housing projects in los angeles

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Los Angeles’ one weird trick to build affordable housing at no public cost

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The term “unsubsidized 100% affordable project” was once an oxymoron. Under Mayor Karen Bass, Los Angeles is now approving them by the hundreds.

The seven-story apartment building planned for West Court Street on the south side of Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood doesn’t make sense, not if you know anything about affordable housing in California.

All 190 of the proposed units will be reserved for people making under $100,000, which in Los Angeles makes this an “affordable housing” project.

But unlike the vast majority of affordable developments that have been proposed in California in recent memory, no taxpayer dollars are allotted to build the thing. Especially in the state’s expensive coastal cities, the term “unsubsidized 100% affordable project” is an oxymoron, but Los Angeles is now approving them by the hundreds.

That’s thanks to an executive order Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, signed in December 2022, shortly after being sworn into office. In the year and change since, the city’s planning department has received plans for more than 13,770 affordable units, according to data provided by the city’s planning department. That’s just shy of the total number of approved affordable units in Los Angeles in 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined .

The city has also been the subject of at least two lawsuits and a multi-front political battle over whether and how to turn the mayoral decree — which is only in effect as long as Bass wants it to be and barring a court’s decision to end it — into a permanent fixture of Los Angeles housing policy.

The policy was designed to fast-track the approval process for 100% affordable projects. What it perhaps was not designed to do — but has done at a scale that few anticipated — is allow private developers, who rarely dabble in affordable housing and simply look to make as much money as humanly possible from building new homes, to take a second look at a set of state laws that give added benefits to entirely affordable projects.

Throw those two policies together and building new apartments for working class Angelenos is suddenly a booming business. 

A ‘monumental shift’ in affordable housing policy

Andrew Slocum and Terry Harris, the developer pair behind the seven-story project on West Court Street, represent the type of developer suddenly wading into Los Angeles’ affordable housing market. They aren’t leading nonprofits or charities. They don’t run websites with feel-good mission statements. Both come from the proudly profit-seeking world of “luxury” housing development.

“We are mission driven in the sense that we want to provide housing,” said Slocum. But he’s pursuing this affordable project, along with two others, because it “made more financial sense.”

Harris, a former college basketball player pursuing a post-athletic career in Southern California real estate, put it more bluntly. 

“I’m just trying to be as greedy as possible,” he said. 

Though publicly available data on financing is sparse, an early analysis of the program by the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA estimated that roughly three-fourths of affordable units proposed through the policy are doing so without any public money. In some cases , developers, including Harris, are opting to scrap proposed “luxury” apartment projects entirely, re-submitting those plans as 100% affordable. 

It’s hard to overstate just how weird all of this is. 

“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” said Scott Epstein, policy director at Abundant Housing LA and one of the authors of that analysis. “When it comes to 100% privately invested projects…I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything close to the magnitude that that has been unleashed.”

“I’m just trying to be as greedy as possible.” Terry Harris, developer

Between the extraordinary cost of building new apartment buildings in coastal California and the money that a developer can recoup through legally capped rents, traditional affordable housing projects almost inevitably run a sizable financing gap. That gap is almost always filled by public subsidy. A large project might require half a dozen loans, grants and tax bill write-offs from local, state and federal housing agencies. Most of these sources of public finance come with strings attached, which can saddle projects with yet higher costs and further delays. 

Los Angeles’ new breed of affordable housing circumvents all of that — at least on paper. None of these units have actually been built yet. But talk to supportive policy advocates and industry players in Los Angeles and you quickly run out of new synonyms for “unprecedented.” 

“This is clearly a monumental shift in how affordable housing is developed in the state,” said Mahdi Manji, policy director at Inner City Law Center, a legal service provider and affordable housing advocacy group in Los Angeles’ Skid Row. “We just haven’t seen this before.”

Building affordable housing in two steps

Privately funded developers hoping to crack Los Angeles’ affordable housing market tend to follow a familiar pattern.

First, they evoke Bass’ order — “Executive Directive 1” — to guarantee and speed up the process. 

The order sets a shot-clock of 60 days for the city’s planning department to approve or reject a submitted project. As long as that project meets a basic set of criteria, it must be approved. That means no city council hearings, no neighborhood outreach meetings and no environmental impact studies required. 

It also means less time getting a project green-lit.

