Everywhere you look, there are signs of the housing crisis gripping Los Angeles. Young families are fleeing the city. Eviction filings are way up. Hardly anyone can afford to buy a home.
But when you take a closer look at most L.A. neighborhoods, housing advocates say you’ll find little in the way of change to address this crisis. Palm tree-lined streets with rows of detached houses appear pretty similar to how they looked decades ago.
That’s because almost three-quarters of the city’s residential land is zoned for single-family homes. And L.A. leaders have chosen to leave those neighborhoods largely untouched in their efforts to create more housing.
“It really does limit where we can build,” said Tara Barauskas, executive director at Community Corporation of Santa Monica, a nonprofit that focuses on developing affordable housing in higher-income neighborhoods on L.A.’s Westside.
“If there's this policy emphasis on really trying to make serious change for building more affordable housing, but these big blanket exclusions are still in place, it's a contradiction,” Barauskas said. “We're not going to be able to make the big shift we need.”
What’s happening now
On Thursday, L.A.’s Planning Department will hold a meeting to gather public feedback on a slate of proposals to significantly boost housing production in order to meet a state-mandated goal of planning for nearly 457,000 new homes by 2029.
The city’s current zoning can’t accommodate that much growth. So officials have outlined plans to increase capacity by more than 250,000 homes. Those plans exclude single-family zones. Instead, new housing is being channeled into already dense, renter-heavy districts.
Those in favor of preserving L.A.’s single-family neighborhoods say they support that strategy.
“I do think the city has taken a really good approach,” said Cindy Chvatal-Keane, co-founder of the neighborhood preservation advocacy group United Neighbors. “There are plenty of places to put affordable housing without disrupting single-family.”
Affordable housing developers, homeless service providers and tenant organizers see it differently. They argue that the city is continuing to let wealthy neighborhoods off the hook when it comes to doing their share in accepting new housing.
How we got here
It has become a familiar debate in Los Angeles. Last year, Mayor Karen Bass decided to carve out single-family neighborhoods from her signature program to streamline affordable housing approvals. Before that, city council members voted to oppose state legislation allowing additional units on single-family lots.
Renter households outnumber homeowner households in the city of L.A. nearly two-to-one. But housing policy analysts say homeowners tend to have more political capital, vote more consistently and put up more organized opposition to change.
“The city does have a lot of very wealthy people — people who are almost exclusively single-family homeowners,” said Shane Philips with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. “Those people have disproportionate influence on policy making, and I think that especially applies to land use.”
Proponents for more housing say zoning patterns help explain why so many L.A. apartments are overcrowded, why more than half of local tenants are paying rents considered unaffordable by federal standards, and why renters looking for a new place to live are finding so few options.
“We're all aware that there is a need for housing, because every time we step out we see a homeless person on the sidewalk,” said Diana Corrales, who was born and raised in L.A. and recently moved back in with her mother.
Corrales said she lost income during the COVID-19 pandemic and could no longer afford the one-bedroom Ladera Heights apartment where she was living with her son. When she started hunting for another place to rent, she realized the options were beyond her budget.
“Everyone's scared of change, but we understand that there's a need for housing,” Corrales said. “Not just for us, but for everyone of all income levels, all walks of life.”
What’s in the plan
According to officials with the L.A. Planning Department, the city will be able to meet its ambitious state goals by focusing on areas already zoned for dense housing. They say L.A. can get there by incentivizing development in those neighborhoods. The proposed incentives would let developers increase the density of their projects and remove certain parking requirements, as long as they reserve some apartments for low-income renters.
The department did not make an official available for an interview, but told LAist in an emailed statement that their approach “promotes housing near jobs and transit, along major corridors, and away from environmentally hazardous and sensitive areas such as fire zones and sea level rise areas.”
This strategy aligns with ongoing efforts to update community plans across the city, which have so far sought to locate lots of new housing in dense neighborhoods like Hollywood and downtown L.A.
