Will Parker and Christine Mai-Duc at WSJ:
A Los Angeles nonprofit was given government land in January 2007 to build a few dozen units of affordable housing. They’re finally hoping to open the building next year.
Lorena Plaza, a 49-unit development rising in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights in eastern Los Angeles, is taking longer to complete, a city official said, than practically any other residential building this size in the history of Los Angeles.
The 17 years of false starts and delays are an extreme instance of how difficult it has long been to build affordable housing in California—for both the homeless as well as lower and middle-income workers—and in other states with complex regulations and high costs.
The development has faced nearly every hurdle that California laws allow opponents to place in the way of affordable housing. Approvals by politicians and commissions took years, often held up by a single determined opponent on the city council. It took the developers more time to win over skeptical neighbors who were particularly opposed to nearby housing for the mentally ill and homeless. Financing hurdles and other costs piled up along the way. Construction finally began about a year ago.
In California, affordable housing developers typically abide by a host of requirements when they take public subsidies, such as tougher energy-efficiency standards and higher wages for construction workers. They often need to build amenities such as offices for social workers and transit-boosting features such as bike storage.
Even home builders who are sympathetic to these priorities say those same objectives undermine the state’s ability to produce enough affordable housing. That means California will continue to suffer stubbornly high rates of homelessness that plague the Golden State and are evident on the tent-filled streets of cities like L.A.