Letters to the Editor: How California makes it almost impossible to build affordable housing

To the editor: It’s easy to say, “Build more affordable housing.” Doing it is another matter entirely. (“Lack of housing is pushing more seniors onto the streets. That’s on all of us,” editorial, June 24)

For-profit developers generally aren’t interested. There’s no profit to be had, except in the form of a density bonus for including affordable housing. But developers don’t want to manage these units.

Nonprofits struggle as well, as detailed in recent L.A. Times articles. While nonprofits are usually better at providing monitoring and support services, financing these projects is hard for them.

Building in California is expensive. We have tough building codes to deal with earthquakes and other kinds of natural disasters. Land gets increasingly expensive in urban areas because developers pay full price for properties, tear down the improvements and then have to recover that cost.

Financing for an affordable housing project comes from multiple sources. Multiple layers of financing mean multiple lawyers examining the transaction and billing their time, even though terms of the financing are non-negotiable.

Government funding from a single source is part of the answer, but no single agency can do that. Article 34 of our state Constitution requires a vote of the people for government-funded affordable housing, adding the cost of an election to the process without any guarantee the voters will approve.

The first step is breaking through all these obstacles. A proposal to put repealing Article 34 on the ballot has been dropped. Now what?

June Ailin Sewell, Marina del Rey

The writer is an attorney who has worked on affordable housing projects.

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To the editor: Conspicuously absent from your editorial on solutions to address the increase in homelessness among seniors in California is any mention of rent control.

Yes, we need to build more housing more quickly — but affordable housing, not more luxury housing. And providing modest rental subsidies when warranted to keep people in their homes could prevent many seniors and others from slipping into homelessness and ending up on our streets.

However, keeping people housed in their existing homes via reasonable rent control measures could be the lowest-hanging fruit in a multi-pronged approach to homelessness.

This November, Californians will have the chance to vote on the Justice for Renters Act, a ballot measure that will override an existing statewide ban on rent control. For a newspaper that has twice previously endorsed similar statewide rent control ballot initiatives, it is strange that The Times made no mention here of rent control as another important tool to address housing affordability and homelessness.

Ged Kenslea, Los Angeles

The writer is senior director of communications for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, sponsor of the rent control ballot initiative.