Earlier today, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass enacted an executive directive focused on increasing housing affordability and availability for the city's residents. The model for this initiative includes encouraging the construction of houses accessible to all income brackets, with a special emphasis on affordable and mixed-income housing. The directive also aims at improving homeownership and converting current buildings into residential units as reported by the Mayor's office.
City's Development Services Center in Downtown Los Angeles was the location for the signing. Accompanying the Mayor were council figures such as President Paul Krekorian and Councilmember Nithya Raman, Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, alongside city and industry leaders.
"The cost of housing throughout Los Angeles has made living in the city unaffordable for too many Angelenos. We need to take action so that Angelenos can afford to live here, to buy their first homes, and to live near their jobs—and that means we need to build more housing," stated Mayor Bass, stressing the affordable housing need in the city.
The departments are required to perform several actions under the executive directive in order to work towards achieving the housing affordability objective. These involve dealing with homeownership obstacles, considering approaches to lessen discretionary review for promoting housing construction across all income brackets, creatively overcoming bureaucratic hurdles to facilitate building conversions into housing units, lowering the time required for mixed-income housing permits, eliminating unnecessary delays to speed up housing unit delivery, and pushing for the inclusion of more affordable housing units in projects.
"Addressing the affordability challenge goes beyond just preventing future homelessness. It’s about building community. It’s about building a middle class again and ending a cycle that increases the disparity of wealth in this city." commented City Council President Paul Krekorian, stressing the affordability crisis.
Councilmember Nithya Raman observed, "ED1 showed us that developers value predictability, and we can in fact incentivize the creation of deeply affordable and much-needed housing in Los Angeles. What’s exciting about today is that ED7 brings us another step forward."
Mayor's Office is keen to push forth a range of solutions for quickly increasing housing production in collaboration with communities and with their feedback. This strategy includes revising the City's benchmark for temporary construction noise impacts, exploring all available California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) streamlining tools, and reporting on barriers to the development of for-sale housing. Moreover, the Department of Building and Safety, while consulting with the Fire Department, will look into possible changes in requirements that can further support building conversions without compromising necessary health and safety precautions.
The executive directive additionally demands the creation of an intra-departmental working group led by the Mayor’s Office of Business and Economic Development in conjunction with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Homelessness Solutions. This group’s center of attention will be organizational and procedural enhancements, pre-development review, and interdepartmental permit clearance coordination for affordable and competent mixed-income housing projects. The working group will also target reducing process timelines for permit services and clearance for suitable mixed-income housing projects by 25–30%.
Los Angeles has been grappling with a steep housing crisis for numerous years, resulting in exorbitant rents, densely populated conditions, and escalating housing instability. The city’s response to the 2013–2021 Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) exposed that it achieved less than 50% of its goal for very low and low-income housing units and less than 10% for moderate-income housing units. Currently, the City is expected to meet only 40% of the targets under the 2021–2029 RHNA for all income levels as per the signed directive.
