Grant

Los Angeles Housing Department ($700,000)

Grant

Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles ($300,000)

Background

Nearly two-thirds of Los Angeles’ four million residents are renters. In 2006, nearly 20 percent of all rental households lived in overcrowded conditions, while almost half of them spent more than 30 percent of income on rent. Furthermore, nearly one-third of the subsidized housing stock (22,000 of 65,000 units) is at risk of losing its affordability when covenants or subsidy contracts expire in the next ten years. Over the last several years, the City of Los Angeles has made significant progress in aligning its various governmental agencies and their capital resources to implement a comprehensive preservation strategy, with a particular focus on preserving Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units. Los Angeles launched the New Generation Fund in May 2008 as a flexible, revolving acquisition loan fund and infused $100 million into the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund for permanent financing of affordable housing developments. In September 2008, Mayor Villaraigosa committed $1 billion towards a five-year, $5 billion “Housing that Works” plan to promote affordable housing, including transit-oriented development, public housing redevelopment, foreclosure prevention, and affordable rental housing preservation.

Project Description

The Los Angeles Housing Department will use grant funds to enhance its Affordable Housing Preservation Program (Preservation Program) to better coordinate its efforts with other city departments and target its resources to preserving affordable rental housing by hiring additional staff and channeling resources to undertake three complementary initiatives. The improved program will conduct a robust data collection effort on affordable and market-rate housing, including the development of criteria to identify at-risk projects, information on affordability restrictions, characteristics, and the physical condition of existing affordable properties. A sustained outreach program to target owners of properties that may lose their affordability, because of expiring covenants or subsidy contract terminations, will be matched by a communications strategy to systematically educate residents of subsidized properties about their rights and options, if their property loses its rental subsidy or other restrictions. Finally, the Preservation Program will facilitate the acquisition of properties identified as suitable preservation opportunities based on the enhanced database and extended outreach efforts.

The Community Redevelopment Agency is pursuing a neighborhood-based strategy to preserve Central City East/Skid Row hotels for the neighborhood’s most vulnerable residents, while also supporting economic growth in the community. A key strategy to preservation is creating a new community dialogue around embracing the vision that preservation and economic growth are not incompatible and that a lack of housing preservation might force even more households into homelessness, especially in such areas as Central City East/Skid Row. In order to build support for having shared goals of long-term preservation of affordability covenants and a balanced community, the Community Redevelopment Agency will sponsor a series of stakeholder workshops to be held in this area to build consensus around preservation issues and neighborhood transformation.  The final component of Los Angeles’ effort to preserve SRO units will be the direct investment in building the capacity of two nonprofit SRO developers and owners that have long-standing relationships with the Skid Row community: SRO Housing, Incorporated and Skid Row Housing Trust. The capacity building will focus on board development, strategic planning, and upgrades to management and information systems, with a goal of doubling their capacity and expanding their successful model of supportive housing.

Contact

Los Angeles Housing Department
Yolanda Chavez
Executive Officer
1200 West 7th Street, 9th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017
213.808.8405 (Tel)  213.808.8999 (Fax)
ychavez@lahd.lacity.org