Executive Directive No. 13 – Support for Affordable Housing Development

Mayor: The shortage of affordable housing is an ongoing crisis in the City of Los Angeles. High
housing costs have adverse effects on our City’s economic prosperity, including challenges to attracting and retaining new employers and local talent. High housing costs also affect the quality of life in Los Angeles when Angelenos have to choose between housing, healthcare, food, education, recreation, and saving for the future.

The lack of affordable housing also creates traffic and environmental challenges, forcing residents to move farther from their workplaces to afford housing, with longer commutes resulting in increased greenhouse gas emissions. Given this, the City needs to employ as many tools as possible to provide an increased supply of affordable housing.

In my Sustainable City pLAn, I set forth goals of building 100,000 new housing units by 2021 and additional new housing units in subsequent years. To help achieve these goals and to ensure that as many as possible of these new housing units are affordable, I am now calling on City Departments that provide development services to streamline the permitting and entitlement process for all housing developments and to create priority processing incentives for housing developments that include targeted levels of affordable units.