Our research has identified ADUs as a best practice for providing naturally occurring affordable housing within the ongoing housing scarcity and unaffordability crisis. Commercial conversions (the conversion of commercial space to a residential use) also present a strategy for supplying housing units during a housing shortage. Mixed-use developments are common place in urban areas globally, and the COVID-19 Pandemic has revealed opportunities for underused retail and office spaces.
Read MoreLos Angeles has a housing affordability crisis due in large part to a lack of supply that is five to six decades in the making. The root causes in Los Angeles include suppressed housing supply rates due to inequitable urban planning and exclusionary zoning, such as downzoning, inadequate policies or enforcement, rising construction and development costs, a financial structure favoring nonresidential development, and insufficient funding for subsidized low income housing.
The big planning question with which we have been grappling is whether any zoning changes are either necessary, or more conducive to, accomplishing the 8 year targeted increase in housing supply, and if so, what specific zoning changes are these?
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