Los Angeles has approved up to $466.6 million for affordable housing. The money is not yet going to individual projects. Here is what happens next and what Parriva will track.
Los Angeles has approved up to $466.6 million in public funding for affordable housing projects across the city.
But the money has not yet been assigned to specific developments.
The funding is part of the second round of the Los Angeles Housing Department’s Homes for LA affordable-housing program, a competitive process through which developers, nonprofits and other eligible organizations can seek city financing to build, preserve or stabilize affordable housing.
The next question is not simply how much Los Angeles is spending. It is where the money goes, how many homes it helps produce or preserve, who those homes will serve and when they will become available.
The Round 2 funding pool is authorized at $466,575,674.71 and draws from several sources, including California Permanent Local Housing Allocation funds, Affordable Housing Linkage Fee funds, United to House LA funds and Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency funds. (lacouncilwatch.org)
The city’s Homes for LA program includes funding opportunities for new construction, preservation and operating assistance.
That means the $466.6 million will not translate into one simple number of new apartments.
Some funding can support new homes. Other funding can preserve existing affordable housing, rehabilitate properties or help stabilize existing developments.
As Parriva has explained in its broader look at California’s billions for housing and the challenge of turning funding into actual homes, money is only one part of the housing equation. Land, financing, permitting, construction costs and project timelines all affect what ultimately gets built.
So a calculation such as “$466 million equals X apartments” would be misleading until the city identifies the projects and their financing structures.
The next stage is the application and evaluation process.
Under the city’s authorization, LAHD will release program regulations and term sheets, evaluate applications and bring funding award recommendations back to the City Council and mayor for final approval.
The process is scheduled to include applications beginning in October, followed by evaluation and selection.
That means the projects Angelenos will ultimately see are still ahead.
What Angelenos should watch
Once the Round 2 projects are selected, several questions will become important:
Where are the projects?
Which neighborhoods and Council districts receive funding?
How many homes are involved?
How many units will be newly constructed, and how many existing affordable units will be preserved or rehabilitated?
How affordable are they?
What income levels will the homes serve?
Who is receiving the funding?
Which developers, nonprofits or other eligible organizations are participating?
How much does each project receive?
How much city funding is committed, and what other sources of financing are involved?
When will the homes be ready?
What are the projected construction and completion dates?
Those answers will determine what the $466.6 million means on the ground.
They also matter because affordable housing and homeownership are not the same thing. Our reporting on why Latino families remain locked out of homeownership despite billions in housing spending examines another part of that larger affordability problem.
Los Angeles already has a way to track the results
The city’s LAHD Affordable Housing Projects database provides a starting point.
The public dataset covers multifamily affordable-housing projects financed by LAHD from 2003 to the present and includes projects supported through programs including Proposition HHH and United to House LA.
That makes it possible to follow the new funding beyond the announcement itself.
As projects are selected, the focus will be on the information that matters to residents: where the projects are, how many homes they produce or preserve, who qualifies, how much public money is involved and when the housing is expected to be completed.
For Angelenos, the important measure will ultimately be more concrete than the size of the funding pool.
It will be what gets built, what gets preserved and when people can actually live there.
