Some 76 percent of all unsubsidized, below market housing units in L.A. County are owned by independent landlords, many of whom have been hard hit by the pandemic as more than half of the county’s renters faced unemployment at some point during the COVID shutdown. With the help of some big name backers, relief and support is soon on it’s way to South L.A.
The Local Rental Owners Collaborative is a first-of-its-kind program designed to support rental owners in South Los Angeles with benefits including rental relief grants, property management solutions, bet practice guidance and more. The goal is to keep local properties in the hands of local owners and not giant corporations.
The collaborative come together with the support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (as in Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan), the Roy + Patricia Disney Family Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, Realtor.com subsidiary Avail, and the Coalition for Responsible Community Development (CRCD).
“The LROC program will bring much-needed relief to rental owners of small apartment buildings and their tenants in South L.A. This program will address the loss of rental income since March 2020 and provide the opportunity to preserve affordable housing in our community,” said CRCD president and co-founder Mark Wilson in a prepared statement via Urbanize. “This work supports CRCD’s efforts over a decade, to use Community Economic Development principles to impact change in the neighborhood. We are proud to partner in this collaborative effort made possible by the initial pilot funders, CZI, and philanthropic partner, RPDFF.”
The collaborative is now accepting application from property owners with 2-20 residential units, with priority given to those of BIPOC ancestry. Buildings must be located within the 90011 zip code. To learn more, click here.