“To go from acquiring a lot to putting a shovel in the ground in less than a year is kind of unheard of,” said Steven Scheibe, a small-scale developer working on his first entirely affordable project through Executive Directive 1. 

Less time spent paying off debt, making payroll and ensuring skittish investors that the project is a sure thing saves projects on the front end. 

Another key detail: Unlike most recent statewide laws aimed at speeding up the approval of new housing, the Los Angeles law doesn’t require developers to pay construction workers heightened “prevailing wages” — roughly equal to what unionized construction workers earn on a public infrastructure projects. Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said that makes Executive Directive 1 a kind of alternate reality for housing policy in California.

“It shows what is the minimum that could be built in California, without (environmental review) and prevailing wage, like a real world example of that,” he said. “I don’t think any other big city in the country has taken this sort of initiative to build housing.”

Then comes the next step. Most so-called “ED1 projects” also make use of a hodgepodge of statewide “density bonus” laws that allow developers of 100% affordable housing projects to pack far more units and floors onto a given lot than would otherwise be allowed under local zoning rules. These laws also let affordable developers pick and choose from a wide range of goodies and freebies that cut costs further and allow for yet denser development. That means no parking spots, limited open space, smaller rooms and fewer trees.

All those added units mean developers can set the rents lower and still pay themselves back for the cost of construction and then some.

Together the executive directive and the density bonus form a necessary “one-two punch” to make these projects work, said Charly Ligety, a director of research and development at Housing On Merit, a nonprofit that invests in affordable housing projects. “It’s, one, ‘Oh, I can put 80 units on a single family plot…’ and then, two, ‘… and I can get it approved quickly.”

“To go from acquiring a lot to putting a shovel in the ground in less than a year is kind of unheard of.” Steven Scheibe, developer

And while Bass’ order and the state’s density bonus laws are pulling privately funded developers into the suddenly profitable world of affordable housing development, other economic forces are pushing them out of the high-end luxury market: High interest rates have made waiting around on municipal approvals that may never come an especially costly proposition. Los Angeles’ recently enacted tax on multimillion-dollar real estate transactions, the so-called mansion tax, has also slowed the fancy apartment building business, said Ligety.

As a result, he said, “market rate developers are discovering affordable housing for the first time.”

How affordable is affordable housing?

Just because something is “affordable” in Los Angeles doesn’t mean it’s cheap.

To qualify as a 100% affordable housing project under the city of Los Angeles’ streamlined treatment, a studio can go for roughly $1,800. Compare that to a traditional publicly subsidized project which could charge as little at $650 for the same unit. 

And you can bet this studio doesn’t have a parking spot. 

Developers flocking to the city’s new program are essentially “making a bet,” said Gary Benjamin, a land-use consultant who advises developers on how to navigate the city’s planning and permitting bureaucracies. The bet is that housing costs are so astronomically out of reach in Los Angeles that even someone making north of $70,000 per year would jump at the chance to rent “a more bare bones product without all the bells and whistles” for what could amount to a modest rent reduction.

That bet is still very much in play. It will be months before the first of the apartments approved under Executive Directive 1 are tenant-ready.

“This is just a whole new product specifically catering to the middle-lower end of the market. That just wasn’t a thing that people were doing before,” said Benjamin.

In the meantime, the rush of planned development has promised the demolition of existing buildings across the city. In many cases, those are commercial buildings or unoccupied single family homes and both city and state law require developers to pay displaced tenants’ relocation costs and to offer them a right to return to the new building. Even so, the planning blitz has at least some low-income Angelenos worried that they will be evicted to make way for “affordable” units that they themselves might not be able to easily afford. 

In many parts of the country — and even once upon a time in Los Angeles — the mere fact that a developer could successfully build an apartment building within the price range of someone earning just under the area’s typical income would not be cause for celebration — and wouldn’t need an emergency declaration to bring about. 

“It shouldn’t be odd” that a developer might choose to build an $1,800 per month studio without taxpayer support, said Manji with the Inner City Law Center. “It’s only odd because we’ve made it odd.”

Though his organization principally advocates for unhoused Angelenos, Manji said he supports the policy, even if units being proposed are “not housing for homeless folks.” 

Allowing private developers to serve lower- to middle-income renters frees up scant financial subsidies and rental vouchers for people who most desperately need the help, he said. That’s especially important this year when the governor is proposing cuts in state affordable housing funding .

