Municipalities

Increase units of affordable housing within one mile of the river.

The most effective way to mitigate adverse effects on housing affordability is to increase the supply of affordable housing or preserve existing affordable housing. Investing in more housing units with restricted rents near the river can help ensure that river adjacent…

Utilize the County’s Affordable Housing Coordinating Committee to review and advise on housing and community stabilization strategies along the river.

Ensuring that river improvements strengthen communities without contributing to housing affordability challenges requires a complex balancing act and the best strategies are likely to change. Ongoing input from impacted communities will help guide the evolution of this strategy over time.

Increase safe transportation routes to the river.

Ensuring that there are clear, safe, direct connections from neighborhoods to the LA River makes nearby neighbors more likely to use the river and, by extension, the broader LA County network of parks and trails that the river connects to. The…

Create welcoming access points and gateways to the LA River and LA River Trail to optimize physical access along its length, on both sides.

Along parts of the river that currently have trails, only about a third of access points have signs, less than two thirds appear to be clearly accessible by persons with disabilities, less than half connect to bridges that allow access to…

Encourage cities along the river to adopt sustainability strategies.

Adopting sustainability strategies that encourage the use of best practices in the construction, maintenance, and operation of public projects can decrease a city’s environmental footprint, reduce long-term costs, and improve the relationships between buildings and their surrounding environments. In addition to…

Encourage compatibility of the river and adjacent land uses.

The appeal of the LA River corridor can be undercut by adjacent uses that are off-putting due to safety, smell, pollution, or noise. Large blocks of incompatible adjacent uses could act as or be perceived to be a barrier to access…

Ensure design excellence within and along the river corridor.

Excellence in design enhances function. From the earliest stages of project development, it is important to consider how a project can be beautiful while addressing multiple needs of adjacent communities. Design excellence requires an attention to quality of built structures, the…

Complete the LA River Trail so that there is a continuous route along the entire river, and encourage future routes on both sides where feasible.

As a recreation and transportation route, the LA River Trail serves multiple purposes. However, it has yet to live up to its full potential because it is fragmented. A continuous route along the entire river would serve as a major…

Implement consistent floodplain management practices across the region.

Floodplain management is fundamental to reducing losses from floods. Adopting regionally consistent floodplain management practices, such as managing development in the floodplain, will help to reduce potential catastrophic flood damage and improve community resilience to flooding.

Reduce peak flood flows into the river.

In addition to increasing capacity of the river, flood risk can also be improved by reducing the amount of water that enters the LA River at peak flows. Upstream storage or detention facilities, such as dams, help to store runoff during…