Los Angeles' Ongoing Housing Emergency

By: Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, LISC LA Executive Director, & Alexandra Dawson, LISC LA Community Development Officer

7.16.2020 — LISC StoriesAffordable Housing

Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency on March 4 in response to the coronavirus, for all of California. On April 18, the Governor announced that 15,000 hotel rooms would be made available to house individuals experiencing homelessness.

The choices were swift, and they were definitive.

They also leave us with two questions – where has that urgency been, and what does it mean for unhoused folks when it ends?

As of 2019, the population of individuals experiencing homelessness has skyrocketed to 58,936 people in Los Angeles County alone. The homeless population in California reached 151,000 last year. The median price of a home in LA County was over $600,000 in 2019, and the average rent for a one bedroom was almost $2,000.

And this was all before COVID-19 hit.

Put simply, California and Los Angeles have been in a state of emergency for a long time. This pandemic has highlighted disparities, but the issues of unemployment, affordable housing, and homelessness were never new to the state.

We need this momentum moving forward, past the pandemic. We need federal funding, innovative solutions, and immediate policy decisions to combat the affordable housing crisis. Because when COVID-19 is over, California can not knock on 15,000 motel doors and ask the people inside to go back to the streets.

That is why LISC LA is working to support the development of thousands of housing units, including innovative housing models, by 2024. At a minimum, we will leverage investment of $250 million in loans in equity into the construction of 2,500 rental units. We will train 500 CDC project managers and staff. Our five year plan is demanding because, until our community members have equitable and affordable housing, access to living wage jobs, and long term strategies for building wealth, Los Angeles will remain in a state of emergency.

COVID-19 has seen the creation of temporary solutions for a permanent problem. But our five year strategic plan, and our continued affordable housing efforts, demand long term, sustainable solutions.

Through generous funding from supporters like Torrey Pines Bank, LISC LA has been able to commit fully to the development of affordable housing. We have helped fund over 10,000 affordable homes and apartments and provided $855 million in grants and loans in doing so.

With the groundwork in place, LISC will act as an advocate for a continued sense of urgency. LA residents are calling for rent cancellations. Studies suggest that homelessness could rise by 45% nationally as a result of unemployment. And COVID-19 related deaths continue to affect some of the most underserved populations most disastrously.

So when California ends its state of emergency, the urgency must live on.

COVID-19 has shown us, as a nation, the disparities we are facing. But we can’t just survive those disparities, we have to innovate to fix them.

LISC LA is part of that innovation – because if homelessness, a housing crisis, and inequitable development were part of a normal life before this pandemic, that’s not a normal we are willing to return to.