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Los Angeles County Short Nearly 500,000
Affordable Homes For Low Income Families
The California Housing Partnership Corporation (CHPC) and the Southern California Association of Non Profit Housing (SCANPH) are releasing a report today, that shows Los Angeles County's private housing market is not providing an adequate number of homes affordable to low and moderate income households and calls on our County Board of Supervisors to take immediate action to meet the housing needs of our lowest income residents. The report, "How Los Angeles County's Housing Market Is Failing to Meet the Needs of Low-Income Families," is the supplement to the statewide CHPC report released in March, 2014, which found that the recent foreclosure crisis had failed to make housing more affordable to a majority of lower-income households in California. You can hear how the leading candidates for Supervisor in Supervisorial District 3 (the district Zev Yaroslavsky is termed out of) respond to the challenges presented in the report tonight at the Safe, Healthy and Equitable Neighborhoods Candidates Forum at 7pm at Stephen S. Wise Temple.
Some of the findings of the report
* There is a shortfall of nearly 500,000 homes affordable and available to LA County's very low-income and extremely low-income households.
* Median rents in LA County increased by 25 percent between 2000 and 2012, while the median income declined by 8 percent.
* There are currently 39,500 men, women and children facing homelessness in LA County, one in nine of whom are veterans.
* Los Angeles County has 7 of the 10 zip codes with the worst housing overcrowding in the nation and 64 zip codes that are in the worse ½ percent for housing overcrowding. (University studies show that children in crowded homes have poorer health, worse scores on math and reading tests and more behavioral and emotional problems, even when poverty is taken into account.)
* 91% of LA County's very low-income renter households pay more than 30% of income in rent.
 Despite the acute need for affordable homes, the annual federal, state and local funding available for building affordable homes in the County has been cut by 79% (over $575 million annually) since 2008. This number includes a cut of $250 million dollars annually in redevelopment housing funds that used to go toward building affordable homes before the elimination of local redevelopment agencies.
Recognizing that it will take funding from many different sources to fill this large of a funding loss, the report includes several state and local policy recommendations, including:
* Replace exhausted state housing bonds by passing legislation to create a permanent source of funding at the state level and by making a general fund investment in existing state programs for building affordable homes.
* Help California meet its GHG reduction targets by investing a significant portion of Cap-and-Trade auction revenues to building homes for transit riders around transit.
* Replace lost Redevelopment funds by dedicating to affordable housing a significant percentage of the hundreds of millions of dollars in recaptured annual property tax revenue that is now going to the County.
* Ensure that the LA County MTA (LACTMA) adopts policies that encourage affordable development on LACTMA-owned land so that the most likely transit riders have access to transit.
Download the report here.
The California Housing Partnership Corporation (CHPC) is a private nonprofit organization dedicated to helping government and nonprofit housing agencies preserve and expand the supply of affordable homes for lower-income households throughout California. The Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing's (SCANPH's) mission is to facilitate affordable housing development across Southern California by advancing effective public policies, sustainable financial resources, strong member organizations, and beneficial partnerships. ### | 
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