Housing needs for current and future residents, environmental justice, access to local commercial corridors and preserving Boyle Heights’ cultural legacy will be priorities as the neighborhood grows, according to its newly updated community plan.
In a 14-0 vote, city leaders last week officially approved the update to the Boyle Heights Community Plan, which acts like a blueprint for the future of one of LA’s oldest neighborhoods. The multidecade effort to update the document is its first change since 1998.
Councilmember Ysabel Jurado spoke to the greater City Council during a June 24 meeting and pointed to the history of Boyle Heights residents being left out of conversations that impact their neighborhood. For the updated plan, she said neighbors and other stakeholders worked to mold it into a positive asset for the community of roughly 85,000 people.
“This plan reflects years of community advocacy for stronger environmental protections, more thoughtful land-use decisions, greater compatibility between industrial and residential uses, affordable housing antidisplacement measures and investments that allow families to remain in the neighborhoods that they built,” Jurado said during the meeting.
Jurado spoke as the Lineage warehouse fire was still burning next to homes. She stressed the future of the neighborhood didn’t necessarily have to mirror its past.
“No community plan can undo generations of inequitable land use decisions overnight…” Jurado said, referring to the residential neighborhoods around the industrial zone that endured smoke from the fire for days. “A community cannot thrive if families are asked to bear environmental burdens that [other communities] aren’t forced to accept.”
The plan will allow for 13,000 new homes, attract 12,000 more work opportunities, and accommodate 37,000 additional residents in Boyle Heights through the year 2040, according to a press release from LA’s Planning Department.
The latest update incentivizes developers to build in the proposed zones by the LA River that will allow more mixed-use structures, such as apartments above small businesses. The plan will also offer opportunities for legacy small businesses to be relocated to the new development area to further preserve the culture and identity of the neighborhood.
Addressing environmental harms
The plan also includes updated building code guidelines to ensure that:
- Potentially disruptive or hazardous industrial uses along streets that serve as boundaries between industrial areas and residential neighborhoods are discouraged
- Facilities that handle hazardous materials near residents and schools are phased out
- Qualifying development projects conduct soil testing to ensure that lead and arsenic are removed from the soil prior to any ground disturbance
Housing, jobs and neighborhood character
The plan update also features the following tools to “promote affordable housing, economic development, and maintain the community identity” in the neighborhood:
- Prioritizes new production of housing development along commercial corridors and near transit stations to reduce automobile dependency, while safeguarding existing residential neighborhoods
- Incentivizes units for a range of lower-income households, including families of four that make less than $16,000 annually, and family-sized units for intergenerational housing needs
- Adopts new zoning standards that promote corner shops, or tienditas, that provide groceries and household goods within a walkable distance of the surrounding residential neighborhood
- Strengthens local business and job growth potential along major corridors with new regulations that limit the size of commercial spaces to support mom-and-pop-style businesses and neighborhood grocery stores rather than big-box stores and chains
- New zoning standards that require design features on new development to be compatible with and reflect the existing character of historic and potentially historic buildings, such as those along the historic Brooklyn Avenue corridor
The updated Plan was initially approved in September 2024 and preserves access to incoming affordable housing while safeguarding housing in existing residential neighborhoods.
The plan update also incorporates the New Zoning Code, a more flexible zoning system designed to promote sustainable development and equity across LA neighborhoods. Boyle Heights is the second LA neighborhood to utilize the new code after downtown.
Residents’ hopes for implementation
At a June 10 town hall at Boyle Heights City Hall, various community groups and organizations met with Jurado and the Eastside Leadership for Equitable and Accountable Development Strategies (LEADS) coalition to discuss the plan.
At the end of the meeting, attendees broke into groups to talk about issues they wanted addressed and what neighborhood identity and culture would be important to preserve as the community plan is implemented.
Daniel Jimenez said that his table discussed “how important it is for us to be able to have affordable housing in our neighborhoods.”
In addition to affordable housing, others shared that the plan should ensure adequate parking for new developments, create more green spaces and programming for youth.
Fanny Ortiz, a longtime Boyle Heights resident, said, “In order for us to live and thrive in our community, we should be able to have housing with dignity.”
According to a representative from Jurado’s office, the plan will take effect later this summer.
