Do Real Planning #5: Advance Homes for Every Income

Triangle Square
Originally uploaded by CD-13.

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission has unveiled a 14-point policy agenda to set the city on a course towards sustainability, using Planning Director Gail Goldberg's mantra of DO REAL PLANNING as an acronym for the platform. Each day, on this blog, I am sharing my thoughts on each of these planning principles through the lens of my own district work and the potential for citywide direction along these lines.

The 13th Council District is home to people at all income levels, and I am deeply committed to catalyzing housing production for all the diverse communities in the district. My office has consistently gone to bat for new, well-designed residential development. At the same time, developers seeking zone changes in Hollywood have volunteered affordable housing units as public benefits for the working families that live in our city. To achieve more homeownership opportunities for our residents, I have encouraged the use of the Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance, and several projects in my district are beginning to demonstrate that for-sale housing can be built more affordably. I continue to work with the Mayor and my colleagues to ensure that the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is fully funded. With housing prices in the urban core continuing to rise or maintaining their unaffordable heights, the expansion of affordable rental housing and homeownership will require efforts from all neighborhoods across Los Angeles to house our city.