Build the housing, run the trains, account for the money — LA has all three on the table today, and the city's credibility rides on whether it can actually deliver. This is Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily. We've got affordable housing taking shape in Lincoln Heights, a D Line extension that could matter for 2028, and a homelessness funding story where the accountability question is a lot messier than any press release wants to admit. And the city is already talking about delaying wage increases for tourism workers. Reform city, right up until it gets uncomfortable. Let's get into it. Here's Steven Sharp at Urbanize LA:
Six months after breaking ground in Lincoln Heights, wood framing is on the rise for the new Century + Restorative Care Village near Los Angeles General Medical Center. Century Housing Corp. is currently building the first phase of the project at 1321 N. Mission Road, which will include 146 supportive and affordable homes, as well as a 12-bed peer respite facility, and on-site supportive services.
Lincoln Heights is getting real wood framing in the air. Century Housing's first phase on Mission Road is 146 supportive and affordable units, plus peer respite beds and on-site services, and it's slated to finish in 2028. Urbanize LA has been tracking this one. 296 units total across both phases, a workforce development center, right next to LA General — this is exactly the kind of project that should be the template. Affordable housing tied to healthcare infrastructure, in a neighborhood that actually needs it. The site is on former hospital ancillary land, so they didn't have to tear down existing housing to get here. That's a clean land story. 2028 is still two years out, though — let's see if permitting holds. Two years is optimistic by LA standards, but I'll take cautious optimism over the usual decade-long stall. Just don't let a neighbor's view concern torpedo phase two. When the Governor announces hundreds of millions more for homelessness, I always want to know: where does that money actually go, and is anyone on the hook if the numbers don't move? It's a genuinely complicated chain, so let me walk through it. At the top, the state runs the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention program, HHAP, and in May Governor Newsom delivered $760 million in HHAP Round 6 funding to 42 eligible regions across California, with the California Department of Housing and Community Development administering the grants to counties, large cities, and regional Continuums of Care. Separately, in March he announced another $291 million tied to CARE Court, his program targeting chronically mentally ill Californians, and that came with new accountability tools meant to speed up local implementation. The catch is that in January, CalMatters reported that Newsom's administration is adding new strings to all of this money: localities have to pass ordinances regulating homeless encampments, among other requirements, just to receive their share. And this isn't just a warning — per the Sacramento Bee, in March Newsom explicitly labeled ten counties underperforming on CARE Court implementation, including Los Angeles County, and said he was prepared to claw back state funds from them. So the accountability mechanism, at least on paper, is: meet benchmarks or lose the grant. But locally in LA, who's actually the entity that receives and distributes this money? Isn't LAHSA in the middle of a pretty significant meltdown right now? That's the fault line to watch. LAHSA, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, is laying off 284 employees and eliminating more than 400 positions total, because LA County is pulling its funding and standing up its own separate homeless department, per the Daily News. Starting July 1, LAHSA gets pushed into a much more limited coordinating role, which means the agency that has historically handled data, service access, and federal funding applications is being restructured mid-stream, right as hundreds of millions in new state dollars are flowing in. The accountability chain only works if there's a functioning local agency to hold accountable — and right now, LA is rebuilding that infrastructure on the fly. From Matthew Seedorff at FOX 11 Los Angeles:
A growing RV encampment has taken shape just outside a Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles administrative building in Gardena, where more than a dozen RVs, cars and buses are being used as makeshift homes. FOX 11 found people living along Hamilton Avenue, an industrial street lined with "No Parking" signs and notices referencing Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 41.18, an ordinance intended to prohibit camping in certain areas.
FOX 11 is out in Gardena, where more than a dozen RVs and buses have set up a long-term encampment right outside a Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles administrative building — on an industrial street with No Parking signs and 41.18 anti-camping notices that, by all accounts, aren't being enforced. There are twenty-five secure Safe Parking spots literally behind the fence on the same property, and people are still on the street. That's not a capacity problem. That's a system that can't connect the dots between a parking spot and a human being standing ten feet away from it. County says they're aware and outreach teams are coming. Someone's been parked there three months, so — noted. The Housing Authority runs the building and can't clear the block out front. That's the whole story. If your agency exists to house people and this is what the sidewalk looks like at your own address, something has gone structurally wrong. Here's Libby Rainey at LAist:
The Los Angeles City Council is considering a contentious plan to roll back minimum wage increases for tourism workers, as the city faces the looming prospect of a measure to repeal the business tax that could financially ruin the city landing on the November ballot.
LAist has this one — the City Council voted 10 to 5 to explore delaying minimum wage increases for airport and hotel workers. Last year, they voted to get those workers to thirty dollars an hour by 2028. Now they want to push that to 2030. So they passed it, took the victory lap, and now the second the business lobby rattles a ballot measure, they fold? These are hotel and airport workers — some of the hardest-hit during COVID, some of the lowest-paid people keeping this city running for the Olympics. The political logic is real, even if the timing is rough. There's a business tax repeal measure that could land on the November ballot and genuinely crater city finances, so Council is trying to buy goodwill. Whether that's worth it is another question. Buying goodwill from hotel owners by making housekeepers wait two more years for a living wage. Great deal. Really sharing the sacrifice there. Here's Los Angeles Sentinel:
In a milestone decades in the making, Los Angeles leaders, transit officials, labor representatives, Team USA athletes and community members gathered Friday, May 8th to celebrate the opening of Section 1 of Metro’s D Line Extension, a transformative subway expansion connecting Downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills through the historic Mid-Wilshire corridor.
Credit to the L.A. Sentinel for the on-the-ground coverage here — Section 1 of the D Line Extension officially opened May 8th at Wilshire/Fairfax, and it is a genuine milestone. Decades of planning, tunneling, and budget fights have finally produced a subway stop on the Westside. Decades. That word should haunt every elected official who slow-walked this. But fine — it's open, trains are running, and for the first time you can actually get under Wilshire without sitting in that soul-crushing 405 backup. I'll take the win. And the timing is deliberate. Metro is framing this around 2028, and Wilshire/Fairfax isn't the end of the line, but it is the proof of concept that the full extension to Westwood can get done before the Olympics torch is lit. The pressure of 2028 is the only reason this city finishes anything on time. Cynical, but true. Now let's see if they actually open the Westwood stations before NBC's cameras arrive or after. Got a correction, a story idea, or a neighborhood issue we should be watching? Send it our way at ladailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read the notes, and they help shape the show.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, you can follow it there and read more.
That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.