Finding housing in Los Angeles isn’t easy, much less finding the perfect units for potential tenants within a building.

At the City Administrative Officer’s (CAO) pivotal Homeless Strategy Committee meeting on Thursday, November 7, Assistant City Administrative Officer Edwin Gipson remarked that he felt like he was

“looking for unicorns”

in making placements.

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The real unicorn might be Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority “LACAHSA”, a new-ish body designed to comprehensively tackle the housing crisis. Hydra-like problems of housing unaffordability and homelessness are nothing new in Los Angeles, but LACAHSA’s novel multi-jurisdictional structure promises a new approach to building affordable housing, keeping people off the streets, and getting those on them housed.

The CAO’s meeting with a single elected, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, takes place in non-descript conference room Suite 1500 in City Hall East, attached to main City Hall by a bridge over Main Street.

By contrast, LACAHSA meets in the boardroom of the Metropolitan Water District Building on Alameda Street, with elected officials gathered at DWP’s usual chamber underneath elaborate lighting. The futuristic DWP meeting space was only sparsely filled with public attendees.

With 77,049 evictions originating from within the City of Los Angeles being processed through LA County Courts from February through December 2023, according to Controller Kenneth Mejia, the room could have been filled with those who were evicted many, many times over.

The despair is real, as several public commenters reminded LACAHSA of their housing struggles. Indeed, at one point, the board even discussed adding outreach workers to the meeting plan.

Councilwoman Raman was there, too, at LACAHSA (say it “la casa” like “the house” en Español) as a representative for the City of Los Angeles alongside Chief Housing and Homelessness Officer Lourdes Castro-Ramirez, representing the office of Mayor Karen Bass. Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell sat nearby amidst representatives from other municipalities within the county in a meeting led by California Community Foundation President and CEO Miguel Santana and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, who stated that the LBC might as well be another county given its size and independent agencies, including its own health department. The crisis of the unhoused has bedeviled Los Angeles in a fiscal way that only the Los Angeles Police Department could rival, with people hitting the streets perhaps almost as fast as they come off them. Is LA doomed to simply repeat the same old mistakes?

As part of its work, the CAO’s office on November 7th again took up a continued item from its October 3rd meeting, now branded:

“Motion for the Development of the Comprehensive Work Plan for the Homelessness Strategy Committee” • CF24-1179

The measure by Nithya Raman, with a second from Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, was approved by City Council on October 29th with a 13-0-2 vote and involves an in-kind gift of 4 months from the California Community Foundation, The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and Southern California Grantmakers:

“to develop a clear and cohesive map of the City’s homelessness operations, across departments.”

The evaluation will be led by Sarah Solon of HR&A Advisors, who serves as Principal, Inclusive Cities. With Solon having previously worked for the New York City Mayor’s office in both criminal justice and mental health, as well as for the ACLU. Asked for a comment about the scope of her work and goals for the project, Sarah Solon didn’t immediately respond.

Lived Expertise

Clearly, our first recommendation would be to implement CF19-1020, which we’ve campaigned for along with others in Los Angeles who wanted to see the City make good on its promise to create a Commission on Lived Experience with Homelessness. The motion, authored by former Councilmember Mike Bonin with a second from Harris-Dawson, was introduced on September 4th, 2019. CF19-1020 can be located in the City Clerk’s Council File Management System “CFMS” along with an 11-page report from the Chief Legislative Analyst office dated November 22nd, 2022.

Creating the commission is a basic move to get more feedback from those being served, but attempts to revive it before the November 18th expiration date faltered. This was despite a last-ditch attempt to move it forward with the recent endorsements of 9 separate neighborhood councils ranging from Palms to Reseda to Rampart Village. CF19-1020 received the backing of a similar Lived Experience Advisory Body, "LEAB,” within Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), who had stated that they too wanted to see Council take this step forward by engaging the expertise of people who live on City streets and in City-run shelters. We can only hope that this great idea will rise again to the top of the agenda, especially with recent news from the Controller about massive underspend of City Homelessness funds, which likely would have been detected sooner had the City been listening to the streets.

Meanwhile, LACAHSA, separate from LAHSA, was doing its thing on affordable housing like a finely-tuned machine. If LAHSA were a joint-powers authority between the City and the County, LACAHSA is modeled much more like the Metro Board, with representation from cities from across the County. Administratively led by Ryan Johnson, Interim Chief Executive Officer, an investments specialist with experience in New York City, Orange County, and Greenville, South Carolina; Johnson also served in the U.S. Army with the 502nd Military Intelligence Battalion. Johnson’s presentation on “Alternative Affordable Investment Models” states that:

“LACAHSA is able to unleash large scale production by creating investments that avoid the bond cap allocation.”

The bond cap allocation limits borrowing under a state ceiling by the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee (CDLAC) in order to manage limited public borrowing power. LACAHSA would take an end-run around state limits, promising to provide:

“a conduit for significant rehabilitation of aging affordable housing.”

Johnson’s presentation suggested that.

“the organization in partnership with philanthropy & private sector can create catalytic investment partnerships to leverage agency financing on [sic] 4-1 basis.”

Asked how this would be accomplished, Ryan Johnson stated that:

“LACAHSA has been engaged with both philanthropic and private sources of funding prior to the passing of Measure A.”

Furthermore, Johnson plans to leverage:

“additional sources from my career in the non-profit and private sector.”

LACHSA’s investment models are seemingly still under consideration, but Johnson’s presentation stated under “Guarantee Programs” that:

“Government or Philanthropy can create pools of money designed to unleash private capital (equity or debt) by providing gap coverage”

and bridging

“the delivery of other government sources of investments or catalytic investment in underinvested communities.”

The presentation further suggested a

“Joint Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae Preservation Product”

to achieve its goal with a “July/August 2025 Launch” date set. Also on the table are “LACAHSA Social Mortgage Bonds,” for which:

“LACAHSA is the sole lender or risk shares with senior leader.”

In an email response, Johnson added that LACAHSA, unlike similar projects in the Bay Area and Charlotte,

“has the unique dual ability to issue bonds and a sustainably source of funding via Measure A.”

The presentation left at least one commissioner asking if this was really the solution that LACAHSA leadership promised and if the risk of such widespread lending was in fact perhaps greater than anticipated at the start. YIMBY somewhat?

Next on the agenda was a quick approval of hiring a General Counsel and Inspector General for LACAHSA at a recruiting and solicitation cost

“in an amount not to exceed in total, $450,000, for a term not to exceed eighteen months.”

Will turning affordable housing in Los Angeles County into a Wall Street model work to unleash the levers of capital? There are clearly no guarantees, even under the current effort to change zoning laws to promote density. In fact, as Los Angeles Times journalist Liam Dillon recently reported, at least one think tank thinks the proposed rezoning wouldn’t even produce enough housing to meet the state goal of 250,000 more units by 2030. Moreover, how do you get past the NIMBY effect? The story noted in “single family home neighborhoods” that:

“City officials had considered allowing changes…but reversed course after pushback from homeowner groups that protested the potential for traffic and parking problems.”

Financing and planning alone clearly can’t get Los Angeles out of this crunch, nor can more bureaucracy, even done with the best apparent intentions as LACAHSA has set out. If anyone knows of additional funding sources, please do let LACAHSA know ASAP.

Perhaps Edwin Gipson was right; developing housing in Los Angeles is a bit like “looking for unicorns,” much less getting clients, including the unhoused...