Affordable housing incentives

Los Angeles’ city council is currently mulling a permanent ordinance that would codify the mayor’s signature affordable housing policy and put it on a firmer legal footing. The council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee is expected to take it up in the coming weeks.

Timing may be of the essence. 

Bass’ order is the target of two lawsuits from Fix The City, a local nonprofit that has regularly contested the city’s land use decisions going on two decades. In both suits, the group disputes the legal validity of a sweeping 13-month-long housing policy passed by mayoral edict.

“To give emergency powers reserved for earthquakes and horrible storms and true catastrophic emergencies to apply that to housing to override community plans and zoning for an indefinite period of time — it’s just not good government and it decimates due process,” said Michael Everoff, one of the group’s co-founders. 

Translating the mayor’s order into permanent city law and ending the emergency declaration could weaken Fix The City’s legal challenge, at least as it applies to future projects, though Everoff disputed that point. But whether a majority on the city’s council will agree to do so — and how much of the mayor’s original policy they will opt to rewrite, soften or jettison in the process — is an open question. 

Still up for debate: Just how many incentives and waivers the city is willing to grant 100% affordable developers as they make use of the state’s density bonus program. So far that decision has been left to the planning department’s discretion. That unlimited economizing and supersizing has resulted in projects that are “ substantially out of scale ” with their surrounding neighborhoods, according to a planning department assessment. The most recent version of the ordinance caps the number of developer freebies at five . 

Slocum, the developer of the proposed Echo Park apartment building, said most of his projects would “no longer work” if subject to such a cap. He said he needs eleven or twelve.

‘A declaration of war on single family neighborhoods’

But the biggest debate over the breadth of the city policy may have already come and gone. Though the first version of the executive order seemed to apply to all housing sites in the city, Bass later came back with an amended order to exempt all of the city’s single family neighborhoods. That clarification cut out more than 70% of the city’s residentially zoned land and the lion’s share of its well-to-do neighborhoods, but not before a handful of projects were approved.

The city has since tried to revoke the approvals of some of those projects. Their fate is now the subject of yet another series of lawsuits, these brought by the pro-housing development legal group YIMBY Law, who argue that the city has to let those developments go ahead. In its first suit on behalf of a proposed 7-story project in the west San Fernando Valley, the group denounced the city for having “buckled to political pressure from ‘Not In My Back Yard’ constituents.”

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, whose district includes the southwest San Fernando Valley and who opposed approving these under-the-wire affordable projects in single family areas said there’s virtually no chance that the council will decide to re-expand the policy to every part of the city. Doing so might have a limited effect anyway: The number of single family parcels that can be turbo-developed under the state’s density bonus law is limited.

“While that may be something for the future, right now we’re piloting (Executive Directive 1) the way it is,” he said. “And as it is, it’s a major step forward. To go that extra step…would be a declaration of war with our single family neighborhoods.”

That war may be coming to Los Angeles before long. Just as cities across the San Francisco Bay Area were required by state law to redraw their zoning maps to accommodate a massive increase in allowable housing development, the City of Los Angeles has until mid-October to plan for 250,000 new homes .

Data about the number of affordable units that Los Angeles has received plans for was updated to reflect the most current numbers from the city’s planning department.

This story was made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation .

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Mayor Bass Acts to Make Housing More Affordable and Available For All

LOS ANGELES – Mayor Karen Bass today signed an executive directive to make housing more affordable and available throughout Los Angeles. The executive directive works to incentivize more housing to be built faster for people of all income levels, with an emphasis on affordable housing and mixed income housing, to begin to address the barriers to home ownership and to help convert existing buildings into housing.  Photos are available  here . 

Mayor Bass signed the executive directive at the City’s Development Services Center in Downtown Los Angeles where building permits are reviewed and approved in order for housing and other buildings to begin construction. She was joined by Council President Paul Krekorian, Councilmember Nithya Raman, Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, city and industry leaders. This executive directive builds on the Mayor’s continued efforts to prevent people from falling into homelessness and move Los Angeles forward. 

