Los Angeles mayor orders streamlining for housing

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(The Center Square) – With just days before Tuesday's election, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has signed an executive directive to streamline how Angelenos search and apply for affordable housing.

Executive Directive No. 26 directs city agencies to begin laying the groundwork for a universal affordable housing search tool and a common application process. Under the new directive, the Los Angeles Housing Department will explore legal mechanisms to require owners of properties built using city land-use incentives, city-issued bonds or municipal gap funding to list available units on a city registry. Property owners also would be required to accept a standardized application generated from a user’s profile.

Housing is among the key issues in the race between Bass and her general election opponent and fellow Democrat, Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who said city policies have meant higher costs. But Bass said affordable housing is now being built at a quicker rate and that her new directive will improve the process of getting into a unit.

"Every affordable unit presents a life-changing opportunity to Angelenos, a chance to build stability, wealth, and opportunity for their loved ones," Bass wrote in the directive. "Unsurprisingly, the competition for these units is fierce, and the housing market has grown rife with online scams preying upon anxious Angelenos trying to find affordable places to live."

The Center Square asked the mayor’s office for an interview but did not receive a response.

The directive also mandates that LAHD evaluates implementing navigation and filtering tools, mapping features, and automated match alerts based on income eligibility and unit size. Additionally, it instructs public agencies such as libraries, senior centers and parks departments to coordinate on providing in-person application assistance and hosting public "teach-ins" to help residents navigate the system and avoid fraudulent listings.

While city officials emphasize that a common application will ease administrative burdens for working families, free-market policy experts contend that the initiative bypasses the underlying structural drivers of California’s housing crisis.

Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at Pasadena-based Pacific Research Institute, said administrative tools do nothing to fix the systemic barriers suppressing housing construction across Southern California.

"The Mayor’s Executive Directive does not address the core obstacles that hinder the development of housing in the LA market and unnecessarily inflate housing costs," Winegarden told The Center Square in an email. "Instead, the directive focuses on developing search tools for government databases, creating a common application, and promoting wider marketing."

Winegarden pointed to heavy regulatory burdens as the primary force behind the region's elevated construction price tag, where affordable housing developments often reach an average cost of $600,000 per unit.

"Due to the regulatory burdens, either building a single-family home or developing a new community in LA typically takes more than twice as long as the national average," Winegarden said. "These time delays discourage housing development and directly contribute to the region’s housing shortages. Again, the directive does nothing to speed up the development process to meaningfully expand the supply of housing."

According to the directive, the Los Angeles Housing Department and the City Attorney’s Office are required to report back within 30 to 60 days on implementation plans, necessary budget resources and the legal framework required to enforce registry mandates.

However, policy analysts remain skeptical that marketing and application reforms will translate into tangible relief for home-seekers.

"Until these fundamentals are addressed, housing supply will continue to be inadequate, and costs will remain unaffordable for far too many residents," Winegarden said. "Since the directive does not address these fundamental problems, residents should not expect any substantive improvements to housing availability or affordability."

In a video outlining her housing plan, Raman blasts city policies that she says drive up the cost of housing and delay construction.

“We can fix this,” said Raman. “We'll expand home ownership by legalizing starter homes. We are going to modernize our land use code, ending the racist legacy of exclusionary zoning, and building a lot more density, near good jobs and transit.”

Pointing to her time on the city council, Raman said she “successfully” led the first major expansion of tenant protections in Los Angeles in 40 years.

“As mayor, I'm going to ensure that we actually enforce those laws,” said Raman. “And for those who will never be served by the private real estate market, we're going to make sure we invest in social housing, public housing, co-ops, land trusts and a lot more affordable housing.”

Raman's campaign did not respond to The Center Square’s request for an interview.

In an Oct. 28 social media post, Bass said Los Angeles is building affordable housing four times faster than before she took office.

“We disrupted a broken system, cut through the excuses, forged key partnerships, and proved what works,” said Bass. “LA has come too far to stall that progress now.”