Back to: Address potential adverse impacts to housing affordability and people experiencing homelessness.
Action: Identify funding necessary to create an affordable housing land bank, land acquisition loan fund, or similar strategy to purchase land in proximity to the river and hold it for future development as affordable housing or permanent supportive housing.
The primary obstacle to building new affordable housing and permanent supportive housing is the lack of available land on which to build it. LA County is largely built out, with few vacant properties and relatively high property values.
A land bank or similar organization that is specifically tasked with assembling development parcels could lower the barrier to creating new affordable housing. See the affordable housing system project pages for additional considerations related to siting affordable housing.
Click above for other actions that involve the implementation lead or potential partners or that apply to the same geographic boundaries.
Methods
specific, tangible ways to reach the goal
Land Bank or Similar Entity
- Coordinate site acquisition and financing river-wide.
- Initially target land acquisition efforts largely (but not exclusively) in areas identified as facing the greatest risk of displacement.
- Work with the County Assessor and municipalities to identify properties with repeated code violations or tax delinquencies that could be acquired.
- Partner with local agencies and community-based organizations to manage community planning processes to identify local priorities for development in each area.
- Manage RFPs or other public process for selecting housing developers for disposition or joint development projects.
- Transfer ownership of land to local nonprofit housing providers, or other long-term owners when sufficient local capacity exists.
- Recapture land purchase funds for reuse in future sites to the extent possible.
- Develop and record affordability restrictions to ensure perpetual affordability of assisted projects.