Policy and Research

The Los Angeles region’s cities and neighborhoods are defined by exclusion. Exclusionary zoning bans duplexes, apartments, and subsidized affordable housing in most “residential” areas. This makes housing more expensive, maintains patterns of racial and class segregation, and fuels neighborhood displacement by shifting housing demand to lower-income areas. We want to end exclusionary zoning and apartment bans, especially in wealthy, high-opportunity neighborhoods. 

AHLA offers a blueprint for how the City of Los Angeles can encourage more apartments citywide:

• Allow multifamily homes in all commercially zoned areas, near job centers, and near transit, especially in high-income areas. 

• End exclusionary single-family zoning. 

• Embrace ambitious housing growth targets throughout the Los Angeles region, and fairly distribute new housing capacity across neighborhoods. 

• Eliminate on-site parking requirements citywide.

• Adopt density bonus incentive programs.

• Create more housing for lower-income households in high-income neighborhoods. 

• Build housing away from wildfire danger zones. 

• Implement pro-housing, holistic anti-displacement policies that apply citywide alongside ending exclusionary zoning and increasing new housing production. 

Complex administrative and political approval processes make it difficult, time-consuming and expensive to build housing. This discourages home building and adds to the cost of housing, and also creates opportunities for “pay-to-play” situations and outright corruption. Wealthy homeowners frequently use their political influence to block housing, including affordable and permanent supportive housing, through this flawed approval process.

• Make most residential and mixed-use developments “by-right. 

• Empower city governments to approve housing. 

• Expedite approval of deed-restricted affordable and permanent supportive housing. 

• Take action on climate change by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

• Remove barriers to housing at the ballot box. 

• Improve public outreach methods for decision-making on housing.

Los Angeles County has a deficit of over 700,000 homes that are affordable to households with low incomes, a situation that accelerates neighborhood displacement and pushes Angelenos into homelessness. Addressing this significant need requires $100 billion annually in new local, state, and federal funding for the production and preservation of enough affordable homes to meet cities’ below-market-rate housing growth targets under the Regional Housing Needs Assessment. New affordable housing should be situated throughout a city’s neighborhoods, both in high-cost, high-opportunity areas, as well as in disadvantaged neighborhoods where public investment has been insufficient and displacement risk is high.

• Make rent subsidies available to all lower-income households. 

• Fight displacement by helping tenants buy their homes. 

• Introduce a progressive tax on property sales. 

• Reform Proposition 13 and tax property owners fairly. 

• Produce housing on city and county owned land. 

• Introduce regional congestion pricing. 

• Charter a California public bank. 

• Introduce taxes on vacant homes and lots, demolition of existing housing units, and on home-sharing/short-term rentals. 

Housing scarcity is particularly harmful to lower-income renters, who are frequently at risk of fast-rising rents and eviction. In addition to building and funding more homes, Los Angeles must actively enforce and expand renters’ legal rights, to ensure that renters can access stable, affordable homes and to prevent neighborhood displacement in lower-income communities.

• Increase compensation and support for tenants that are displaced by redevelopment. Before a rental unit can be taken off the market for redevelopment, the property owners should have to provide tenant compensation far beyond existing law. This would include a “right of return” after redevelopment, at the same rent as before, and rental assistance during redevelopment. Tenants should also have the option to negotiate a fair, voluntary buyout agreement in lieu of a right to return.

• Provide free legal counsel to all renters. This will reduce evictions by ensuring that tenants are well-represented in housing court, and encourage landlords to settle disputes with tenants without taking legal action.

• Limit evictions to “just cause” scenarios, like nonpayment of rent or property destruction. This prevents landlords from using sudden, sharp rent increases to push out tenants.

• Create a citywide streamlined application and notification system for affordable housing units. The current process is burdensome; information about new affordable units is difficult to find, and there’s no clear process for applying for these units. A simple notification and application system will expand access to new affordable housing.

• Create a comprehensive online registry of all rental properties. This will make it much easier for cities to communicate information to tenants and landlords, and to proactively enforce tenants’ rights laws.

• Track and prosecute slumlords who repeatedly violate housing codes and tenant rights. By tracking and prosecuting repeat offenders, cities can encourage better housing conditions and bar the worst slumlords from owning and managing apartments.

Policies in this category include AB 1482 (anti-rent gouging), SB 329 (landlords can’t refuse Section 8 voucher holders), and SB 330 (requires one-for-one replacement of demolished rent-controlled units).