Design and Architecture
Is HHH housing getting built?
In the past year, residents of both the city and county of Los Angeles voted to tax themselves to pay for more housing for the homeless, and for the services needed to keep them in those homes. Local elected officials say those extra dollars couldn't come at a better time. Homelessness is up 23 percent in LA when compared to last year. So what's being built right now, and what's coming down the line?
By Frances Anderton • • 3m ListenVoters in Los Angeles passed Measure HHH last November, a $1.2-billion bond measure to build thousands of units of housing for chronically homeless people. Those housing units would come with wraparound supportive services paid for by the County's Measure H, helping residents with mental health services, job counseling, substance abuse treatment and other services.
But there are still thousands of homeless people on the streets. So what's the status of the implementation of construction?
According to the Mayor's office, there are three projects in the pipeline: one in Skid Row, one in Koreatown and the other in South LA. About 615 housing units for the homeless are "shovel ready," of which 440 will have permanent supportive services attached.
"These are projects that have already received their entitlements. So they have Council support, they have community support and they're just looking to close that funding gap to make them a possibility," said Alisa Orduña, the mayor's homelessness policy director.
But those units are just a drop in the bucket, when we're talking about nearly 60,000 homeless people in LA County.
The city does have a goal of building another 10,000 housing units.
Orduña says that in addition to building permanent supportive housing, the city has strategies for rapid rehousing and for workforce strategy for the 70 percent of people who experience homelessness but do not need the permanent supportive services.
That's where you get into the other problem facing the region: the severe lack of affordable projects across the board.
One concept is a linkage fee whereby developers of market rate housing would pay a fee to construct a percentage of affordable on their projects or at another site.
But many developers argue that is yet another fee on top of many fees that already make the cost of development very high in LA, and those costs get passed on to the renter or buyer.
The city says LA's proposed linkage fee is much lower than that of other cities, like Seattle and San Francisco.
Photo: A homeless person's encampment in downtown Los Angeles. (haymarketrebel)
