By this time next year, Los Angeles may be on a path to fixing its housing shortage and becoming a more affordable place to live.
That’s because state law requires every city in California to create a strategic plan for achieving a citywide housing growth goal. Under this plan, called a housing element, city planning departments identify sites for housing production and institute zoning reforms to accommodate further housing growth. These updates must be completed by October 15, 2021 – just one year from now.
Under this law, L.A. must plan for 456,000 new homes by 2029, including 184,000 that are affordable to lower-income households. This provides a golden opportunity to address L.A.’s housing needs in a way that furthers equity, sustainability, and housing justice. We believe that every neighborhood must be part of the solution by providing more housing opportunities, especially high-opportunity, well-resourced neighborhoods that have historically used restrictive zoning to block new housing and exclude many communities, including Black, Latino, Asian, and Jewish Americans.
To accomplish this, Abundant Housing LA encourages the Department of City Planning to create a housing growth target for each of L.A.’s neighborhoods, based on objective factors like housing costs, median income, transit access, job access, access to public resources (like schools and parks), patterns of historical exclusion and segregation, and environmental quality. Neighborhoods that score higher on these dimensions should be given higher housing growth targets, and rezoning should be based on these neighborhood housing growth targets. Historically disadvantaged neighborhoods should receive high affordable housing goals, in order to address significant present-day need.
We’ve partnered with 17 civic organizations, representing the policy, academic, environmental, business, social justice, and affordable housing communities, to urge the L.A. City Council to support a transformative housing element. Our joint letter asks the City Council to instruct the Department of City Planning to distribute state-mandated housing targets to LA’s Community Plan Areas For the purposes of the Housing Element Update. Read our letter below.
If you’re ready to support our coalition’s advocacy for a more affordable, inclusive, environmentally sustainable, and prosperous Los Angeles, please add your name to our petition to the City Council. Transforming our city for the better starts with you.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://abundanthousingla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Letter-re_-RHNA-Methodology-Martinez-FINAL.pdf” title=”Letter re_ RHNA Methodology – Martinez – FINAL”]
