{"id":109518,"date":"2025-12-26T14:33:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T14:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/109518\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T14:33:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T14:33:13","slug":"austin-beutner-proposes-school-centered-housing-services-and-park-plan-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/109518\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Beutner proposes school-centered housing, services and park plan \u2013 Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Los Angeles struggles to build housing fast enough and keep basic costs affordable for families, mayoral candidate Austin Beutner<\/a> is pitching a set of proposals that would put public schools at the center of the city\u2019s response \u2014 from building apartments on school campuses to opening school grounds as neighborhood parks.<\/p>\n

The ideas build on work already underway within the Los Angeles Unified School District<\/a> and City Hall<\/a>, but would significantly expand that approach.<\/p>\n

Beutner, the former superintendent of LAUSD, outlined the ideas recently as part of his mayoral platform, framing them as ways the city could better coordinate with public schools and make use of public land and infrastructure it already owns.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all relies on a mayor who understands how to do it, and how to better connect schools and what the city can do,\u201d Beutner said.<\/p>\n

The proposals touch on three areas: creating affordable housing<\/a> on small portions of large school campuses, expanding schools as hubs for public services, and opening school sites for community use outside school hours.<\/p>\n

Under Beutner\u2019s housing proposal, the city would work with school districts to identify large school campuses where small sections \u2014 sometimes just a quarter of an acre \u2014 could be used to build modest apartment buildings, potentially housing teachers, school staff and local residents.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

To pay for that, Beutner proposes tapping Quimby fees \u2014 payments developers already pay under state law to fund parks \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Beutner argues the city should seek a change in state law allowing those funds to be used instead to lease and operate park space on school campuses. Lease payments would then help schools cover custodial services, maintenance and programming, making schoolyards function as neighborhood parks without requiring new taxes or fees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need to raise fees on anybody. That\u2019s a terrible idea,\u201d he said. \u201cJust take the existing structure, the existing money, amend the law to say money could also be used to lease park space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this new?<\/p>\n

Not entirely. Elements of Beutner\u2019s 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\u2019s office in a more direct coordinating role.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for LAUSD said Tuesday that the district has explored housing on school-owned property<\/a> for well over a decade, particularly to support teachers and staff facing rising housing costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLos Angeles Unified has longstanding experience with joint-use partnerships and school-connected housing efforts, and the district views schools as important community anchors,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Between 2015 and 2018, the district opened three workforce housing developments totaling 185 units at or near Gardena High School, Selma Elementary School and Norwood Elementary School, and earlier this year authorized new proposals on four additional sites.<\/p>\n

Schools already function as service hubs in many communities, offering health, mental health, family and nutrition services, and LAUSD maintains joint-use agreements that allow community access to certain facilities outside school hours, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

On the parks side, LAUSD and the city have also partnered under Mayor Bass and the city to open 10 schoolyards for free weekend recreation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Feasibility questions<\/p>\n

Translating the ideas into reality would require navigating significant legal and operational hurdles. LAUSD officials said expanding housing or public access on active school campuses would raise a range of issues, from state and local rules governing school property to student and staff safety, labor agreements, long-term maintenance and liability.<\/p>\n

Any proposal would have to move through the district\u2019s formal review process, the spokesperson said, with student safety and campus operations remaining the top priority.<\/p>\n

Joe Halper, a longtime parks and recreation leader and former Los Angeles recreation and parks commissioner, said Tuesday the biggest barriers to opening school campuses as neighborhood parks are often less about space than about governance, liability and long-term funding.<\/p>\n

He noted that many low-income neighborhoods \u2014 particularly Black and Latino communities \u2014 lack parks<\/a> within walking distance, leaving school grounds as the only nearby open space for children. In heavily built-out areas, Halper said, that shortage has contributed to health disparities, including higher rates of childhood obesity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe use of the school grounds is the only opportunity for use of public space for this purpose because of the planning lapses over past years as the city developed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But Halper said school districts have historically been cautious, in large part because of concerns about liability once campuses are opened to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest obstacle that I see is the focus on concern for litigation. The schools have been highly sensitive to litigation resulting from use of the school grounds,\u201d he said. As a result, joint-use agreements are often structured more around minimizing risk than building robust programs, he added.<\/p>\n

Halper said Beutner\u2019s proposal to tap Quimby development fees to help support schoolyard parks is workable in concept, but would require sustained political coordination and funding beyond capital improvements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s legally possible,\u201d he said, adding that doing so would require coordinated action among City Council members and strong leadership from the mayor to move funds across districts and sustain operations.<\/p>\n

Housing experts, however, cautioned that while building on publicly owned land could reduce some costs, the savings may be more modest \u2014 and more complex \u2014 than proponents suggest.<\/p>\n

Paavo Monkkonen, a UCLA urban planning professor, said using publicly owned land could reduce housing costs if it is made available below market value, though it would not necessarily speed up production timelines.<\/p>\n

\u201cDevelopers would likely face additional steps for procurement. There may also be additional bureaucratic steps for projects on public land,\u201d Monkkonen said in an email reply Tuesday. \u201cRegardless of the time or cost, I think housing is a great use for public lands like school parking lots from a land use efficiency perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Ward, an economist and co-director of the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness, said land costs typically make up a relatively small share of overall development expenses \u2014 even in high-cost markets like Los Angeles \u2014 meaning potential savings could be outweighed by other factors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, my intuition would be that all the requirements for labor standards and other sorts of additional steps that would be triggered would likely more than offset any land cost savings,\u201d he said. \u201cIn general, even in a high cost area like L.A., land costs are a fairly small (maybe 10% on average) part of overall costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s office and Bass campaign were contacted for comment but did not immediately respond by press deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Los Angeles struggles to build housing fast enough and keep basic costs affordable for families, mayoral candidate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1400,380,7,989,1011,4132,48,52,51,17248,23,47,137,50,49,100,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-109518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-2026-elections","9":"tag-affordable-housing","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-karen-bass","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-headlines","16":"tag-la-news","17":"tag-lausd","18":"tag-local-news","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-los-angeles-county","21":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","22":"tag-los-angeles-news","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}