How bad is the housing crisis in LA?
By Simon Ha
According to the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), Los Angeles has 1,373,864 total housing units. About 535,000 units are single-family detached homes, and the remaining 840,000 are multi-family.
To meet the current housing demands, Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) identified the need for 456,643 units, of which 184,721 need to be income-restricted affordable housing, by 2029.
That’s almost a half a million homes.
Los Angeles must increase from 1,373,864 units to 1,830,507 units—an increase of 33%. For comparison’s sake, the housing boom in the last decade produced fewer than 90,000 units.
What is needed for the county to build 5 times the amount of housing?
- Faster approvals
- Faster construction (through offsite factory-built construction)
- Removing attrition like Measure ULA tax on housing
- Providing direct rental subsidies and tax incentives
- Incentivizing Accessory Dwelling Unit production on single-family lots (if every single-family lot added an extra unit, housing needs would be met)