PLANNING WATCH - How many times have you heard or read that Los Angeles suffers from a housing shortage?
Supposedly we do not have enough affordable apartments and houses for those who are overcrowded and those whose low incomes force them to live outside or in makeshift shelters. Nevertheless, the housing reality of Los Angeles is that it has thousands of vacant housing units. Mostly apartments, they remain empty because potential renters cannot afford them.
There are at least two explanations for so much existing vacant housing in the Los Angeles area.
Explanation 1: The vacant units – mostly apartments -- are to too expensive for Angelenos who need housing. Their high price forces thousands of residents to either live in overcrowding conditions or go without shelter.
Explanation 2: The vacant units are too small, too large, or otherwise unacceptable to the overcrowded and homeless. Therefore, they choose to not rent or buy them.
The developers opt for the second explanation because they won’t acknowledge that most of those who are overcrowded and homeless in the Los Angeles region are too low income to rent or buy a place to live. LA’s record homeless and overcrowding statistics result from vacant housing that is so unappealing to potential renters that they voluntarily choose not to rent or buy. Instead they opt to live in overcrowded conditions or become homeless.
My answer is to this conundrum is Explanation 1, the vacant units are too expensive. Their high price is one of the main causes for the 10,000 people per year who leave Los Angeles for areas with less expensive housing. Those who cannot move have no choice but to live in overcrowded conditions or become homeless. That is why LA’s population is in long-term decline, projected to decrease from 3.8 million in 2026 to 3.2 million in 2070, less than 50 years from now.
For Explanation 2 to be the reason, one has to believe that the vacant units, which are all over Los Angeles, are so unsuitable that people voluntarily choose to live in overcrowded conditions or become homelessness. In other words, homelessness and overcrowding result from personal choices, and declining real incomes and the high cost of vacant rental or for-sale housing are not the underlying causes.
Yet, compared to other metropolitan areas, housing is extremely expensive in the Los Angeles. According to Zillow, the average house in Los Angeles now costs slightly less than $1,000,000. As for rental housing it also expensive, although average rent mostly depends on the number of bedrooms and on neighborhood.
Studios: $1,700 – $1,960 per month
1-Bedroom: $2,100 – $2,540 per month
2-Bedroom: $2,850 – $3,360 per month
3-Bedroom+: $4,050 – $4,370+ per month
Since location is also a factor, houses and apartments close to the ocean or in hillside areas command higher rents. For example, in Playa Vista the average apartment rent is $4,095 because of easy access to the ocean, local shopping amenities, housing quality, and cooler weather.
Is there a solution to LA’s expensive housing? The end of new public housing, beginning about 50 years ago, means there is no obvious answer to this question. Since housing built since 1978 can be sold or rented at current market rates in Los Angeles, only older housing still qualifies for market controls under LA’s rent control ordinance. As a result, Los Angeles has a record number of homeless and overcrowded people since the surviving public and non-profit agencies cannot provide enough subsidized housing for them.
Other solutions, such as temporarily shipping the homeless and overcrowded off to the desert, might still happen during the 2028 LA Olympics. The Olympic host committee states they cannot afford any other options, and no other sources of financing have appeared.
(Dick Platkin is a retired Los Angeles city planner who writes about planning issues in LA. He is a member of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA). Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives.)