“The cost of housing throughout Los Angeles has made living in the city unaffordable for too many Angelenos. We need to take action so that Angelenos can afford to live here and to buy their first homes here and to live near their jobs – and that means we need to build more housing. We’ve had success expediting affordable projects and we must build on that momentum,” said  Mayor Karen Bass . “I am taking action to make living in Los Angeles more affordable by signing this executive directive to incentivize more housing to be built for people of all income levels, with an emphasis on affordable housing and mixed income housing, to begin to address the barriers to home ownership and to help convert existing buildings into housing.”

The Mayor directed departments to take the following actions: 

Begin to address the barriers to home ownership so that more people can realize the dream of owning their own home

Explore ways to reduce discretionary review in order to incentivize more housing to be built for people of all income levels and make increasing the number of affordable housing units a top priority

Look creatively at how to cut through red tape and help convert existing buildings into housing through adaptive reuse

Cut the time it takes to permit mixed-income housing

Remove unnecessary bottlenecks so that the City can help deliver housing units more quickly

Encourage more affordable housing units to be included in projects

“The challenge of affordability is about way more than just preventing future homelessness,” said  City Council President Paul Krekorian . “It’s about building community. It’s about building a middle class again and ending a cycle that increases the disparity of wealth in this city. We've already passed my motion to exempt affordable units from Site Plan Review, which has opened up a wide variety of projects that we can expedite and get done much more quickly. There are so many more steps we can take to increase predictability and reduce unnecessary bureaucratic delay. I want to thank Mayor Bass and Councilmember Raman and all the leaders here today for what they’re doing to get this done.”

“ED1 showed us that developers value predictability and that we can actually incentivize the creation of deeply affordable and much needed housing in Los Angeles,” said  Councilmember Nithya Raman . “What’s exciting about today is that ED7 takes us another step forward. We are creating a process that doesn’t just put the projects we want to see most at the front of the line, but actually creates a line that is faster, easier, and smoother so that the housing we need built can be done in the speediest way possible. I couldn’t be more pleased to be here with so many of our excellent partners in the City and I want to thank Mayor Bass for her leadership moving this forward.”

The Mayor’s Office will advance this package of solutions in partnership with the communities and with their input. Executive Directive 7 reads as follows:

Subject: Streamlining and Accelerating Housing Production 

Los Angeles is grappling with one of the most severe housing crises among major U.S.  cities. Decades of restrained housing production is reflected by high rents, overcrowded conditions, and increasing housing instability. The most dire consequences are displacement and homelessness as climbing rents lead to the threat of evictions, which escalate the city's homelessness crisis and plunge more Angelenos into economic hardship. The shortage of housing that is affordable and accessible spans every corner of our city and has highlighted the deepening disparities within our communities. The trajectory of our city's future, as well as the overall well-being and economic prosperity of  Angelenos hinges upon our collective commitment to confront the housing crisis facing  Los Angeles. The urgent imperative for increased housing stability, affordability, and  equity has never been more evident. 

Los Angeles has made efforts in recent years to stimulate housing production and  incentivize affordable housing; however, there is much more work to be done. Our current housing crisis is decades in the making, the accumulated result of low levels of housing  production and restrictive land use regulations, going back through the 1980s and beyond. In response to the 2013-2021 Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), the City of Los Angeles reached less than half of its target for very low and low income housing units and less than 10% of the target for moderate income housing units. To date, the City is on track to meet only 40% of the targets under the current 2021-2029 RHNA for all income levels. 

To address the challenges before us, we must employ a multi-faceted, coordinated, and effective approach to produce needed housing more quickly. This approach will remove barriers to housing production, especially for projects that provide affordable housing units, by making more housing project approvals ministerial, and by addressing delays and barriers in the permitting process. In addition, our efforts will facilitate the reuse of  existing buildings that currently stand vacant, and provide relief from lengthy CEQA processes while still ensuring that projects undergo meaningful and necessary environmental review. 

Therefore, I hereby order, that: 

The Department of City Planning shall report to my office with recommendations to reduce the need for discretionary review of housing projects, including the preparation of a draft ordinance to raise the site plan review threshold. The Planning Department shall consider potential additional criteria or standards including minimum affordable housing set-asides. The Planning Department shall also consider the development of additional required objective design standards for these projects, either as a part of this draft ordinance or in a separate ordinance, to enhance the City’s standard of review for new multi-family housing projects in the city. 