Officials say their plans also include new tenant protections. Renters currently living in rent-controlled apartments would have the right to move into new developments if their housing is demolished to make way for a larger building, officials say. But tenant advocates worry low-income renters could still struggle to make the transition and continue living in L.A.
City planners also intend to make it easier for developers to convert old commercial buildings — like deserted malls and empty offices — into housing through adaptive reuse.
None of these plans include allowing new apartment buildings on the 72% of residential land in the city reserved for single-family homes, according to the planning department. A UC Berkeley study estimated these zones make up a slightly higher percentage of the city’s residential land, 74% to be precise.
Many of these protected neighborhoods are in wealthy areas that remain largely segregated due to historic policies such as redlining, racial covenants and exclusionary zoning, a fact that the planning department has acknowledged.
Planning officials had originally considered adding new density to these areas. Then last October, the department said they would exclude single-family zones following public feedback.
Why you should care
For anyone not already steeped in local land use debates, topics like zoning, state housing goals and developer incentives may lead to snooze-inducing boredom.
But these policies profoundly shape L.A. neighborhoods. They help explain why Koreatown is bustling with younger, lower-income renters from many ethnic backgrounds while nearby Hancock Park is occupied by older, wealthier and whiter homeowners.
Similar dynamics are at play in Palms, a Westside neighborhood full of multifamily apartment buildings, and adjacent Rancho Park, a single-family area with a quiet, suburban feel. While walking through these neighborhoods, Mahdi Manji with the Inner City Law Center told LAist it makes sense to build more housing in both.
“The Westside is an area of massive growth,” Manji said, pointing to the UCLA campus a few miles north and the nearby tech employment hub of Silicon Beach. “At the same time, we are only seeing development in those very small areas that are already doing multifamily.”
A tale of two neighborhoods
Under the city’s current plans, Manji said, long-term tenants in Palms could see their rent-controlled dingbat apartments torn down to make way for larger, modern complexes. But developers couldn’t buy a Rancho Park homeowner’s property to create a three-story apartment building within walking distance of the Metro E Line.
Standing near a modest Rancho Park house currently on the market for $1.6 million, Manji said, “We're not saying we should be building a skyscraper here. But it might make sense to have a 10-unit building… It's about who gets to live in a neighborhood, who has the opportunity, who has a choice to live where.”
Many existing residents strongly oppose such ideas. Barbara Broide — planning and land use chair of the Westside Neighborhood Council, which represents an area that encompasses Rancho Park — said apartment buildings don’t belong near single-family homes.
“I don’t think blanket up-zoning helps Los Angeles,” Broide said. “The opportunity to have a home and a yard and have a neighborhood where you know your neighbors — which is something we work very hard for in neighborhood councils and homeowner groups — is important.”
Many homeowners argue they’ve already accepted a lot of change. Under Senate Bill 9, which took effect in 2022, single-family homeowners can split their lots and create duplexes. Last year, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 4, a law allowing churches to build affordable housing on their own land — even in single-family zones.
What happens next
No decisions will be made during Thursday’s feedback session. Planning department officials say they’ll listen to public input, incorporate the feedback and then send refined proposals to the Planning Commission in late September.
Finally, the plans will need to go before the city council for a vote. In order to comply with state law, the city must finalize its rezoning plans by February 2025.
Homeless service providers are among those eager to speak during Thursday’s meeting. Many hope the planning department will reverse course on excluding single-family zones.
“We can get people off the streets,” said Katie Hill, deputy director of South L.A.-based service provider HOPICS. “What we have not addressed is what happens to them after that. And that really just comes down to: do we have housing that people can afford? And the answer is no — nowhere near enough.”
How to attend the virtual hearing
- When: Thursday, July 25
- Presentation and Q&A at 5-6:30 p.m.
- Virtual hearing 6:30-8 p.m.
- View online: https://planning-lacity-org.zoom.us/j/81102298373
- Meeting ID: 811-0229-8373
- Phone: (669) 900-9128 or (213) 338-8477
In lieu of attending the Public Hearing, comments may be submitted by email to housingelement@lacity.org
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