Los Angeles school land housing proposal from former LAUSD chief Austin Beutner targets affordability, parks, and public services
Austin Beutner, the former investment banker who led Los Angeles schools through the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, has presented a series of proposals to alleviate the problem of housing and public spaces by using school lands owned by the city.
Beutner is pitching a set of proposals that would put public schools at the center of the city’s response — from building apartments on school campuses to opening school grounds as neighborhood parks.
The ideas build on work underway already within the Los Angeles Unified School District and City Hall, but would significantly expand that approach.
“It all relies on a mayor who understands how to do it, and how to better connect schools and what the city can do,” Beutner told the Daily News.
The proposals touch on three areas: creating affordable housing on small portions of large school campuses, expanding schools as hubs for public services, and opening school sites for community use outside school hours.
Under Beutner’s housing proposal, the city would work with school districts to identify large school campuses where small sections — sometimes just a quarter of an acre — could be used to build modest apartment buildings, potentially housing teachers, school staff and local residents, according to the Daily News.
Because the land is already publicly owned and could qualify for expedited or streamlined permitting under state and city rules, Beutner argues the housing could be built at significantly lower cost than typical market-rate projects.
This is not totally innovative. According to the Daily News, elements of Beutner’s proposals build on housing, joint-use campus and schoolyard park efforts already underway within LAUSD and City Hall, including initiatives backed by Mayor Karen Bass. But his plan would significantly expand those efforts and place the mayor’s office in a more direct coordinating role.
A spokesperson for LAUSD said Tuesday that the district has explored housing on school-owned property for well over a decade, particularly to support teachers and staff facing rising housing costs.
“Los Angeles Unified has longstanding experience with joint-use partnerships and school-connected housing efforts, and the district views schools as important community anchors,” the spokesperson said.
He also proposes using schools as access points for city services, such as automatically enrolling eligible families in discounted water, power and transit programs during school registration, rather than requiring separate applications through multiple departments.
A third proposal focuses on parks and play space: opening school fields, gyms and playgrounds for school-age children to use during evenings and weekends, supported by dedicated funding for staffing, maintenance and security.
To pay for that, Beutner proposes tapping Quimby fees — payments developers already pay under state law to fund parks — which he says have accumulated but gone largely unused because they can typically only be spent on buying land for parks, an increasingly expensive proposition in Los Angeles.
Austin Beutner: ‘Proposition 28 Funds Are Already in School Accounts’
