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If people were more willing to say move to Santa Ana, Watts, Compton, East LA, Cudahy, Huntington Park, would there still be a housing crisis?
Its like what I am saying in the NYC forum. If the hipsters/yuppies be willing to live in Yonkers, Union City, Elizabeth, Bed Stuy, Crown Heights, Gun Hill, there really be not that big of an issue.
People already are willing to move to those areas.
Can you imagine the influx of people to the LA area if it were much, much more afforable for the masses? If we're complaining about traffic now, and the competitive market to buy already expensive homes, or to rent current market value apartments... just imagine how much stressful things would be if housing prices and rents automatically dropped by 30%.
Very true! Well, the draw of affordability throughout most of LA and California's history is what led us to be the most populated state in the country because everyone wanted a piece of paradise. The California Dream is still alive for many people but most can't afford it.
Building, building and yet more building isn't feasible when there just isn't the water for yet more people. We get a significant amount of our water from the Colorado River, and that ain't looking good right now.
One of the only other options at this point is building desalinization plants like the one in SD county in Carlsbad, but duplicating those up the California coast is unlikely due to the costs and government red-tape. The other option is building more reservoirs in the mountains to collect Sierra runoff in the spring and summer instead of letting the water go to the ocean.
America overall is urbanizing as rural areas are vacating towards cities and their suburbs. Growth of places like Vegas, Phoenix, DMV, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Nashville, Austin, Charlotte, where homes are much more moderate than higher priced cities like LA, NYC, SF where homes are more expensive. America is overall a much richer nation than the years before and the jobs that young people today are getting especially in science and tech fields are better than manufacturing job workers of yesteryear. So people are attracted to urban cities and get paid well for it, while those who are in the service industries and manufacturing are losing out. This will continue into the future decades as LA will continue to attract more high paying jobs, and higher educated people to work those jobs The people who are not up to par will be left behind to either move somewhere far or out of state or worker more but achieve less as a result.
LA is a different beast of a City metropolis. Think about how huge the Metropolis is of the 5 counties of about 19 million people. Everyone can think of very good areas, good areas, ok areas, bad areas and really bad areas. Because of the cost of living, poorer people are forced out, richer moving in and people in the middle are in constant flux on where to live. They are moving to poorer/less desirable areas and turning (gentrify) them into ok and good areas. You see this with Hollywood, Echo Park, Venice, Palms, Koreatown, Highland Park, West Adams, Baldwin Hills, North Hollywood, Inglewood, Downtown Long Beach and other areas. More money means cleaner, safer, streets, nicer schools, nicer shops/restaurants. Currently it is spreading to Historic Filipinotown, East Hollywood, Westlake as the edges of gentrifying areas are moving.
Anyway, the people who will struggle are those at the bottom levels. Is there a fix? NOPE.
Housing is a commodity. people own the rentals and people own housing. They charge a price for what they can get for it. $1000 rent, $2000 rent, etc. Or $500,000 home in Inglewood, or $800K home in Echo Park or $1M+ in Venice. There is often some government hand that can force things like rent control/or rent caps, but overall it is a free market for people to rent what they want and sell what they can get. And it is just escalating because there is more demand that supply. Simple as that. Despite building a lot over the past 5-10 years, it is not enough.
Growing up, I lived in an immigrant community of East Hollywood and NELA where apartments were packed with people. 5-6 people in a 2 bedroom unit. Common. Today, many home and apartments are occupied by 1-2 people in a similar 2 bedroom. Friends I grew up with, they left the nest of their parents and moved into their own homes while their parents still live in the same homes but with less people. Of course there are those that many people living in the same house with more people but it isn't a lot that I know of. People are socially and economically upward on the ladder. Sure their parents were poorer but the kids are able to move up and out on their own. This causes a lot of strain on the housing market. Because before, the family of 5 in a single house are now the same family of 5 in 3-4 houses. Yet there aren't a lot of houses or enough housing for them all. A lot of people dont seem to understand this concept especially those arguing no more housing and more density. Even if there were no transplants or new immigrants coming to LA, the kids of locals would still need housing for them in the future. So if there are 10million LA County residents and each year 20,000 graduate highschool/college and get a job and move out, thats about 20,000 new housing units that need building each year for them. 20,000 every year. Thats just a guess. I dont know the exact numbers. My neighborhood of 30,000 people would need to build a 200 unit apartment building every year just for the people who graduate school. (yeah they can live at home, but I think some would love to move out). Yet the more I think about it, maybe only 50 units get built a year in my area. So where are the other 150 going to live?
There will always be an endless need for more housing in cities that dont lose population or see an increase of population.
