Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks at news conference where he unveiled his new housing plan (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced today an ambitious $5 billion plan, called Housing that Works, to build 20,000 affordable units. “This City’s economic success and vitality depend on our ability to plan for a future of sustainability and stability in our housing market,” Villaraigosa said. “This plan lays the building blocks of housing our middle class can afford and takes the first steps toward building ‘housing that works’ for all Angelenos.”

In short, the plan provides a number of key elements including doubling the number of units constructed since Villaraigosa began his office, implementing a mixed-income housing ordinance that requires the City’s largest developers to offer units at prices LA’s workforce can afford, creating twenty sustainable transit communities along transit corridors and near job centers, shifting the homeless strategy from managing homelessness to moving people out of it by funding 2,200 permanent support housing units connecting homeless with social services, completing the Jordan Downs housing project, addressing the foreclosure crisis and educating citizens about their rights as landlords and tenants.

There's a lot there to digest, but now it's time to get to work and make this happen. A lot of Villaraigosa plans have been launched recently, so let's see if they will follow through. The full plan can be read here (.pdf).