The Department of City Planning shall update the City’s thresholds of significance used to evaluate temporary construction noise impacts for analysis prepared pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

The Department of City Planning shall explore all available CEQA streamlining tools to meet the City’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) obligations and to make the development community aware of these tools. 

The Department of City Planning shall report, within 90 days, to my office, on barriers to the development of for-sale housing, and propose ways that the City can better encourage the development of for-sale housing and support home ownership opportunities through land use and zoning tools. 

The Department of Building and Safety, in consultation with the Fire Department, shall report, within 60 days, to my office, on current building code requirements that are impeding conversion of existing buildings into housing, and potential changes to those requirements that can facilitate building conversions while still maintaining needed protections for health and safety.

The above actions will increase the predictability and speed of housing development review in the city, including mixed-income housing. 

To streamline the permitting process for ministerial and post-entitlement projects, I further order, that: 

The following City departments form an Executive Directive 7 Interdepartmental Working Group led by the Mayor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, in cooperation with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Homelessness Solutions:

Department of City Planning 

Department of Building and Safety 

Department of Recreation and Park

Department of Transportation 

Department of Water and Power 

Department of Public Works: 

Bureau of Contract Administration 

Bureau of Street Lighting 

Bureau of Engineering 

Bureau of Sanitation 

Bureau of Street Services 

Urban Forestry Division 

Los Angeles Fire Department 

Los Angeles Housing Department 

The Executive Directive 7 Interdepartmental Working Group shall focus on organizational and procedural improvements, pre-development review, and interdepartmental permit clearance coordination including developing materials and processes to assist in navigation of the entire permitting and clearance process for Affordable and Qualified Mixed-Income Housing projects. 

The working group shall meet on a regular recurring basis and shall coordinate with other permit streamlining efforts, as directed by my Executive Directives 1 and 4, to ensure efficiency of interdepartmental coordination and avoid duplication of efforts. 

To facilitate the timeline reductions referenced below, working group representatives shall report to my office within 60 days on implementation of priority processing initiatives for affordable and qualified mixed-income housing projects. This report shall include: 

Identification of existing priority processing units or sections for affordable and mixed-income housing. 

Implementation plans for creating such units if they do not currently exist.

Identification of existing processing steps and times for permits and clearances for housing projects, including affordable, mixed-income, and market rate projects.  

Detailed identification, to inform the budget process for the 2024/25 fiscal year, of the staff, contractual services, and equipment needs for supporting priority processing initiatives and reducing permitting timelines for qualified mixed-income housing projects as defined within this Executive Directive. 

Ongoing and on a quarterly basis, the General Managers shall report to my office processing times for qualified mixed-income housing projects as well as all housing projects to demonstrate progress toward expediting targets defined above. 

Additionally, on a quarterly basis, the General Managers of the Planning Department, the Department of Building & Safety, and the Housing Department shall report to my office on housing and affordable housing units entitled and permitted, including affordability levels.

After the 180 days, the working group shall produce a report to my office and the City Council on barriers identified, milestones reached, and future initiatives. 

The Executive Directive 7 Interdepartmental Working Group shall reduce processing timelines for permit and clearance related services between 25% and 30% respectively for qualified mixed-income housing projects. 

For the purposes of this provision, qualified mixed-income housing projects means housing development projects of five or more units that contain at least 20% lower income restricted affordable housing units (Extremely Low Income, Very Low Income, or Low Income) or 40% income restricted affordable units at Moderate Income. 

To support the above directives, and to improve the permitting process for all kinds of projects, I further direct all applicable City departments to identify and accelerate the ongoing development of technological initiatives, including but not limited to BuildLA and the LA Permitting System, to expand Development Service Center counter services, and improve upon timeframes and coordination of permitting  development projects. 

How affordable housing units end up in high-profile L.A. developments — and how to find one

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Los Angeles has far too little housing, especially of the affordable variety. A 2021 study by the California Housing Partnership found that nearly 800,000 low-income households in the city need low-cost housing, but the supply of affordable units is almost 500,000 short.

The city’s current housing plan calls for about 200,000 new affordable units by the end of the decade; state housing officials say the city must move faster to zone neighborhoods for more homes. Either way, the demand will greatly outstrip the supply.

Still, new affordable units are opening every year — more than 8,200 were added to the city’s inventory from April 2021 through March 2022, according to the city’s housing report .

