Los Angeles City Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky is proposing a development agency to assess whether city-owned properties could support other uses. The question matters in practical terms: she says the city owns billions of dollars in real estate, some vacant and most underutilized, and that no one is charged with assessing opportunities across the holdings. She points to a Westside maintenance facility staffed by roughly a dozen employees as one possible example.
Yaroslavsky represents parts of the Westside on the City Council. According to the New York Post, she has criticized City Hall for leaving valuable properties empty or underused instead of putting them toward revenue, jobs, or housing. Her office says the Westside maintenance facility could accommodate housing or businesses alongside its existing city operations, potentially generating substantial revenue. Her official council website describes her broader approach as bringing urgency and transparency to issues facing Angelenos.
Nobody's Job to Check
Yaroslavsky describes the gap as a question of responsibility: she says Los Angeles has no person or agency assigned to assess whether city-owned property could be put to better use. The New York Post reported that estimates of the city’s property inventory vary: the controller’s office has cited about 7,500 properties inside city limits, while the city previously estimated closer to 9,000. The report said Los Angeles has not published a total value for its holdings.
The issue has surfaced in earlier reviews. Former City Controller Ron Galperin said in 2019 that property values are difficult to determine because they depend heavily on zoning, and that he was stunned the city did not know what it owned. The New York Post reported that Galperin’s office had identified 26 city sites listed as vacant, covering roughly 1.7 million square feet, or about 39 acres.
A Slow-Moving Sales Pipeline
According to the New York Post, the General Services Department is still largely working from a list of 248 properties identified in a 2018 review. So far this fiscal year, the city has sold three properties, generating about $302,000 in general fund revenue, with a fourth sale expected to close. The department has described a cluster of lots in Council District 11 as among the city’s most valuable properties and recommended declaring 24 of them surplus; those sales are estimated to generate about $5.85 million.
State rules for surplus land
California's surplus-land framework is relevant to the city's options: according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the Surplus Land Act aims to make locally owned land no longer needed for government purposes available for affordable housing. The department's updated guidelines say cities and counties have been required since April 1, 2021, to report annually on all locally owned surplus land sites.
Yaroslavsky wants Los Angeles to create a development agency modeled on New York City’s Economic Development Corporation, able to identify sites, negotiate with developers and assemble projects pairing market-rate apartments with affordable units. Under her proposed approach, market-rate units could help finance affordable ones. The New York Post reported that a New York City plan is advancing to replace an aging government headquarters with nearly 4,000 homes, including about 1,000 permanently affordable apartments.
A Familiar Fix, Revisited
Yaroslavsky's proposal follows earlier efforts to centralize oversight of city real estate. Former City Controller Ron Galperin flagged about 500 underused city properties in 2016 and called for a chief asset manager. By 2019, he was proposing a municipal development corporation, arguing that responsibility for the city's real estate was spread across too many departments. Yaroslavsky's office is now working with Galperin on a new version of that proposal.
What the records show
The Los Angeles Controller’s Office has described challenges in identifying city-owned properties. For homelessness-related use, the city has identified and screened potential sites.
On the proposed model, New York City Economic Development Corporation describes itself as a mission-driven nonprofit organization, according to its jobs page. That self-description does not establish that a Los Angeles entity would have the same legal form or powers, or provide details about how the proposed agency would be governed.
The push arrives as the city's finances are getting tighter. Los Angeles' budget office projects economy-sensitive tax revenue will grow just 3.3% next year, below the historical average of 3.8%, and citywide revenue came in $160 million below the adopted budget assumption last fiscal year. City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo has written that maintaining the city's long-term fiscal health is imperative — a backdrop that gives Yaroslavsky's pitch to squeeze more value out of city-owned land added weight. Elsewhere, other cities have experimented with incentivizing private redevelopment of empty commercial space rather than managing it directly; Colorado, for instance, runs an Enterprise Zone Vacant Commercial Building Rehabilitation Tax Credit aimed at helping businesses redevelop vacant commercial buildings.
