Should L.A. Provide a Public Solution to Low-Income Housing?

There is a great debate about affordable housing in the State of California and in Los Angeles, and it has manifested on the last several ballots as residents call for solutions. So far, many of the efforts to develop affordable and low-income housing have been inclusionary measures in private development projects; however, Robert Gross of Nadel Architects says that there is a public solution as well. In a conversation about the adoption of density in Los Angeles, Gross said that Los Angeles might consider a public housing model similar to one implemented in New York City to provide low-income housing to those in need.

“New York has the largest stock of low-income housing units in the country. The city built them, so they run a public housing system,” Gross, multifamily studio director at Nadel Architects, tells GlobeSt.com. “Los Angeles and California in general very rarely builds any public housing. If they build anything, they try to push it off through code, through law or through tax incentives onto the private developer to build low-income housing for the State. The city does this instead of taking it on themselves as a public problem that they are going to solve in a public manner.”

While this is a model that Los Angeles should consider, Gross acknowledged there are many solutions to low-income housing that could work, but this is a program that has worked well in New York City. “I think it couldn’t hurt things to adopt a public program, but there are a number of ways to approach the issue,” he adds.

Another solution to providing more affordable housing options—albeit not specifically “low-income housing”—is through mass transit. While Gross emphasizes the importance of mass transit in creating density, he says a commuter transit system is equally as important to providing affordable options outside of a city center that allow residents to easily access the city. “In New York, where it is very expensive to live, there are great train lines that run up away from the city, and that allows people to find more affordable living and commute into the urban center and provide the services that the urban center needs,” he adds. “If you expect people to live right in the middle of the urban center and provide those services required by higher paid industries, then you have to publicly give it to them or publicly incentivize it to such a level that the private sector can actually do it.”

At the moment, rent control solutions, both at the state and local level, are being considered as a solution to affordability. While there are many ways to approach the issue of affordability, Gross does not think that rent control is one of them. “Rent control would be a major issue for the State and the City,” he says. “It would disincentivize people to develop, and that is not going to make housing cheaper. It is always an economic issue. The more housing the is built, the less expensive it will be over time. If you force low income housing to be done by the private sector, that is ultimately going to disincentivize development and raise the cost of housing.”