SGV Feels Pinch of Rising Rental Costs

Alex Sanchez is EVP of ROEM Development.

LOS ANGELES—Baldwin Park may become the affordable housing market that Los Angeles desperately needs. Southern California has a 600,000-unit housing shortage, and as a result, prices are quickly rising. ROEM Development pinpointed Baldwin Park as the ideal location for its Metro Village development, a low-income, transit oriented project that opened earlier this month, and the developer is hoping that it will serve as a catalyst for other low-income projects in the market.

“With a shortage of more than a million housing units statewide, the housing crisis has entered epic proportions,” Alex Sanchez, EVP of ROEM Development, tells GlobeSt.com. “The six-county Southern California region has a shortage of 600,000 units, according to a recent Southern California Association of Governments report. So it’s clear that the San Gabriel Valley area is in high demand and feeling the pinch of rising rental costs. Metro Village, which received 2,000 resident applications, not only provides 69 units of housing affordable to residents earning up to 60% of the county’s area median income, but also links that housing to transit.”