What is LACAHSA and how can it prevent homelessness?
November 28, 2023
Welcome to the fourth issue of Report Forward by journalist Alissa Walker.
THE BIG REPORT
Board members gather for a group photo at the first LACAHSA meeting, with chair Holly Mitchell at the far right. Photo by Mike Dennis
Last year, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Our Future LA coalition, a California state law was passed granting Los Angeles County a valuable new tool for combatting its homelessness crisis: a joint powers authority focused on increasing affordable housing supply. Dubbed a “Metro for housing,” the LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, or LACAHSA, is governed by a 21-member board with unprecedented powers to raise revenue, acquire land, and issue loans — and was just awarded a $660,000 grant to kickstart its first programs. LA County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who is serving as LACAHSA’s first board chair, spoke with Report Forward about what makes LACAHSA different from LAHSA, why it’s so hard to build affordable units in LA, and how getting city and county leaders at the table to talk about renter protections can prevent even more Angelenos from falling into homelessness.
Alissa Walker: I love describing LACAHSA as a “Metro for housing,” because I think that really does help people understand the structure and the goals. Seeing as you also are on the Metro board, is this how you like to describe it?
Holly Mitchell: I really do because it acknowledges that, much like Metro, which is taking a regional approach to public transit, we're taking a real regional approach to the goals of LACAHSA. We are setting up the infrastructure where we can actually create more affordable housing. And we're also setting up the infrastructure for preserving the affordable housing that's still in LA, as well as providing protection for tenants. It's the three P's: protection, preservation, and production.
Since it’s a new agency focused on housing and homelessness, I think people might hear about LACAHSA and ask, isn’t this what LAHSA already does? But even though the acronyms sound the same, it’s very different.
LAHSA is not about homelessness prevention. LAHSA has to step in once people have lost their homes. As we talk about how we support our family, friends, and neighbors who are unhoused, so much of the conversation is focused on that short-term kind of remedy. But we know the real solution is permanent housing. We need a way to tap into a new toolkit for how we stand that up. LACAHSA has a unique power to issue new and underutilized financial tools to actually finance the construction of affordable housing. That is radically different from what any other entity can do.
As you mentioned there is great difficulty in financing this type of housing. When you're trying to develop affordable housing you have to do what’s called “stacking” to cobble together all these different funding sources — loans and grants and tax credits — and then you can only really build it if everything comes together the exact right way.
It has to come together perfectly. It’s multiple loans over multiple years, and, also, at the right time. If one thing is delayed, it could jeopardize your other loans or grant opportunities. The hope and vision of LACAHSA would be to, for example, pull one single private loan and bypass the public financing and tax credit models that really can slow down housing production. Or provide property tax abatement, like what New York has done, and that’s why their unhoused numbers are so much lower. We now have the vehicle to apply some of these lessons learned from around the country and around the world, and really figure out a creative way to address stacking on a regional scale.
The Our Future LA coalition in 2022 celebrating movement on SB 679, introduced by then-state senator Sydney Kamlager-Dove, which formed LACAHSA. Photo courtesy Our Future LA
These financing issues also end up driving up the per-unit cost for developing new permanent supportive housing, which, as we’ve seen, has gone up stratospherically over the last few years. But offering something like a property tax exemption for affordable housing developers is a concrete way to cut into those costs.
If you think back about the passage of Measure H and HHH, those funds had to go to new construction and new units. But with a property tax exemption, that can also help developers who may be rehabbing existing housing. So that helps with the math, both in numbers of units and in terms of making sure that units stay affordable over time. That's the other piece that’s important: it’s not like the affordability will sunset. We can maintain affordable units indefinitely.
You mentioned H and HHH which are very important to this conversation because they're expiring — we have to think ahead because that money is going away. We have ULA at the city, but there's a new ballot measure that's being introduced for the county with a new mechanism for fundraising because we have to change our approach.
We absolutely do. I am not always a fan of what I call ballot box budgeting. As a policymaker, I always want the flexibility to be able to use public dollars where I need them and when I need them, and not get locked into a plan that is too difficult to change. However, when it comes to this issue of affordable housing, we know that this will be an issue that will plague us for decades considering how long it takes to build and how far behind we are. There are all kinds of studies that say that the county is 500,000 housing units short of where we need to be. And over the past decade, LA County has lost 200,000 housing units that rent for less than $1,000. That’s what has led to our homelessness crisis.
