Affordable Housing

A plan to reward real estate developers who put affordable housing in their market-rate residential projects was approved Wednesday by the City Council. On an 11-4 vote, the council approved a package of incentives that roll back zoning rules governing height, density, open space or the number of parking spaces for residential projects that have at least 5% of their housing units designated as affordable. -- -- David Zahniser

A coalition of Los Angeles business groups put forward an affordable-housing plan Thursday that its leaders said would lead to more apartments and condos for working people without imposing restrictions that could cast a pall over entrepreneurial efforts. Its centerpiece is a network of "housing incentive zones" where developers building housing with at least some workforce units would be allowed to relax height and parking requirements and receive expedited approvals.

The Hollywood Community Housing Corp. wasn't giving away housing vouchers Thursday -- just the slim chance of securing a subsidized apartment in a new, 58-unit building. Even so, by 11 a.m. more than 700 people were waiting in a line that snaked down Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles -- and housing advocates were worried enough about potential unrest that they called police to help manage the crowd.

It's an improbable place to find a home-building boom in the midst of Los Angeles' sluggish housing market. Yet only three blocks from the Imperial Courts public housing project, along a stretch of land once used as a neighborhood dump, 44 homes are rising in Watts within sight of its famous towers.

For more than a decade, a steady stream of housing officials and city planners from across the country have visited Atlanta to view the future of mixed-income housing. They tour sites such as Centennial Place -- where vast public housing blocks were torn down in 1994 to make way for a pioneering $150-million mixed-income community of garden apartments and town homes -- and then they go on to carry out similar projects in cities such as New Orleans and New York.

Former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides has joined forces with ex-basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson and a Beverly Hills investment firm to buy and improve more than $2 billion worth of urban apartment complexes across the country. Angelides said Monday that he was chairman of the newly created Canyon-Johnson Urban Communities Fund, which will focus on acquiring and upgrading apartments in inner-city neighborhoods to create more "workforce" housing.

Neighborhood activists in the northeast San Fernando Valley thought they scored a major victory in 1995, when they persuaded Los Angeles officials to approve zoning rules to keep new buildings on Foothill Boulevard from blocking their hillside views.

Frustrated California renters take heed: A trade group says it's getting easier for people to afford their first home. With home prices in a downward spiral in many once-booming areas, the percentage of California households that can afford to finance an entry-level home increased in the last three months of 2007 compared with the same period a year earlier, the California Assn. of Realtors said Tuesday.

In his quest to balance the city's books, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is gearing up to sell city-owned properties in some of the Westside's most sought-after neighborhoods. But Villaraigosa's budget-saving strategy is running up against one of his biggest campaign pledges: to expand affordable housing.

If home prices are plunging, then why are rents going up? That's a question Lynn Washington wants answered. The lease on his Marina del Rey apartment is expiring, and he can't find anything to rent for his budget of $1,000 a month. "It boggles the mind," said Washington, 59, who works as a liaison for international students at Santa Monica College. "I don't make enough to buy. And yet I don't make enough to afford to rent. I'm caught between the two."