“In the last five years, the growth of units being built has just skyrocketed,” said Emilio Salas, executive director of the Los Angeles County Development Authority. “I’m at a grand opening or a groundbreaking at least once a week.”

In addition to buildings dedicated to low-income housing, developers are often adding reduced-rent units to their market-rate and luxury housing complexes. In return, they’re getting permission to squeeze more units onto the property, create fewer parking spaces or ignore certain other rules. The incentives are having an effect: The vast majority of market-rate projects winning approval from the city include affordable units.

The most visible example of a mixture of market-rate and affordable units may be the Grand LA, a 510-foot tower in downtown Los Angeles designed by Frank Gehry . Per a development agreement with the city, 89 of the tower’s 436 apartments will be affordable units, 66 of which will be reserved for people with limited mobility, sight or hearing. (The application period for affordable units at the Grand is closed.)

But how can renters find out about those units, and how do they get filled?

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What is ‘affordable’ housing, and who qualifies for it?

According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, housing is “affordable” if rent and utilities cost no more than 30% of your total income each month. Households spending more than that amount are considered rent burdened.

About half the households in L.A. County were rent burdened before the pandemic, Census Bureau data show. And in South and Central Los Angeles, a 2020 survey found that 3 out of 4 households were rent burdened, with many of them spending more than half of their income on housing.

Affordable units in L.A. County thus have their rents capped at 30% of the monthly income of the targeted group . To qualify for a unit, you’ll need to earn less than 50% to 60% of the area median income for your household size — the larger the household, the higher the income limit.

For very low-income households (those that earn less than 50% of the area median), the rent for an affordable unit will be capped at about $1,040 a month for a single person and about $1,490 for a family of four. For extremely low income households (those earning less than 30% of the area median), the rent is capped at about $625 a month for a single person or about $895 for a family of four.

Those income limits are used to calculate eligibility for Section 8 housing vouchers as well. If you’re awarded a Section 8 voucher, you can use it to help pay for “market rate” housing (that is, homes that aren’t classified as affordable). You’ll be required to pay 30% of your monthly income in rent, however — and up to 40% if the unit rents for more than the standard set by HUD .

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How do you get an affordable unit?

There are three main steps to the process of renting out new affordable units.

First, the property manager has to let the public know that units will be available. It’s not as simple as taking out an ad in the newspaper or posting a notice on Craigslist, however; under the rules set by HUD and local authorities, developers have to find ways to alert the eligible tenants across the city who are least likely to learn about apartment openings.

For the Grand LA, that meant listing the property in the Los Angeles Housing Department’s online Affordable and Accessible Housing Registry, which alerted its mailing list and collected names of interested people for the property manager to contact. The Grand also distributed flyers through nonprofit organizations identified by the city, including family and youth service centers, senior centers and organizations serving disabled or homeless Angelenos. On top of that, it did some marketing on its own.

This sort of outreach is standard operating procedure for developments with affordable units, even though the demand is already overwhelming. Durinda Abraham, director of property management for the Community Corporation of Santa Monica, said her company recently received over 6,000 applications for a 49-unit building in Los Angeles. “That speaks to the need,” Abraham said.

In the second step, the property manager collects applications , which may be submitted in person, through its website or by mail. Once the application period ends (typically a month after it opened), the manager conducts a lottery to determine the order in which the applications will be reviewed. The folks who submitted their applications earliest have no advantage in the lottery, nor do people who have waited the longest for a unit, officials say.

Being a top finisher in the lottery doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a unit, however. It just means you’ll get the first chance to submit your paperwork to show that you meet the income limits.

Then comes the third step: determining which applicants can move in. Each applicant’s financial information — income, assets, dependents, benefits — will go through a verification process. Those who pass will often have to pass a background check and meet other criteria to be accepted as renters.

The lenders and agencies that supported the project have a say in the criteria used to judge applicants. For example, Donna Lambe of the John Stewart Company, which is managing the Vermont Corridor affordable housing development for seniors in Koreatown, said some lenders will require applicants to undergo credit checks that could be used to bar households with a lot of bad debt, while projects devoted to homeless residents may not consider applicants’ financial histories.

There’s one other potentially significant hurdle for applicants: Different shares of the units will be reserved for households of different sizes, income levels and accessibility issues. Some units may also be set aside for tenants who were homeless and now need permanent supportive housing. If you passed the income test but don’t fit the other criteria for any of the remaining units, you’re out of luck at that building.

