Simon Ha

Housing policy has a huge impact on housing development and housing affordability. No doubt, Los Angeles is suffering from housing policy issues, but there are pieces of legislation that are actually helping to encourage multifamily development in areas where it wouldn't otherwise be possible. This actually highlights the importance of housing policy that both balances the needs of residents and creates a space for developers to bring much-needed housing supply to the market.

“Policy has a lot of different ways that it can produce housing or take away housing. Policy, whether it is zoning policy, land use policy or an incentive based policy, can really creates a micro areas within housing production, and then investors can come in and bring capital to an area,” Simon Ha, the head of the urban mixed-use practice at architectural firm Steinberg Hart.

The policy helping to bring housing to the market includes 2005's SB 1818, transit-oriented development and new parking legislation. SB 1818 is a state density bonus bill. “SB1818 made the down zoned areas easier to develop. That was a state policy creating a one-size-fits-all incentive program for the entire state so that we can get affordable housing,” Ha says. “SB 1818 has been very successful, and we have seen a lot of smaller projects come through on the Westside that got extra height and density under SB 1818. That allowed four-or-five story projects to come to markets where previously height limitations made it impossible to do anything other than a strip mall.”