The inability to equitably and affordably house all of our residents is the compounding moral crisis of our time. It has driven our homelessness crisis, deepened segregation, and pushed working families out of the city they built. 

The worst part? This crisis is almost entirely self-made. Thanks to land use policy that sharply limited where new housing can be built, and a bureaucracy that rewards indecision and delays, Los Angeles now has the fewest homes per adult of major US cities, and has the largest percentage of households who are rent burdened. 

We must build much more housing to reduce housing costs. This includes housing at all income levels, everything from deed-restricted affordable housing to market rate housing to social housing to homeless shelters. 

Our plan will triple annual housing construction, and allow Los Angeles to remain a city of opportunity that welcomes people looking to build their dreams here.

The goal

A city where it takes weeks, not years, to get permission to build housing during a housing shortage. Where the process is transparent, predictable, and the same for everyone.

The problem

There is currently no deadline by which the city must approve or reject a permit to build housing. You can submit plans and the city can sit on them indefinitely. Even well-intentioned processes designed to ensure fairness have turned into a system that paralyzes progress — 175 separate condition types, departments that contradict each other, inspectors who add new requirements mid-project. The result is an 18-month average permitting timeline that makes building in Los Angeles slower, more expensive, and less predictable than almost anywhere else in the country. We can ensure fairness and accountability without paralyzing progress. 

Our plan

1. We will issue an executive directive establishing a “shot clock” — 60 days or less to approve zoning-compliant projects, 120 days or less for discretionary ones. No more indefinite delays. 

2. To ensure speed doesn't compromise oversight, we will require coordinated intake meetings with all departments early — identifying all project requirements, resolving conflicts upfront, and issuing binding determinations to avoid late-stage surprises. 

3. Create a “single-inspector” model, one person from pre-construction through final occupancy, to improve accountability and reduce contradictory directives.

4. Develop a citywide self-certification program to expedite permits for straightforward projects.

The goal

A Los Angeles where housing is built across the entire city, creating walkable, beautiful neighborhoods. Where zoning codes no longer determine who gets to live where. Where the patterns of segregation written into our laws are actively dismantled.

The problem

The geography of Los Angeles was shaped by a history of explicit segregation: redlining and restrictive housing covenants concentrated Black, Latino, Asian and Jewish communities into select neighborhoods. Even after the Civil Rights movement made these kinds of restrictions illegal, new zoning and land use laws prevented apartments and low-income housing from being built in other parts of the city. Indeed, more than 70% of Los Angeles' land is zoned exclusively for single-family homes, the most expensive and least attainable housing type. 

New plans and policies to address our housing shortage have largely added density where multi-family housing already exists. This means that existing apartments – which are mostly rent stabilized units – are most at risk for redevelopment, and that most new affordable housing is being built in lower-income neighborhoods: only 14% of affordable housing permitted in the last decade was built in high-resource neighborhoods. This is segregation by zoning code, written into our laws and repeated for decades. 

Our plan

1. Update the Citywide General Plan Framework, our citywide smart growth strategy, with a focus on rezoning high-opportunity corridors and regional employment hubs near transit for by-right housing. The city’s community plan updates are decades behind schedule. 

2. Allow gentle density (duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes) in single-family neighborhoods near transit hubs, creating mixed-income, walkable, and aesthetically welcoming communities across the city.

3. Ensure predictability in rezoning efforts, by using new and simple tech tools to enable neighborhoods to visualize the impacts of changes in zoning law before they are implemented. No more surprises! 

4. Create high-rise zones in select areas to enable many more homes to be built by well-paid union labor.

5. Rightsize parking requirements for commercial establishments in high-walkability and transit-rich areas.

6. Convert empty office buildings into homes by cutting the fees and red tape that make it too costly to attempt, and ensuring that the new adaptive reuse ordinance is easy to use. 

7. Legalize the building methods and housing typologies our outdated codes currently block, including mass timber, factory-built housing, single-stairwell buildings, and other faster, cheaper ways to build. 

The goal

A city whose institutions are genuinely organized around building housing, not finding ways to say no. Where accountability is public, visible, and real.

The problem

A $200 appeal against a housing project triggers more than $20,000 in city staff time to respond. Projects have to get approvals over and over — ping-ponging between city departments and the City Council, sometimes relitigating the same decisions. Meanwhile LADWP imposes rules and requirements that no other major city requires, reducing the land available to build on, adding cost, and slowing projects down. The city loses credibility and the housing doesn’t get built.

Our plan

1. Create an independent professional board to manage land use disputes, removing routine housing decisions from the political process.

2. Raise appeal fees for non-neighbors and reduce the number of allowable appeals for approved residential and mixed-use projects so obstruction carries a real cost.

3. Provide delegated authority to departments so that decisions already made don't come back to the Council for another vote.

4. Create a dedicated LADWP Housing Strike Force to align utility operations with the city's housing goals — streamlined permits, faster approvals, and power connection timelines guaranteed at the start of the process.

5. Direct LADWP to revise the rules and requirements that no other major city imposes (e.g., power line setbacks and transformer staging requirements) that reduce buildable land and add unnecessary cost.

6. Make BuildLA into a single public portal tracking every project submission, approval, permit, and response time in the city. Proposed two administrations ago and never delivered, BuildLA’s true functionality is long overdue. It is a simple but powerful way to hold the city accountable and bring real transparency to how housing gets built.

The goal

A Los Angeles where the public dollars committed to affordable housing actually produce new units quickly, at reasonable costs per unit. Where developers and nonprofits are truly set up for success by a city that has finally simplified and unified its financing process.

The problem

The money to build affordable housing in Los Angeles exists. It sits across multiple public funding sources, each with its own application, its own timeline, its own requirements, and its own politics. To build a single affordable housing project, a developer or nonprofit has to chase each source separately, piece them together carefully, and hope nothing changes before the deal closes. The resources exist but too many projects die in the financing stage because the city has never properly set up the people building affordable housing for success.

Our plan

1. Launch a "Super NOFA" (Notice of Funding Availability) — a single, coordinated funding window that bundles all available public dollars for affordable housing, public housing and social housing. The Super NOFA would open once a year and align as closely as possible to funding from other levels of government, so that developers and nonprofits know exactly what they have to work with.

2. Waive the fees charged on new development for projects that include affordable units for lower-income residents and working families.

The goal 

A Los Angeles where working families can realistically plan to own a home here. Where belief in homeownership is restored not by rhetoric but by building the homes they can afford to buy.

The problem

Los Angeles has made it functionally illegal to build the housing working families could actually afford to buy. Outdated lot regulations, expensive subdivision fees, and condo liability rules written for a different era have all but eliminated the homes first-time buyers can actually afford. Too many working Angelenos have stopped believing homeownership is possible for them. That resignation is not a personal failure, but the direct consequence of policy choices this city made and failed to fix.

Our plan

1. Streamline small-scale housing and ADU approvals so that a homeowner who wants to build a backyard unit can actually do it quickly and cheaply. 

2. Bring starter homes back by allowing for ADU’s to be sold separately from the main home (ie, opt in to AB1033).

3. Fight at the state level to change liability laws for condos that have made building for-sale condominiums so financially risky that developers stopped building them, taking away one of the most affordable paths to homeownership

4. Simplify the condominium approval process and cut city fees that drive up costs.