The Brief

Affordable housing. Simply linking those two words might get you an ironic laugh from today’s apartment hunter. But there was a time when the government did have an overall goal of helping you keep a roof over your head. While a few remnants of that philosophy still exist today, we wanted to know: How did it all start — and what happened?

We look into the complicated history of affordable housing, from a Depression-era housing crisis, through communism fears and today’s patchwork of programs.

What is affordable housing exactly?

First, let’s define our terms. Shane Phillips, housing initiative manager at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, says people can have different things in mind when talking about affordable housing.

There’s the idea of affordable housing as in living in places that are relatively low cost compared to your income, like living on the edge of L.A. County, for example.

Then there’s what Phillips calls “capital A” affordable housing. It happens in multiple ways, including:

• Public housing (which is owned by the government)
• Subsidized housing that’s income-restricted with rent caps (built with public funding)
• Unsubsidized housing that’s income-restricted with rent caps (not built with public funds but using programs that give regulatory breaks to developers)
• Section 8 (where tenants share rent costs with the government on the private market) 

A brief history of early affordable housing

The Great Depression brought an existing problem to a head: dilapidated housing stock.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, it was common for families with little money to live without hot running water. These homes were seen as “blight” and many were eventually torn down.

The U.S. Housing Act of 1937 created the first federal public housing program in which states had to establish local housing authorities. The act was intended to:

The public housing program was put on hold during World War II but was restarted with the Housing Act of 1949, which declared its goal as “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.”

This act did a lot of things, including giving money to local housing authorities to buy up and rebuild slum properties and offering subsidies for them to build over 800,000 units nationwide.

Meanwhile in the early ‘30s, federal agencies that were precursors to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had begun to help people afford homeownership.

The Federal Housing Administration, created in 1934, ushered in mortgage programs that made low down payments and long-term mortgages possible. Until then, most mortgages were written for three to five-year terms and borrowers had to have as much as half of the home’s cost on hand.

Addressing different income levels

Federal programs at that point targeted helping tenants on the very low end of the financial spectrum. Very few options existed for people in the middle — those who couldn’t afford market-rate housing but didn’t qualify for public housing.

Congress saw this gap and wanted to solve it without creating a new and costly government housing program. Their legislation, the Housing Act of 1959, marked the first significant time that financial incentives like low-interest loans were used to coax private developers into building affordable housing. These were directed toward housing that would serve moderate-income people 62 and older.

Later federal additions included a rent assistance program (and precursor to Section 8) in 1965, while other mortgage incentives came in 1968. At the end of the decade, affordable housing subsidies for private developers created hundreds of thousands of units nationwide.

How approaches changed

Former President Richard Nixon at his North Hollywood campaign headquarters in 1962.

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Jeff Goldwater

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Valley Times Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

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A significant shift in affordable housing came in 1973 when the Nixon administration placed a moratorium on federal housing programs. The following year, big changes to our housing programs were largely seen as pulling out of the construction and management game on the federal level.

Nixon was influenced by what was happening in local governments. While World War II had made public housing favorable, eventually public opinion shifted away from it, with Red Scare fears framing it as a communist system. Like many cities, L.A. leaders faced accusations of communist infiltration because of its government-led housing.

The city of L.A. once had a federal contract to build 10,000 public housing units, but it fell through in the 1950s after intense public pressure. L.A.’s last public housing construction ended with the San Fernando Gardens in 1955.

Devolution of authority

After the moratorium, President Gerald Ford introduced the Community Development Block Grant program, which gave federal dollars to local governments with “few strings attached” to do things like improve sidewalks and help rehabilitate dilapidated housing. It began what’s called the “devolution of authority” — passing on the responsibility to plan and implement affordable housing to states and cities. While there is still federal involvement in affordable housing, this program is still in use today with local authorities directing much of the implementation.

Which means that affordable housing differs from region to region. In L.A., our affordable housing is now largely private and public partnerships, while the city’s housing authority has been slowly demolishing public housing for decades and rebuilding some as mixed income housing.

Fifty unhoused people warm up in City Hall after the City Council voted to open the chambers overnight during an unusually cold spell on Jan. 21, 1987.

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Javier Mendoza

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Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

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In the backdrop, while rent and house prices continued to skyrocket, more and more people were squeezed out of their homes. In 1987, L.A.’s homelessness crisis had grown to such a point that City Hall was opened to shelter unhoused people during a frigid winter.

Over the decades, the city has tried a myriad of programs, like enacting rent control and establishing a blue ribbon committee to research affordable housing, to push the needle on the issue.

But across its history, affordable housing initiatives have always been criticized. Some feel systems of wealth and racial inequality against tenants have worsened, especially as some groups push against affordable housing.

Others feel the privatization of affordable housing lines the pockets of developers, or that rent programs don’t stabilize market rents enough. Then there are the developers, who often face hefty hurdles to building.

Affordability today

Throughout the housing programs, the debate over who they help and by how much has persisted. New market-rate housing is expensive and limited to pretty high-income people. Subsidized housing — where costs are shared with the government — are limited to low-income and extremely low-income people. For example, to qualify for Section 8, an individual’s annual income has to be at or below $44,150. For a family of four, it’s $63,050.

“Everyone else in the middle just gets nothing,” Phillips said. “They're just kind of left to fend for themselves and that space keeps widening further and further.”

