LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass expanded Executive Directive 3 to use publicly-owned land to build more housing faster and to address RV encampments by increasing the City’s capacity to tow, store, and dismantle surrendered vehicles. Since Mayor Bass took office, thousands more Angelenos came inside than the previous year and tent encampments have come down in every council district thanks to urgent action locking arms with the City Council, County and LAHSA. Los Angeles is also building more housing rapidly to confront this crisis. More than 14,000 units of affordable housing are now being accelerated as a result of her executive directive to streamline their development.
“We are building on our progress and adapting our approach to bring more people inside, increase housing and save lives,” said Mayor Bass. “We will work closely with our public sector partners to build housing on underutilized lands to urgently confront the homelessness crisis. We will now be able to address more RV encampments by creating capacity within the city to properly dispose of RVs after people move into housing and establishing future sites for RV safe parking to connect people with services.”
Since Mayor Bass signed Executive Directive 3 into effect in February 2023, the City has been able to identify sites that can be utilized for up to 500 tiny home beds through a $33 million State grant adopted by City Council last week, moved the long-awaited Go For Broke and First Street North Project to fruition after more than 20 years of predevelopment on city-owned land, and launched interdepartmental working groups to reimagine how city-owned land can facilitate more cost efficient and accelerated production of affordable housing.
The updated directive accelerates the building of permanent and interim housing on publicly-owned land that is owned by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Metro and the Los Angeles Community College District, in addition to land owned by the City of Los Angeles. This update ensures that critical redevelopment projects, such as the Jordan Downs Redevelopment Project, will meet their critical deadlines.
This action builds on Inside Safe’s work to resolve RV encampments. Last year, the Mayor’s Office and City Council secured an RV dismantling contract to dispose of surrendered RVs. Inside Safe also addressed an encampment of more than 50 RVS on Forest Lawn, along with other operations where RVs were present.
“Through our joint development program, Metro has delivered approximately 2,200 multi-family housing units across 15 sites in the City of Los Angeles, with another 12 projects with 3,100 units in construction,” said Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins. “With plans to continue to grow that portfolio to 10,000 units, Metro appreciates the Mayor’s leadership in making Metro eligible for the benefits under ED3. ED3 will boost Metro’s efforts to accelerate the delivery of affordable housing on Metro-owned land while reducing vehicle miles traveled and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 8,000 metric tons annually.”
"1 in 5 LACCD students are homeless and over half are housing insecure. Because of this, LACCD is excited to join forces with Mayor Bass to be a part of the solution in addressing the City's housing crisis by partnering on Executive Directive 3 (ED3), an incredibly valuable tool with the potential to streamline key District housing project approvals in the coming years,” said LACCD Board Vice President Sara Hernandez. “By granting eligibility to LACCD, the District will have more pathways and options for developing and accelerating approval for critical student housing initiatives.”
“We commend Mayor Bass for exploring solutions and expediting steps to address the growing need of our Los Angeles Unified students and families experiencing homelessness,” Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said.
Mayor Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness on her first day in office to confront homelessness with the urgency it requires. As part of Executive Directive 3, she directed City departments to conduct an inventory of unused and underutilized city property that could be used for temporary or permanent housing with on-site services. The City Administrative Officer submitted an analysis of more than 3,000 sites which the Mayor’s Office has evaluated, which led to a $2.9 million grant award from the Southern California Association of Governments to support Executive Directive 3’s efforts.
Read the expanded Executive Directive here.