Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: November 7, 2024
The Los Angeles affordable housing boom!
A recent executive order from Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles unlocked a much-needed surge in affordable housing construction.
Tell your city to emulate the Los Angeles affordable housing boom!
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Reasons For Hope
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles seems to have found an incredible urban policy “cheat code,” a simple regulatory change that unlocks a much-needed boom in affordable housing construction. Amazingly, it’s completely unsubsidized, with the city spending no extra money to make it happen - just clearing up some red tape with a single executive order.
Bass’ landmark Executive Directive Number 1, signed in December 2022 shortly after she took office, simply mandates that the city accept or reject new housing projects within 60 days, and that they must accept them if they meet certain basic criteria. This means no council hearings, no impact studies, no neighborhood surveys - in short, no lengthy and expensive “veto points” for NIMBY interests to choke off new projects.
In the year-and-a-few-months since that order was signed, from December 2022 through the first quarter of 2024, Los Angeles received plans for 13,770 new affordable housing units, more than the total number approved in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined!
“We must do all that we can to build more housing, cut through bureaucratic red tape and move with urgency toward building more affordable and climate-friendly housing.”
-Mayor Karen Bass
Now that it’s fast to build affordable housing, it’s become profitable as well. Super-streamlining the lumbering permitting process brings spectacular results. Other cities need to take note!