It's no mystery that LA has housing problems. We have a serious shortage of affordable housing, apartment vacancies are dropping, and we're the nation's most unaffordable city regardless of whether you're renting or buying, but maybe there's some relief coming our way. In a speech given at a UCLA conference, Mayor Garcetti revealed his plan to add 100,000 new units to LA's housing stock by 2021, along with plans to make it easier to build affordable housing, says the LA Times.
It's unclear what the breakdown will be of those 100,000 units—how many will be market-rate and how many will be affordable—but every single unit counts when LA's facing its worst housing shortage since World War II. (The *Housing Element of the city planning department has estimated that LA needs to have 82,000 total units built by 2021 in order to meet the demand.) UPDATE 10/31: An earlier version of this story indicated 82,000 affordable units, but that number referred to total units, affordable or otherwise.
The Mayor did say that he plans to bulk up LA's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, push a proposal to subsidize building affordable housing on sites that are owned by Metro, and instituting reforms in CEQA, which is often invoked by NIMBYs suing to block new developments and rival developers who want to throw a wrench in the project's workings.
It wasn't all good news though. The Mayor cautioned that "even with dramatic increases in market-rate and affordable housing, L.A. will continue to be an expensive city in which to live."
· Garcetti says housing shortage, minimum wage linked in Los Angeles [LAT] · At LABC Summit, Mayor Garcetti Announces New Policies To Address Affordable Housing Shortage In Los Angeles [PRNewswire] · LA's Scary Shortage of Affordable Housing, By the Numbers [Curbed LA]
Loading comments...