Los Angeles Must Make Building Affordable Housing a Top Priority

Audit of Housing Department Finds City As A Whole Must Take Immediate Action On Issue

Calling the shortage of affordable housing a crisis, City Controller Laura Chick released the first of several audits of the Los
Angeles Housing Department. “My audit of the Housing Department’s Affordable Housing Program found a Department hard at work to solve the housing crisis. However, the Housing Department is up against problems that they cannot solve alone,”
said Chick.

“The median price of a single family home in Los Angeles is over half a million dollars. How can we expect those in the lower income brackets to be able to put a roof over their family’s heads in this highly costly environment?” said Chick.

Among the audit’s key findings:

o Barriers to providing affordable housing require creative solutions from the Housing Department and the City, as a whole.
o The Housing Department does not have an adequate means of measuring its effectiveness.
o The Housing Department’s program to utilize City surplus properties for development has been unsuccessful.
o The Housing Department’s efforts to preserve the existing affordable housing inventory have had limited results.
o The Housing Department’s existing technology systems are inadequate, inefficient and do not interface with one another.

The Chick audit contains 28 recommendations to help achieve the goal of providing more affordable housing in the City of Los Angeles. The Controller’s Housing report, as well as all of her over 100 audits, is available at her website at www.lacity.org/ctr.