'We're Watching Other Cities House People While We Wait': LA Residents Speak Out on the Housing Gap

Los Angeles has spent three years under a declared housing emergency and still cannot outpace Toronto, Singapore, or Barcelona on the one metric that matters most: units built per capita. That gap is no longer an abstraction for the roughly 75,000 people counted as homeless in LA County during the January 2025 point-in-time census, or for the renters paying a median $2,400 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in a city where median household income hovers around $73,000.

The comparison stings locally because the political machinery has been visibly churning. Mayor Karen Bass issued Executive Directive 1 in December 2022, cutting permitting timelines for affordable projects. The City Council approved the "Inside Safe" street outreach program, which has moved hundreds of people off encampments along Vermont Avenue, Skid Row, and the 101 Freeway corridor. But residents in the neighborhoods absorbing the most pressure say the gap between policy language and built shelter remains enormous.

A 47-year-old warehouse worker from Boyle Heights, who has lived in the same rent-stabilized unit on Cesar Chavez Avenue for eleven years, put it plainly when reached by phone this week: her landlord filed an Ellis Act eviction notice in April, and the waitlist for the Affordable Housing Managed by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, known as HACLA, runs longer than four years for a two-bedroom unit. "Toronto built 40,000 rental units in one year," she said, citing a statistic she had looked up herself. "What are we doing?"

The Cities LA Is Losing To

Toronto permitted roughly 40,500 new housing units in 2024, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data, in a metro area about half the size of Greater Los Angeles. Singapore's Housing Development Board, a government agency with no direct American equivalent, currently houses approximately 80 percent of the country's residents in publicly subsidized flats. Barcelona's 2016-2025 housing plan mandated that 30 percent of any new residential development above a threshold size be set aside for affordable tenure, a rule Barcelona actually enforces with municipal inspectors and fines.

LA's own Measure ULA, the transfer tax voters passed in March 2023 to fund affordable housing, has generated less revenue than projected because high-end real estate sales slumped. The City Controller's office reported in early 2026 that ULA had raised roughly $215 million through its first two fiscal years, significant, but well short of the $900 million annual figure advocates had forecast. Meanwhile, construction costs in Los Angeles County average $650,000 per affordable unit when land, labor, and financing are factored in, according to a 2025 report from the California Housing Partnership.

In Koreatown, where apartment vacancy rates sit below 3 percent, tenants organized under the Koreatown Tenants Union say they watch Councilmember Nithya Raman's District 4 approve mixed-income projects on paper while harassment complaints pile up at the city's Housing Department. A 28-year-old graduate student renting a studio near Wilshire and Vermont said she applied for three income-restricted units advertised through the city's HCIDLA portal last year and received lottery rejections on all three. "Barcelona gave residents a legal right to below-market housing in certain zones," she said. "Here we get a lottery."

What Advocates Say Has to Change

Organizations including Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, based in South LA, and the Los Angeles Community Action Network in Skid Row have been pushing the City Council to move beyond emergency declarations toward mandatory inclusionary zoning with real teeth, something closer to Barcelona's 30 percent rule. Both groups are watching the city's ongoing update to its Housing Element, which must be certified by the state by a revised deadline in late 2026.

The 2028 Olympics deadline is sharpening the urgency. Infrastructure investment along the Metro D Line extension through Westwood and into the Sepulveda corridor is expected to drive land values up in neighborhoods that already have minimal vacancy. Advocates want the city to lock in affordability covenants before ground breaks on Olympic-adjacent projects, not after.

For the Boyle Heights warehouse worker facing eviction, the policy timeline offers cold comfort. Her Ellis Act case goes before a hearing officer in September. She has contacted three legal aid organizations. One has capacity to take her case.