L.A. Mayor Issues New Executive Order Aimed At Cutting Red Tape For Housing Development

With housing and homelessness defining her first year in office, Mayor Karen Bass is hoping to increase production with a new executive order aimed at cutting the red tape. Executive Directive 7 works to incentivize more housing to be built faster for people of all income levels, with an emphasis on affordable housing and mixed income housing, to begin to address the barriers to home ownership and to help convert existing buildings into housing, per a city announcement.

The directive will also explore ways to reduce discretionary review in order to incentivize more housing to be built for people of all income levels and make increasing the number of affordable housing units a top priority; look creatively at how to cut through red tape and help convert existing buildings into housing through adaptive reuse; and cut the time it takes to permit mixed-income housing.

“The cost of housing throughout Los Angeles has made living in the city unaffordable for too many Angelenos. We need to take action so that Angelenos can afford to live here and to buy their first homes here and to live near their jobs – and that means we need to build more housing. We’ve had success expediting affordable projects and we must build on that momentum,” said Bass. “I am taking action to make living in Los Angeles more affordable by signing this executive directive to incentivize more housing to be built for people of all income levels, with an emphasis on affordable housing and mixed income housing, to begin to address the barriers to home ownership and to help convert existing buildings into housing.”

The move comes as L.A. housing permits are down 5.3 percent in 2023, according to Hilgard Analytics. 

“Throughout the City of Los Angeles, 11,437 residential units were permitted through the first three quarters of this year,” says Shoshana Baum of Hilgard Analytics. “This represents a fall of 5.3 percent, or 641 units in absolute terms through the same period last year. To reach the same level of permitting that the city had for the entirety of last year of 15,621 units, 4,184 units must be permitted by the end of the year.”