In his book “Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World,” Robert Neuwirth describes the immense pressure put on cities as newcomers from rural areas seek their fortune in them. He cites U.N. statistics. Every year, 70 million people leave their rural homes for cities. That’s about 1.4 million people a week, 200,000 a day, 8,000 an hour. Many of them have arrived, or will arrive, in Los Angeles.

In an effort to create additional housing, the Los Angeles City Council voted late last month to go forward with a plan to streamline the legalization of bootleg apartments, calling on lawyers with the city to begin drafting an ordinance. The plan has been championed by its co-proposer, Councilman Felipe Fuentes, whose 7th District includes Lake View Terrace, Mission Hills, Pacoima, Sunland-Tujunga and Sylmar.

Its premise is a simple one: If an approved 20-unit apartment building has been operated as 21 units and there is adequate on-site parking for the extra unit, and density limits in city zoning code are adhered to and there are no safety issues, the city should expedite the unit’s legalization. Thereafter, the newly legalized unit would be rent controlled.

But bootleg units invariably violate some combination of parking, setback, life-safety and density codes. It’s why they’re classified as “illegal” to begin with. It is why the city has ordered 1,700 units to be shut down since 2010.

Although tenants of illegal units are found across all economic strata, most I’ve seen are poor: As a real estate appraiser, I’ve witnessed attic crawl spaces in a beachfront property in Isla Vista leased to doe-eyed UC students and once entered a unit in Boyle Heights in which one darkened room with a bed and a playpen also contained the building’s exposed electrical boxes and a bank of dripping water heaters.

Since its first zoning code was signed into law in 1921, Los Angeles, like other cities, has had a clear pathway for legalizing such space, but it involves hiring an architect, going through a plan-check process, engaging a general contractor and completing construction in “a workmanlike manner,” to use trade parlance. Often, the economics of such projects simply don’t pencil out for apartment owners..

True attraction

Alas, the true attraction of illegal units is that the property owner can hire a crew and, in a couple of days, cobble together a space that resembles a dwelling and leads to additional cash flow with minimal capital outlay. Tenants of illegal units trade the unconventionality, risk and inconvenience for lower rent. Often, they get the opportunity to live in a building or a school district they might otherwise not be able to afford.

Any official acceptance of illegal units would favor cash investors, to the exclusion of those who require a bank loan and insurance as part of their business model. Illegal kitchens are of most concern to banks. Bootleg units have kitchens. These are invariably discovered by appraisers engaged by lenders prior to the granting of a loan. Generally, complexes found to have bootleg units are unmortgageable because these loans can’t be resold. If these units are known about but not remedied, insurers will refuse to cover claims in case of loss or injury.

Owners of adjacent buildings don’t like bootleg units nearby because of the classic tragedy-of-the-commons scenario they create. Just a handful of such units on a street can make guest parking for all buildings impossible. This punishes all owners equally with the benefits going only to those with bootleg units.

Most troubling is that amnesty for illegal units signals the acceptance of “favelafication” of complexes in Los Angeles. Brazil’s favelas are chaotic matrices of units that invade all three-dimensional space, where warrens of narrow passageways, steep stairs, patchwork construction and skeins of electrical extension cords characterize the genre. Plumbing is handled on an ad hoc basis and building modifications are handled individually. All of these characteristics describe things I’ve seen in illegal units.

In the case of that crawl space dwelling in Isla Vista, the space could have been made legal by hiring an architect and contractor, pulling permits and legally adding a second story to the structure. In the case of the utility room-turned-bedroom in Boyle Heights, the owner could have sought permits to construct a new utility room, and perhaps made a case for converting the old room into a living space.

But such things cost time, money and effort, things not associated with bootleggers.

Jeremy Bagott is a senior analyst at Integra Realty Resources – Los Angeles.