UCLA Launches Affordable Housing Program

Several markets in the country, including California, are suffering a severe housing affordability crisis. In response, industry leaders have stepped forward to look for solutions to the problem, from social impact investors to architects. Now, the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA is launching an affordable housing program, which will serve to educate and train more professionals in the complex affordable housing niche.

“We are in a severe crisis of housing availability and housing affordability in many parts of the nation and notably in coastal California,” Stuart A. Gabriel, Arden Realty chair, professor of finance and director of the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA, tells GlobeSt.com. “If you go up and down the coast of California, you find very expensive land, very limited housing development, very high regulatory constraint on housing production and plunging levels of affordability with severe constraints on workforce, including teachers, firefighters, doctors, nurses and so on. There are consequential issues to this problem. The lack of affordable housing is associated with the exit of jobs, lack of arrival of jobs and ultimately it will threaten economic growth.”

The depth of the affordability crisis was the primary motivator to launch the program, which kicked off in the fall semester to great success. It is the first nationwide program and teaches zoning, finance, design and permitting in affordable housing. “The crisis has become more pronounced. There have been more people coming into the sector that are interested in addressing issues of housing supply,” says Gabriel.

UCLA has re-launched the program for the Spring, and began accepting applications in February. In the fall, the program received 140 applications for 24 spots. Now, the program has expanded with 30 spots, but Gabriel expects an increase in applicants. “A significant portion of the training is a learning by doing where the students are divided into teams and asked to put together an actionable development proposal for a development site,” he adds. “We are not going to teach 600 people in one shot, so the classes will be in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 people.”

Affordable housing is a complicated development process, and educating people on the sector could be an important step in augmenting the affordable housing market. “Affordable housing is much more complicated than a standard apartment building or a standard strip mall,” says Gabriel. “There are very unique funding sources and applications for tax credits and financing. There are also regulatory constraints. It makes for a niche play. A lot of people have good intentions, but they are limited in their capacity to get through the barriers to being effective. We recognized all of that, and thought that we could address it by creating a program that focuses directly on this development type and make people quick effective in this sector.”

With affordability plaguing markets throughout the country, UCLA is considering expanded the program even further. “We are considering opportunities to run the program numerous times during the year as well as scaling opportunities,” adds Gabriel. “We are working with some of our friends at other universities around the country to use our curriculum in other parts of the country that are suffering from the same ills.”