Jordan Downs in Watts has crossed another milestone in its decade-long transformation, with the public housing authority and its development partner celebrating the completion of 75 new homes earlier this month while breaking ground on a children's park right next door. The housing, known as Mariposa, marks the fifth completed phase of a redevelopment that is reshaping Los Angeles's largest public housing complex into a mixed-income neighborhood of more than 1,500 units.
The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles and The Michaels Organization held a ceremony earlier in October celebrating Mariposa's completion, according to Urbanize LA. The development includes one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom homes spanning affordable and market-rate units, along with common spaces and a new early childhood education center. Practice served as the project's designer, with Walton Construction acting as general contractor, per the same outlet's report.
A New Park Takes Shape Next Door
Alongside Mariposa's debut, HACLA and The Michaels Organization began work on the Children's Park, which will become the third park built within the Jordan Downs complex. Plans call for multiple play areas, a splash pad, a junior basketball court, and other gathering spaces once construction wraps up.
The park is funded through the Caltrans Clean California Local Grants Program along with support from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and HACLA, according to HACLA. Construction is scheduled to conclude by late summer 2027. That timeline builds on earlier green-space investment at the complex — Hoodline previously reported that the City of Los Angeles secured an $11 million federal grant in September 2024 from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program to build Jordan Downs Central Park.
Keeping Longtime Residents in Place
The redevelopment's defining feature has been HACLA's “Build First” policy, a strategy built around a commitment to avoid displacement. HACLA reports that 79 percent — 565 households — chose to return to newly constructed units on-site.
Jordan Downs was originally built in the 1940s as semi-permanent housing for World War II defense workers before converting to public housing in the 1950s, and the complex is expanding from 700 units to more than 1,500 mixed-income homes once fully built out, according to Affordable Housing Finance.
Billion-Dollar Investment, More Phases Ahead
Jordan Downs has drawn more than $1 billion in investment over the past decade, according to Urbanize LA, funding new parks, 120,000 square feet of commercial space, and 863 new homes built by The Michaels Organization and BRIDGE Housing combined. That momentum traces back to 2018, when HUD awarded HACLA a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods Initiative implementation grant that helped unlock the broader wave of public and private funding, according to a HUD retrospective.
Commercial development has grown alongside the housing. Freedom Plaza is a 115,000-square-foot retail center anchored by Ross, Smart & Final, and Blink Fitness. Infrastructure has followed too: a half-mile extension of Century Boulevard opened in 2018.
More housing is already in the pipeline. BRIDGE Housing completed Kalmia Rose, the project's seventh phase, in 2025. The 76-unit development has 61 affordable units, 14 market-rate units, and one manager's unit; more than half its homes were reserved for Jordan Downs residents, according to Affordable Housing Finance. Per Urbanize LA, The Michaels Organization is set to begin construction this year on its sixth Jordan Downs housing development, which will eventually total 1,500 residential units. HACLA has also selected developers City Ventures and Azure Development to lead the project's homeownership phase, introducing affordable for-sale units alongside the rental developments that have defined the site so far.
