LA mayor moves to scale, speed up city’s response to homelessness

On day-one of her administration, Bass declared a citywide emergency on homelessness, and followed it up with a directive mandating that city departments prioritize affordable housing. A second directive launched a housing-centered program to clean up encampments, and a third required administrators to consider more than 3,000 city-owned properties and identify those that could be repurposed for affordable housing.
With the identification process complete and suitable sites noted for their future development potential, Bass issued a memo Tuesday calling on city leaders and citizens to “take this moment to be bigger and bolder, and rethink how we utilize city parcels and financing resources to scale up the development of affordable housing,” she wrote. “We can, and must, do better. In order to address our housing and homelessness crisis head on, and build as much affordable housing as possible, we must advance new strategies to utilize these critical city resources quickly, effectively, and efficiently.”

In coming months, the city is aiming to streamline its bureaucratic processes to expedite converting the selected real estate into shelters and affordable housing in coming years. In the shorter term, Bass continued, the city is building about 500 ‘emergency sleeping cabins’ in partnership with California Go. Gavin Newsom as part of a broader effort to install 1,200 interim units statewide.

Longer term, a new initiative to be launched in July will explore innovative ways to scale and speed up development on public land. Working groups will consider solutions like having multiple sites built by one primary developer, breaking away from traditional financing for construction and operation, testing out “innovative and cost effective approaches to construction and delivery of housing,” and engaging with regional public agencies that own vacant and surplus parcels in Los Angeles to see if they’d be interested in partnering to address homelessness.

“A starting place for identifying these public agency partners is the mapping program and analysis developed by the Committee for Greater LA and the Center for Pacific Urbansim,” the memo says, noting it “explores publicly owned land across the City of Los Angeles and identifies parcels most suited for interim or permanent housing.”

Agencies will also develop best practices and consistent standards for developing the land via an intergovernmental working group. The directive Bass will issue will be to create clear and consistent standards around affordable housing development, financing, and engagement. A followup report on the city’s progress toward its affordable housing goals is expected in December.