A California Assembly member is looking for ways to revitalize cities

The side streets of the Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles were bustling.

Silver-faced, tuxedo-adorned mannequins are jostled by crazy clowns and glowing Hello Kittys. Ball caps, Stetsons and sombreros, baby carriages, toasters and Crock-Pots, lucha libre masks, belts and shoes burst from open-air shops and street vendors' tables. Steam rises from the food trucks and carts.

Matt Haney, a Democratic Assemblyman from San Francisco, weaved and waved as he navigated the narrow streets. Dressed in denim and a monogrammed windbreaker, holding a cup of coffee, she was relaxed and unassuming, well-dressed for a true autumn morning.

“Like all of you, I love cities, and I, like all of you, will not allow us to abandon our cities,” he told LA business leaders earlier in the day. “They are very important. They affect people's lives in many positive ways.”

Los Angeles was one of nine stops on his city tour. From Sacramento to San Diego, you're looking for a prescription for California's sickest suburbs.

In Long Beach, eat potato wedges at an outdoor event area near the city's convention center. In San Diego, he wandered a street of empty stores. In San Jose, he visited student housing in a former hotel. In San Francisco, he took over Union Square, where the iconic Macy's is slated to close.

Chairman of the Downtown Recovery Select Committee, Haney plans to introduce legislation next year to help these cities revitalize their downtowns.

Not so long ago, urban cities were booming. The recession was earlier, office space is at a premium and residential development is booming. But as the COVID-19 shutdown emptied buildings and left streets empty, progress stalled, setting off a series of unfortunate events.

Office vacancies are at their highest – about 25% in Los Angeles and 35% in San Francisco. Some areas, like LA's Fashion District, remain vibrant, but the inescapable realities of homelessness, mental illness and drug use drive many tourists and businesses away.

For Haney, who studied urban development at UC Berkeley before earning a law degree, there is no “sugarcoating” this fact, or its urgency.

He said: “The clock is ticking. “As each month goes by – and things get worse – it becomes harder for cities to get out of the challenges they are facing. We can't leave our cities on the slopes to go around and tear them apart as they decay. That would be a catastrophic failure.”

Ending his journey through the Fashion District, he faced tensions between brick-and-mortar stores and street vendors, while just blocks away, encampments blocked the streets of Skid Row, a nearly abandoned city-owned mall, and a zombie. buildings fill the sky.

A single passenger tours downtown San Francisco on a double-decker bus. Steeped in history, this city by the Bay now has a dubious reputation for housing shortages, rampant crime and business migration.

(Luis Cinco / Los Angeles Times)

“This pandemic has made us realize that our cities are not sustainable,” said Steven Pedigo, assistant dean at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the LBJ Urban Lab.

The risk to urban areas, Pedigo said, comes from an over-reliance on knowledge-based industries — the tech sector in San Francisco, government in Sacramento — whose workers are slow to return to the office.

Expanding that focus will mean moving from an advanced economy dependent on 12-hour workdays to 24/7, day-and-night environments.

“The goal is to bring people downtown,” Haney said. “Downtowns cannot survive without people.”

There is no simple and complex agenda. It begins by addressing the public perception that cities are dangerous and dirty.

Haney is looking at Proposition 1, a $6.4-billion bond to fund treatment and housing for homeless people with mental illness or addiction.

And it means dividing the economic base of these neighborhoods.

In Long Beach, Haney stopped at a hotel built in the 1920s, which served as a seniors' residence before its recent opening as a luxury hotel.

Haney, center, joins Downtown Long Beach Alliance President and CEO Austin Metoyer, left, with others on a walking tour of the neighborhood.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

In the Bay Area, he visited part of the San José State University hotel building that was converted into housing for more than 700 students.

In Riverside, he visited the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, which has played a major role in revitalizing the city's downtown.

“Each of them has big challenges, and they are facing these challenges by rethinking what their city is in different ways and with different levels of success,” said Haney.

The scale of these problems is so great — and the needs so similar — that Haney believes a nationwide strategy is warranted.

“One thing that emerged from some of these visits is that these cities don't always talk,” he said. “They don't always have strong support or communication from across government.”

State government can step up, Haney said, but “the urgency is not just for the state to say, 'You can do this, and we'll allow it, and we'll make it easy.'

Fashion shows fill the sidewalks in LA's Fashion District, far from the homeless-blocked streets of Skid Row.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University, said cities can succeed if they redefine their purpose.

“I don't think cities are dead yet.” I think they are changing,” he said. “And they are becoming increasingly dispersed,” as their residents are drawn to urban life on a different scale.

Big cities can learn something from small “booms,” Kotkin said. He cited Orange, Downey and Paramount as examples of “small town” cities that serve their communities by creating places where residents want to go.

This kind of redefinition and reimagining is behind Haney's journey. He lives in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, where opioid overdoses have become so prevalent that outgoing Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in 2021. Haney intends to continue his tour in the new year, with Richmond, Bakersfield and Stockton on the itinerary.

Haney, left, and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, center, walk past an empty storefront as they discuss ways to revitalize the city's downtown.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

While still drafting his proposed legislation, Haney hopes to include incentives for universities and community colleges to develop downtown student housing, for the state to sell unused downtown properties, for convention centers to attract more visitors and for cities to develop more nightlife.

In addition, he plans to reintroduce a bill — vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year — that would have encouraged developers to renovate older buildings by easing zoning restrictions, eliminating conditional-use permits and giving municipalities the power to grant incentives and concessions.

But he acknowledged that urban areas face more than just structural problems. Their image was also affected, he said. In the past, banks, developers, philanthropists and other local leaders and institutions invested in cities out of community pride.

“A lot of these buildings and a lot of the developers are controlled by a very large investment force, so that the community pride or connection to the place is not there like it used to be,” Haney said.

“Buildings,” he said, “must be more than a number on a spreadsheet.”

He has until the end of February to submit his bill.