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MY VIEWPOINT - A recent Los Angeles Times article argues that San Diego is outpacing Los Angeles in apartment construction because it is easier to build there. While this is directionally true, the article relies on commercial apartment market vacancy data and sidesteps a deeper and more damaging problem in Los Angeles. Thousands of affordable housing units that already exist are vacant, misused, or effectively invisible. This failure is not simply about permitting speed or zoning rules. It is about a broken system of affordable housing oversight that is quietly shrinking supply while costs rise for everyone else.
The article cites industry vacancy figures drawn from commercial real estate sources that track professionally managed apartment buildings. These datasets are useful for investors, but they are not the same as Census rental vacancy data, which measure vacant units available for rent across the full housing stock. Conflating the two leads to misleading conclusions. Los Angeles can appear to have among the lowest vacancy rates in the country in a narrow commercial sense, while still losing real housing supply through nonuse and mismanagement of affordable units that were built to be occupied.
Los Angeles currently has an estimated 9,000 affordable housing units that are vacant, misused, or have effectively disappeared from the market. These units are often inclusionary units embedded within market rate developments. On paper, they count as housing. In practice, they are not housing anyone. They exert no downward pressure on rents. They do not relieve homelessness. Instead, they quietly function as lost supply.
This loss has real consequences. Analysts estimate that the disappearance of these units adds about $10 per month to rents citywide. It also adds roughly $10 per month to payments for new mortgages and refinances. Individually, these amounts seem modest. Aggregated across millions of renters and homeowners, they amount to a persistent affordability tax that residents pay every month because housing that should exist in the market does not.
The human cost is visible on the ground. In many parts of Los Angeles, vacant affordable units sit within yards of unhoused people living in tents or vehicles. Owners and property managers often say they are afraid to open these units because of perceived risk, administrative burden, or fear of future enforcement complications. At the same time, there are many eligible low income households who could responsibly occupy these units today. Housing these households would not solve homelessness overnight, but it would stabilize part of the housing ladder and eventually free up other units for people with fewer options.
Instead, Los Angeles has created a system in which owners and developers are caught in a bind. They see affordable units remain empty for years, even as need intensifies around them. They face unclear or inconsistent guidance from multiple agencies. They fear penalties if they make a mistake, but receive little help to do the right thing. The result is paralysis. Affordable units languish, and the city quietly loses housing supply it already paid to create.
This is where the comparison with San Diego becomes instructive. San Diego does not simply permit more housing. It manages affordable housing differently. Oversight is centralized under the San Diego Housing Commission, which administers requirements, monitors compliance, and provides a clearer path for developers and owners to meet their obligations. The in lieu fee structure is simpler and more predictable. Enforcement is more unified. The system is not perfect, but it works well enough that affordable units are more likely to be occupied and visible.
Los Angeles, by contrast, splits responsibility across multiple entities. The Los Angeles Housing Department oversees policy and development. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles manages vouchers and public housing. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority coordinates homelessness services across city and county. Additional regional bodies add further layers. Each agency plays a role, but no single entity fully owns the problem of affordable units sitting empty inside market rate developments. The result is fragmentation, weak accountability, and poor public transparency.
The LA Times article focuses on construction pipelines and permitting delays, but it ignores this central failure point where developers and cities experience the most pain. The painful interaction is not only at the planning counter. It is in the long tail of compliance, monitoring, and leasing of affordable units after buildings open. When this process breaks down, housing supply shrinks quietly, even as headlines focus on how much new housing is being built.
This failure is particularly dangerous as Los Angeles approaches the World Cup and the Olympics. Major global events place intense pressure on housing markets. Short term rental activity increases. Speculative behavior accelerates. Long term tenants are pushed out. Professor David Wachsmuth of McGill University has documented that one in nine unhoused Angelenos were displaced by short term rental activity. When affordable units are already missing from the market, these pressures are amplified.
If Los Angeles does not fix its affordable housing system, the city risks repeating and intensifying this displacement cycle. Vacant affordable units will continue to languish. Developers will continue to face uncertainty and delay. Residents will continue to pay higher rents and higher monthly housing costs. And more people will be forced out of stable housing, potentially joining the already displaced.
None of this is inevitable. The lesson from San Diego is not that regulation must be abandoned. It is that systems must be designed to function. Affordable housing requirements only work if affordable units are actually occupied. That requires centralized oversight, clear rules, active assistance to owners, and public visibility of where units exist and whether they are leased.
Los Angeles should publish a comprehensive, public facing database of all affordable housing covenants and unit status. It should assign clear responsibility to a single agency for monitoring and leasing compliance of on site affordable units. It should simplify processes so owners are not punished for attempting to rent to eligible tenants. And it should treat vacant affordable units as a housing emergency, not an administrative footnote.
The housing crisis in Los Angeles is not only about how much is built. It is about whether the housing that already exists is allowed to function. Until that question is addressed, articles celebrating construction statistics will continue to miss the most painful and expensive failure of all.
(Dr. Pini Herman is a Los Angeles–based demographer focused on housing supply, affordable housing compliance, and urban governance. His work examines how regulatory fragmentation and data misuse contribute to hidden vacancies and rising housing costs in Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles and is a candidate for U.S. Congress in California’s 30th District. He can be reached at [email protected])
