Many of LA’s affordable apartments are disappearing, according to a new report from the California Housing Partnership.
The organization, which was created by the state to monitor and preserve California’s supply of affordable housing, finds that between 1997 and last year, 5,256 affordable units in Los Angeles County were converted to market rate, meaning that tenants living there no longer benefit from rental subsidies or reduced rent prices.
That’s over one-third of the 15,044 affordable units no longer affordable statewide. Los Angeles lost more units than any other county in California.
It’s only a small portion of the nearly 100,000 that now exist in LA, but the authors of the report find that another 12,121 affordable homes are now “at risk.”
“Given California’s existing shortage of 1.5 million homes for extremely low-income and very low-income renters, it is clear that failing to preserve California’s affordable homes is not an option and that state and local action is needed urgently,” the report says.
In LA County, where roughly half of renters devote more than 35 percent of their income toward monthly rental payments, a healthy supply of affordable housing is critical to the economic survival of lower-earning residents.
Jennifer Hark-Dietz, executive director of People Assisting the Homeless, tells Curbed that tenants benefitting from reduced rents are far more likely to become homeless when they can no longer afford monthly payments.
“Every unit lost is really detrimental to the success of ending homelessness,” she says. “If [residents] do fall into homelessness, then we’re using resources for folks that were stable before—and we know there’s not enough resources available for the folks already experiencing homelessness out on our streets.”
Thanks to state grants and ballot measures, the city of Los Angeles has more than $1 billion to spend on construction of new affordable housing over the next decade. Hark-Dietz says that losing existing units could lessen the impact of that investment.
Most affordable homes in LA are kept at low prices through contracts or agreements with set time limits. As the report notes, units can be “lost” when those deals expire.
In many cases, affordable units are built through the federal Low-income Housing Tax Credit program, which grants generous tax breaks to developers who agree to offer some or all of a building’s units to low-income tenants. But those tax credits dry up after 10 years, and owners of older buildings are allowed to convert units to market rate after 30 years
California now requires that buildings financed through tax credits remain affordable for 55 years, but at least 14 Los Angeles developments built in the 1980s and early 1990s have shorter-term affordability agreements that will soon expire.
Other properties are kept affordable through rental subsidies, usually issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. These are also attached to contracts with expiration dates. If building owners don’t renew these agreements, they are then free to raise rents to levels higher than what tenants are able to pay.
In many cases building owners do renew agreements or property owners simply continue to offer affordable rents (many, but not all, affordable units are owned or operated by nonprofits committed to providing housing at low rates).
But the authors of the report suggest that local leaders should take steps to guarantee housing that’s now affordable stays that way—by proactively identifying homes at risk of converting to market rate and working with owners to prevent this from happening.
- How much affordable housing does LA need? [Curbed LA]
- Make less than $54,250? You may qualify for low-income housing [Curbed LA]
- In LA, home affordability approaching an all-time low [Curbed LA]
Comments
I simply don’t believe the narrative that if someone loses an "affordable housing" unit they become homeless. So someone living in affordable housing in Santa Monica will decide to be homeless rather than moving farther east to an apartment that cost the same exact rent as the reduced rent in Santa Monica? Or someone living in a cheaper area would decide to be homeless rather than moving to Lancaster or Riverside?
By LADude on 02.19.19 1:32pm
The nexus between the loss of affordable housing and homelessness is probably about 1% of the total homeless population. But the social work/justice warrior crowd would have you believe otherwise so they can get millions of dollars in funding to keep their $60k jobs shuffling papers.
Don’t buy into it.
By Ferryboy on 02.19.19 3:27pm
You’re willfully ignorant here. And I’ll keep pointing that out each time you make this comment.
By LosFeliz$ean on 02.19.19 3:39pm
Can you elaborate? You are saying someone is ignorant, i.e. lacking knowledge. So would you please inform us so that we can have such knowledge.
By LADude on 02.19.19 4:05pm
Big money $ean doesn’t have the answer, he’s a chronic low expectation government / progressive shill.