And the other big number that you referenced is part of what’s happening regionally, where all these cities and counties have to create a certain amount of affordable housing per the state by a certain date.
Yes, the Regional Housing Needs Assessment says we need 341,000 units of affordable housing by 2029. That’s the equivalent of tomorrow. LACAHSA’s aim is to accelerate that pace.
Some communities are, of course, already trying to push back. But I feel like LACAHSA sets you up to say this is how we’re all doing it, together.
We've got small cities, large cities, my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors are there, we've got developers who are present, we've got renter advocates who are present. So all of those voices are heard. We've spent a great deal of time in these first few months having a shared learning experience, where we've had experts come in and tell us their perspective on a variety of issues. And just to be in the room together, to hear from all the cities that are currently represented on the board and talk about what they’ve put in place in terms of things like tenant protections, it really is creating a forum that could hopefully motivate others around the table. So I feel good about the strategy we've engaged in as we prepare ourselves to start to get funds of a significant enough value to begin to do this work.
Have more questions about LACAHSA? Join LA Forward and members of the Our Future LA coalition for the virtual launch of the LA County Affordable Housing, Homelessness Solutions, and Prevention Now ballot measure which will create a sustainable funding mechanism for LACAHSA. Learn how you can help gather signatures to put it on the November 2024 ballot this Thursday, November 30 from 8 to 9 p.m. RSVP here
PROGRESS REPORT
The 300 neon green-shirted ambassadors riding Metro’s trains and buses have become a fixture of the system: directing tourists through a subway transfer, reporting urgent maintenance issues like broken escalators, and, remarkably, saving at least 70 lives in just one year. Last month, the Metro board voted to not only make the ambassador program permanent, but also to bring the program in-house, meaning that the ambassadors will not be contracted out through different agencies and instead become Metro employees.
Metro’s surveys show nearly two-thirds of riders say the ambassadors make them feel safer.
Especially as Metro explores creating its own police force, enshrining this unarmed position within the institution represents a major win for advocates pushing Metro to explore popular public safety alternatives. Just a few weeks later, a transportation crisis highlighted how critical these employees have become to getting around LA: During the 10 freeway fire closure, LA Mayor and Metro board chair Karen Bass proposed a motion to increase the numbers of Metro ambassadors throughout the affected stations.
LOCAL REPORT
Commuters who use the closed portion of the 10 freeway drive an average of 53 minutes to work, making their trips among the longest in the country. The data from Replica revealed an unsurprising conclusion: the closure’s disruptions placed more burdens on commuters already experiencing the greatest existing transportation inequities.
Ridership went up 19 percent on LADOT’s Commuter Express buses when the routes went fare free as part of an expansion of transit operations during the 10 freeway fire. Despite the fast freeway fix, the routes will remain free until further notice, offering an opportunity to study how free fares attract new riders and, hopefully, gather more data on how the closure changed behavior.
Rent increases will be capped at 4 percent when a rent freeze is lifted for rent-stabilized units in the city of LA in February 2024. What was dubbed a “compromise” proposal split the council as progressive members argued to keep the freeze while others wanted to allow a 7 percent rent increase. According to City Controller data, 66,007 eviction notices were filed with the city from February to October.
NATIONAL REPORT
Social Networking: Building social housing, particularly in transit-rich neighborhoods, can be a powerful tool to reduce emissions and decarbonize communities, according to NRDC analysis.
Walk This Way: Designing walkable neighborhoods would reduce the country’s power generation needs much more than planning for energy-intensive electric vehicles, claims a new Union for Concerned Scientists report.
FIELD REPORT
Back after a pandemic hiatus, ACT-LA’s Transit Justice Summit convened public transportation advocates at Expo Center last month. Watch the video from the day to see how attendees envisioned a thriving transit-centric region where riders boarded fast, frequent buses from leafy, ubiquitous bus shelters.
Coming up next…
Don’t forget to join LA Forward and Our Future LA this Thursday for the virtual launch of the LA County Affordable Housing, Homelessness Solutions, and Prevention Now ballot measure. Learn more about LACAHSA and how to get homelessness prevention on the November 2024 ballot on November 30 from 8 to 9 p.m. RSVP here
REPORT IN
Hi, Alissa Walker here — I’ll be compiling Report Forward every month. Please send reports, studies, white papers, and big policy wins to me at reports@laf.institute — and forward this to someone working to make LA a better place.
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