I think it is still the case, that government dont really build public housing like it did many decades ago. Now it is just section 8 vouchers. LA just gives incentives that would allow more units in a complex than allowed if those were allocated as affordable housing (im not sure of the details), Thats why whenever you see a new apartment complex, there is this mention that like 10 percent of them are going to be affordable while the 90 percent is market rate. (or luxury as many say). This is the only way to get affordable housing for new construction. Some developers are given city/county land at low prices to build affordable housing. But it is hard to find a non-profit developer with the kind of cash to build affordable housing units. Even the public housing areas of Jordan Downs, and the one in Boyle Heights want to rebuild the entire area but only keep the same number or slightly more units as affordable while triple of the other new housing are market rate.
Not sure if there is a great solution. Though I did see this article of a modular 110 unit apartment building in Leimert Park. 8 months construction, no parking, and targeted towards lower middle income with some units for very affordable. https://urbanize.la/post/modular-apa...e-leimert-park
Can you imagine if this was replicated all over LA within 5-10 minute walk of a Metro rail line? We can get thousands of units a year especially in lower income neighborhoods as affordable housing.
Downtown LA is has Citizen M hotel which is a modular hotel being built. Will increase the timeline of a finished project compared to the traditional method. This will also limited parking that I know of since there is a big parking lot behind it that can be used at near corner of 4th/Spring St. https://urbanize.la/post/11-story-ci...wn-los-angeles
I think these modular units are amazing. Maybe using shipping containers and stack them up could be a great thing. They can be build in other areas where housing is cheap so the workers, then just truck them in put it together on site.
I think that all of these new modular buildings are super cool, cost effective, sustainable, time saving on construction, and maybe a solution for density along transit lines.
It seems like everyday there is another headline about how LA has broken another record for median home prices. Is there anything (density, mass transit, continuation of a building boom) that could fix LA and make it affordable and livable again or is it a lost city where only the wealthy can live, and poor can go to die on the streets?
Even though I'm a Northern Californian, I love LA (we do exist), and I think that LA has all the right elements to be the best city on earth in my opinion, but there is so much wrong with it these days and it just seems like to me that the days of a normal life in the Southland is over. Don't get me wrong, NorCal has it's problems, but that's for another thread.
Let me know what you think and what you would do to "fix" LA and make it a city where everyone who wants to be there can live comfortably and affordably.
Not just L.A my friend,but San Francisco & New York are also in a state of emergency for the poor + housing.
But this is what happens when Republicans get in office lol.
The biggest issue is zoning. Remove restriction on how high building can be, remove requirement that developer improvement local street etc. Basically building needs to be cheaper and it needs to be quicker. City needs around 250,000 new units of housing to be build every 5 years in order to drive down the price and that is not going to happen. Also even if higher vacancy may landlords will not have pressure to rent out a unit because of prop 13. If your expense is extremely low and you already paid of the building, why would you care to lower the rent when you know once you do, that unit will be off the market for decades to come.
Why would the unit be off the market for decades to come once it becomes rented? Seems like a problem with rent control rather than prop 13.
They are cheaper relatively speaking to other parts of the city/county. But the larger point is the housing vacancy rate for the overall city/county is quite low.
Supply and demand is what it is...sure a few hipsters could move to Watts for cheaper housing for THEM but that won't change the overall picture which is a low vacancy rate and high rents/home prices.
I think if the gentrifiers were moving and spreading themselves around more, in the beginning, as opposed to congregating in certain areas first only, the housing be more manageable even years later on.
There would not be enough demand for any one given area to completely change the whole demographics/socio-economics of area. The speculations will not be so abrupt, and extreme as it be hard to pinpoint any one area to go all in.
And with people willing to literally live anywhere, even in places that are far below their means, suppliers will have to price compete.
If people were more willing to say move to Santa Ana, Watts, Compton, East LA, Cudahy, Huntington Park, would there still be a housing crisis?
You appear to be under the mistaken impression that there are high vacancy rates in these areas. That is not the case.
The data below is from 3Q 2018 but the overall picture remains the same. The overall LA County rental housing market had a vacancy rate of 3.6% (which is very tight). South Los Angeles was even lower at 2.0%. Case closed.
I think if the gentrifiers were moving and spreading themselves around more, in the beginning, as opposed to congregating in certain areas first only, the housing be more manageable even years later on.
There would not be enough demand for any one given area to completely change the whole demographics/socio-economics of area. The speculations will not be so abrupt, and extreme as it be hard to pinpoint any one area to go all in.
And with people willing to literally live anywhere, even in places that are far below their means, suppliers will have to price compete.
Demand for housing is driven by employment, household formation and population growth. We have been increasing on all three metrics (until very recently pop. growth has finally slowed to a trickle).
The article below points out that the the combined LA/Orange County rental vacancy rate has averaged 4.7 percent from 2005 to the present. One of the tightest metro areas in the nation.
"Is there anything (density, mass transit, continuation of a building boom) that could fix LA and make it affordable and livable again"
LA isn't broken: Price ~Demand/Supply
If can be made affordable if those who want to buy had more money and income.
Liveable: If it wasn't more people would leave.
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