By LeBasque on 02.19.19 9:07pm
Stuff it. The only expectation I have is that reality will continue. The homelessness crisis won’t be solved by hating or criticizing the homeless.
By LosFeliz$ean on 02.20.19 9:02am
In the past though, being mean to the "homeless" actually did work. People called them hobos and bums and enforced vagrancy laws and sanitation laws against them. They forced them to live away from everyone else. They arrested them for drug abuse and forced them into rehab or jail.
Not at all like the boundless, pathological compassion of today … but that is an actual clue there.
By Another PJ on 02.20.19 8:34pm
HATE THE HOMELESS AGAIN!
By LAwastheplace on 02.20.19 10:29pm
So when someone disagrees with the leftist dogma, just yell HATE. Screaming is good too, when the discussion is public.
By Another PJ on 02.23.19 10:35am
fail. sad.
By LosFeliz$ean on 02.23.19 9:46pm
intellligent. not.
By Another PJ on 02.25.19 10:28pm
We’ve been here before. Links have been given. There is a connection between lack of affordable housing and homelessness.
By LosFeliz$ean on 02.20.19 8:58am
Care to share one of those links (from a reputable source, not the UC Berkely Center for Inclusion and Diversity In Housing)?
By LADude on 02.20.19 11:16am
https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.09380
https://www.zillow.com/research/rents-larger-homeless-population-16124/
By Cocomonstr on 02.21.19 11:05pm
Links
By Cocomonstr on 02.21.19 11:05pm
Your pettiness is showing.
By Mildred Fillmore on 02.20.19 10:12am
i dont know about Lancaster, but the inland empire is /has gone up as well. it is also about locality,
some folks dont want to move, plus moreno valley and neighboring areas are more retail and wharehouse orientated with work. may have to get a job with the city and county to make a decent life out there.
By Kj J on 02.19.19 6:03pm
Raytheon just relocated to Ontario Airport. I’m sure other firms will see value in setting up shop in cheaper locations.
By Balmung on 02.19.19 7:24pm
Will you please accept that homeless people, for the majority part, don’t come in from ‘someplace else?’ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10900-013-9664-2
By The40YearOldVirginian on 02.19.19 6:33pm
According to the date provided in this blogpost, the affordable units CONVERTED since 1997 to market rate averages 250 units/ year in LA County. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is a far greater number of affordable units being created to more than offset the conversion. SO an alternative headline with that accompanying data could also read "LA is Gaining Thousands of Affordable Apartments for Lower-Income Residents"
By Cleavon Little on 02.19.19 2:04pm
This article is a mess. The headline refers to L.A. but then it sites numbers for all of California. Just pick one and write about that.
I know the story they’re trying to tell is about THOUSANDS, but dial it back a little. This comes of as disingenuous at best.
By CaliSon on 02.19.19 2:46pm
And they post a picture of Santa Monica, which is not Los Angeles.
By Ferryboy on 02.19.19 3:29pm
"..finds that between 1997 and last year, 5,256 affordable units in Los Angeles County were converted to market rate…"
By LosFeliz$ean on 02.19.19 3:43pm
Yeah, by their own numbers, LA is losing 250 units per year. A far cry from the impression they’re trying to make with their headline about "thousands" of units being lost in LA.
By goingup on 02.20.19 9:27am
The article doesn’t even bother to ask why there is a time limit in the first place but instead tries to manufacture an alarming crisis by saying the limit is only "for a few decades".
The reason there is a time limit is that after 30 years (and definitely after 55 years) all apartment buildings need to be renovated. So the idea is that an affordable housing building has a time limit of 30 (or 55) years and after that the building is renovated with funds from a loan that assumes the new renters will pay market rents. Or the building gets renovated with housing funds and the affordable housing contract is renewed for another 30 (or 55) years. This option is the one that happens the most and at least the article acknowledges that it happens "in many cases…"
So this article, instead of acknowledging the fact that every building wears out over time and will need funds in the future to renovate it, is written like these buildings last forever and it’s just a boneheaded move by our elected officials to have a time limit on the restriction in rents.
By I Like Buildings on 02.19.19 4:09pm