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

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Karen Bass Nov. 8 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.

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 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 mayor’s office will advance this package in partnership with the communities and with their input.