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How can you find out about available units?

A good place to start in the city of Los Angeles is the Housing Department’s relatively new Affordable and Accessible Housing Registry , where you can sign up to be notified when new projects are listed, applications are accepted or filled waiting lists reopen for new renters-in-waiting.

Ann Sewill, the department’s general manager, said the site lists roughly 45,000 units covered by affordable housing covenants with the city and adds new projects as they come in. Older affordable units, meanwhile, are being added as their owners supply the necessary information, she said.

Projects such as the Grand LA that mix market-rate and affordable units aren’t often found on the registry at this stage, although the city aims to include those units as well. The main way to learn about units in mixed developments is to look for advertising online, in media and through nonprofits in your community.

The county also has an online Housing Resource Center that provides searchable listings of a variety of homes, including affordable and accessible ones.

If the city or county supports a project with funding or incentives such as a density bonus, it will require the property manager to post the units to the city’s registry or the county’s Housing Resource Center. Salas said the county also invites any property owner who accepts Section 8 vouchers to list units on the Housing Research Center site, while also helping voucher holders find landlords looking for tenants. The challenge there, he said, is for owners to remove units from the site after they’ve been filled and keep their listings up to date.

(The sites and the marketing plans are helpful, but most people find affordable units in old-fashioned ways: through family, friends or their own observations, according to a 2018 study by Carolina K. Reid at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center. In a survey of more than 250 residents of buildings financed by federal tax credits, Reid wrote, about a third learned about their units from a friend or family member who lived in one of that developer’s properties, and an additional 28% learned about it by walking by during construction.)

Here’s another tip for finding affordable units: Get onto as many buildings’ waiting lists as you can. After a building fills, units will open up sooner or later as tenants move out — maybe they no longer meet the income limits, or maybe their family size changes. At that point, property managers often reach out to people on their waiting lists rather than advertising the openings.

One other online source is HUD, which lists available affordable units by county and city . The list isn’t comprehensive, but it’s a font of information on affordable units in older buildings.

More Renter Resources

Your guide to Southland renting

Get your security deposit back

Move with as little stress as possible

Find a compatible roommate

What you need to know about pets

Find affordable housing programs

What you can do about eviction

How do more affordable units get built.

Not by the federal government, at least not directly. HUD stopped providing grants to expand the supply of public housing in 1994. Instead, its emphasis has shifted to vouchers, and it has largely limited direct construction funding to projects that replace older units with new ones. In both cases, officials say, the government hasn’t come close to meeting the demand for aid.

(Local governments can use up to 30% of their voucher funding to support new or renovated units for low-income tenants, assigning the vouchers to specific apartments instead of specific people. That approach has been a “godsend” for lower-income renters who’d otherwise be unable to find housing, Salas said, but L.A. County is quickly approaching its 30% limit.)

Still, the feds do provide tax credits to state and local housing agencies to help finance 100% affordable housing complexes by private developers. Projects that receive tax credits must reserve at least 20% of their units for people earning less than 30% of the area median, with the rest divided among renters earning less than 50% and less than 80% of the area median. That’s an important source of new units, as is financial help from local governments.

The city and county of Los Angeles also use state and local incentives to promote the construction of affordable units within market-rate apartment complexes. For example, developers of market-rate apartment complexes may be allowed to build more units if they agree to make a portion of their units affordable (the “density bonus”). And under 2016’s Measure JJJ, the city can offer more density, relaxed parking requirements and other incentives to developers of projects near major transit hubs that make 8% to 25% of their units affordable.

About The Times Utility Journalism Team

This article is from The Times’ Utility Journalism Team. Our mission is to be essential to the lives of Southern Californians by publishing information that solves problems, answers questions and helps with decision making . We serve audiences in and around Los Angeles — including current Times subscribers and diverse communities that haven’t historically had their needs met by our coverage. How can we be useful to you and your community? Email utility (at) latimes.com or one of our journalists: Jon Healey , Ada Tseng , Jessica Roy and Karen Garcia .

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Jon Healey writes and edits stories for the Los Angeles Times’ Fast Break Desk, the team that dives into the biggest news of the moment. In his previous stints, he wrote and edited for the Utility Journalism team and The Times editorial board. He covered technology news for The Times from 2000 to mid-2005.

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