyone agrees that something needs to change, and although this isn't a complete solution, it's a part of one.

They also kept the requirement that the general plan and community plans be reviewed and considered for amendment every 5 years, which is also good policy. It's something we really should have already been doing, but we've lacked the staff for a long time—particularly since the recession, when the Planning department's budget was decimated.

The initiative still has the requirement that environmental review be facilitated through the city. Currently developers can pay consultants to have this done, and the new law would make it so that the city either does the review themselves or, more likely, contracts with the consultant directly, in place of the developer doing so. Nominally this is to ensure transparency, but the consultants are still doing the work and the city has the final review in either case, so I don't really see the purpose or benefit of this. It seems guaranteed to delay the environmental review process and increase overall costs, but that's about it. It looks like poor policy that's motivated solely by a mistrust for government, and I think we can do a lot better.