Los Angeles’ one weird trick to build affordable housing at no public cost
The term “unsubsidized 100% affordable project” was once an oxymoron. Under Mayor Karen Bass, Los Angeles is now approving them by the hundreds.
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The seven-story apartment building planned for West Court Street on the south side of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood doesn’t make sense, not if you know anything about affordable housing in California.
All 190 of the proposed units will be reserved for people making under $100,000, which in Los Angeles makes this an “affordable housing” project.
But unlike the vast majority of affordable developments that have been proposed in California in recent memory, no taxpayer dollars are allotted to build the thing. Especially in the state’s expensive coastal cities, the term “unsubsidized 100% affordable project” is an oxymoron, but Los Angeles is now approving them by the hundreds.
That’s thanks to an executive order Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, signed in December 2022, shortly after being sworn into office. In the year and change since, the city’s planning department has received plans for more than 16,150 affordable units, according to filings gathered by the real estate data company, ATC Research, and analyzed by CalMatters. That’s more than the total number of approved affordable units in Los Angeles in 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined.
