LAND USE -
City Hall Keeps Accelerating Housing Development While Its Own Controller Raises Troubling Questions About Affordable Housing Oversight
My apologies to readers wondering whether I ever write about anything but land-use legislation. I do. But stay with me: the bulldozers may be coming to a residential neighborhood near you.
If you chose a neighborhood of single-family streets, this concerns you.
And to the YIMBYs who follow me—or troll me—without ever setting foot in the San Fernando Valley: we are not one endless subdivision. The Valley has apartments, townhomes, shopping centers, commercial corridors, and single-family neighborhoods, often side by side.
Those neighborhoods matter, too. Their residents deserve answers before City Hall remakes their streets in the name of “affordable” housing. Especially after what the City's own Controller found.
Kenneth Mejia Didn't Get the Memo
City Controller Kenneth Mejia probably wasn't supposed to uncover this particular stubborn fact. But he did what he was elected to do: oversee City government and hold it accountable. His June 2025 audit exposed weak enforcement, missing compliance records, and failures involving billions in public affordable-housing loans.
That should have stopped City Hall long enough to demand answers. Instead, Sacramento and Los Angeles keep accelerating approvals, weakening zoning protections, and narrowing public participation.
City Hall is racing to approve housing in the name of affordability while its own Controller questions whether existing affordability promises are being kept. John Adams had it right: “Facts are stubborn things.”
And these facts should not be left sitting on a committee agenda while the bulldozers roll.
Dante put Limbo in the first circle of Hell. For Valley residents facing a four-story building next door, the distinction may seem academic.
Council File 25-0622
Mejia released his audit on June 5, 2025. It was referred to the City Council’s Government Efficiency, Innovation, and Audits Committee under Council File 25-0622. The question is what the Council has done with those findings—and why residents are still demanding a public accounting.
At an October 19 town hall in Northridge, I questioned Councilmember John Lee about why the audit had languished for sixteen months without meaningful Council action. His response was an incoherent word salad that never came close to answering the question. Meanwhile, City Hall continues advancing proposals such as Missing Middle and density bonuses, layering more density on top of Sacramento's housing laws while the Controller's findings await a convincing public response. That is disgraceful. Where is the accountability? Where is the proof these policies are solving the affordability crisis? And where is my money? I want every tax dollar back from developers who took public funds and failed to deliver the affordable housing they promised.
What the Controller Found
In 2023, 13% of reviewed properties failed affordability requirements; another 20% lacked enough information to determine compliance. For roughly one-third, satisfactory compliance could not be established. Missing records do not prove violations. They do expose an oversight problem.
At one property, rents exceeded allowable limits by more than 30%, while a tenant's income exceeded the eligibility limit by more than 60%. Auditors encountered cockroach infestations, evidence of mold, trash and feces in a stairwell, and an unsecured emergency exit. Management staff at two properties acknowledged they were not using waiting lists to select tenants.
Of 179 properties that failed to submit required compliance information, the Housing Department sent follow-up notices to just 27, and only three subsequently achieved compliant status. During 2023, the department referred no affordability compliance cases to the City Attorney. Auditors also could not obtain evidence establishing whether tenants charged excessive rents had been reimbursed.
The City held more than $2.9 billion in affordable-housing loans—nearly 1,100 of them—without annual financial reviews of projects with outstanding City loans. One property ran deficits from 2021 and drew nearly three dozen code complaints, yet was missing from the department's at-risk watchlist.
Former Controller Ron Galperin warned about affordable-housing oversight in 2017. Nearly a decade later, where are the answers?
Promises Without Enforcement
We're committing billions in taxpayer dollars to address a “housing crisis” while advancing housing laws that don't necessarily require affordable units. But this is not a housing shortage crisis. It is a housing affordability crisis. Mejia's audit exposed serious failures in tracking whether publicly financed developments honor their affordability commitments. Why wasn't oversight in place before the money went out?
Some affordability agreements run 99 years. If the City cannot verify compliance now, how will it enforce those promises decades from now? The audit found weak enforcement and no formal protocol for referring violations to the City Attorney.
The tracking systems should have come before the money. Trust is not enforcement.
Sacramento, You’re Not Off the Hook
Mejia audited subsidized affordable housing, not every market-rate project approved under state housing laws. But the questions collide: if lawmakers invoke affordability to justify faster approvals and fewer local safeguards, where is the proof that the result is affordable housing?
Permits are not homes. And completed homes are not necessarily affordable homes. A permit does not prove that a restricted unit exists, houses an eligible tenant, or charges the lawful rent.
Some housing laws require no income-restricted units at all. So stop treating increased density and enforceable affordability as interchangeable. Tell residents what the law delivers—and how anyone will measure it.
Before City Hall strips away R1 protections, it damn well better show that the change addresses the crisis it invokes. Neighborhoods should not be asked to sacrifice protections for an unmeasured promise.
Putting the Process in Reverse
City Hall has housing policy backward: decide what to build, then clear away zoning, environmental review, and public objections. It has also pursued raising resident appeal fees from about $200 to $4,350. As I wrote in Errors of Commission and Omission, commissioners can acknowledge residents' objections—and approve the project anyway.
Outside the hearing room, Valley residents face deteriorating roads, aging infrastructure, wildfire danger, and limited evacuation routes. AB 747 strengthened evacuation planning after the 2018 Camp Fire. But who is accounting for the cumulative impact of added density?
A ministerial approval does not widen an evacuation route. A density bonus does not fix a sewer. Calling housing “attainable” does not make it affordable.
Put the Audit on the Public Agenda
The Mayor and Council should publicly account for every audit recommendation: completed, outstanding, and overdue. Before committing more discretionary affordable-housing funds, show the compliance and enforcement systems work.
Residents can review Council File 25-0622 and Mejia's June 2025 audit, then submit written comments demanding a public hearing, a recorded vote where appropriate, and a detailed corrective-action report.
Then send the links to five other Angelenos. The Controller made his record. Now the public needs to make its own.
Everything in Reverse
Look at the order of operations: incentives before enforcement; density before infrastructure; fewer hearings and higher proposed appeal fees; an audit without a clear public reckoning.
City Hall must prove that publicly financed housing delivers the affordability promised—and explain what neighborhoods receive when longstanding protections disappear.
Los Angeles has managed to reverse engineer just about everything associated with housing development.
The zoning. The hearings. The appeals. The environmental protections. Even the definition of affordability.
Perhaps City Hall should try reversing one more thing.
It’s priorities.
Put the public before the developers. Put accountability before incentives. Put infrastructure before density. Put enforcement before promises.
And make the Controller's findings impossible to ignore.
Because the one thing Los Angeles cannot afford to keep doing in reverse is governing.
(Eva Amar is a West San Fernando Valley community organizer, contributor to CityWatch Los Angeles, and National Sexual Assault Victims Advocate.)
