California and LA are seeing major pushes for “social housing,” which is government-supported and affordable to people of different income levels. In LA, voters last year passed Measure ULA (aka the “mansion tax”), which aims to fund more affordable housing in the city by taxing higher-priced properties. At the state level, there’s a legislative push to spur affordable social housing through major building initiatives.
David Levitus, executive director of LA Forward Institute, tells KCRW that social housing is not part of the marketplace, and isn’t owned by for-profit landlords/companies. While the construction company getting these units up may be private, the units are owned by a nonprofit, a cooperative, or some level of government. Key to making it all work: government subsidies.
Carla De Paz, senior organizer with Community Power Collective, points out that Austria has implemented this housing model for over 100 years.
“They have the municipal housing, which is similar to our public housing. They have what they call limited profit … which is very similar to the nonprofit developers that we have in LA. … We also have a thriving community land trust coalition here in Los Angeles,” she says. “So it's about the investment. We have ULA dollars. I think we need to work with the city to really figure out how is it that all these strategies are going to help us scale up.”