A "For Rent" sign hangs outside an apartment building in northeast Los Angeles.

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David Wagner/LAist

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There’s also the issue of time. Affordability requirements are governed by legal contracts known as covenants — where the owner agrees to maintain a unit as affordable for a specific period of time (typically 55 years in L.A.).

So if you do the math, our affordable housing stock is on a ticking clock. In 2022, L.A. County had 133,909 affordable rental housing units, but nearly 8,000 places were at risk of losing affordability, according to the California Housing Partnership.

But new developments are added on an ongoing basis. Among the locations are Broadway Housing in Santa Monica from 2012 and the 4252 Crenshaw modular housing development completed in 2019.

L.A. County still is short a massive 499,430 affordable homes. It’s a high number that experts say we can’t keep up with. The shortfall only decreased by 82,393 homes between 2014 and 2019.

“It will just never come close to meeting the need,” Phillips said. “We need a bigger strategy than just ‘maybe a few billion more dollars that'll subsidize a few thousand more homes.’”

The Japanese American National Museum announced today it will reopen in January after a two-year, $25 million overhaul of the country’s largest museum dedicated to the Japanese American experience.

The museum in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is reshaping its galleries and expanding its signature exhibition to include more perspectives and connections between Japanese American history and current debates over race, immigration and democracy.

The new exhibition at JANM features A.I.-assisted avatars of Japanese American survivors of incarceration.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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“We want to tell the story in a way that is more expansive and that other immigrants, communities can see their own story reflected,” said Ann Burroughs, the museum’s president and CEO.

That effort to tie history to the present comes as JANM itself has faced political pressure, with the museum losing federal funding amid Trump administration cuts.

From the outside, visitors returning to the museum, which has been closed since January 2024, will recognize its modern, minimalist exterior. Once they step through the doors, though, the experience will be vastly different.

The biggest change will be the installation of a 9,200-square-foot permanent exhibition occupying nearly all of the museum’s first floor — more than twice the space of the exhibition it replaces.

"Common Ground," which opened in 1999, covered Japanese American history from migration to the U.S. in the 1800s to the passage of a federal law — the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 — that formally apologized for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and provided $20,000 in reparations to surviving detainees.

The new exhibition, called "In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy," will include more recent history, such as Japanese American support for reparations for Black Americans and vocal opposition to the Islamophobia that swelled after 9/11. It will also cover the Japanese American response to ICE detention and incarceration of migrant children, drawing parallels to World War II camps.

Galleries have been reconfigured to include more recent history and more objects from the past, including kimonos owned by women from Japan, who immigrated to the U.S. in larger numbers starting in the turn of the 20th century.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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It will also bring lesser-known perspectives to familiar history through telling the story of incarceration from “women and mothers” and those incarcerated at Tule Lake, the camp in Northern California where Japanese Americans labeled as disloyal by the U.S. government were isolated during World War II.

“JANM hadn’t told that story before,” Burroughs said. “You can’t draw those parallels of what’s happening now if you don’t talk about the camps and if you don’t talk about Tule Lake.”

The new exhibition will also lean more heavily into audiovisual storytelling, using technology and archival media to make the history feel more immediate.

The interactive “StoryFiles” incorporate AI so visitors can pose questions to digital avatars of incarceration survivors like the actor George Takei.

Burroughs stressed that the museum is not using generative AI, but drawing upon hours and hours of interviews in which subjects answered hundreds of questions.

The new exhibition will also draw deeply from JANM’s extensive collection of Japanese American home movies, including footage dating to the 1930s, and give visitors a window into everyday life before World War II.

Some of JANM’s best-known objects will be included in the new exhibition, like barracks from the Heart Mountain incarceration camp in Wyoming and a model of Manzanar in California’s remote Owens Valley, the first of the camps to be built.

The museum is also emphasizing everyday culture, with displays ranging from kimonos brought by Japanese immigrant women at the turn of the 20th century to rice cookers, and the worldwide reach of Hello Kitty.

The Hirasaki National Resource Center has been relocated to the second floor and will showcase work from artists like Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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The larger new exhibition was created without growing the museum's footprint through reconfiguring the building. For example, the museum’s Aratani Central Hall will take on a new role as the museum’s main entrance, with visitors entering through its sweeping curved glass wall and moving directly into the exhibition galleries. But Burroughs said the redesign will not come at the expense of the hall’s longtime function as a community space available to local nonprofits.

Upstairs, visitors will find reconfigured spaces including a new reading room filled with works and furnishings by Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi. Behind the scenes, JANM has upgraded decades-old building systems such as its HVAC and elevators.

The museum overhaul was funded as part of a much larger $135 million fundraising campaign, Burroughs said. The rest of the campaign supports JANM’s operations and long-term financial stability, including about $56 million in endowment and board-designated reserves.

"You know, life is never secure in the nonprofit world or in the museum world," Burroughs said. "We have to do a lot more to build up our endowments. We just will keep going."

Public health officials are urging people to be wary of flea-borne typhus after a recent outbreak of the illness.

The outbreak in late July was centered in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Public Health said five people were hospitalized; all recovered.

The outbreak comes as typhus cases continue to tick up in L.A. County.

Cases have been increasing fairly steadily for more than a decade, but they nearly doubled over the last three years. The Public Health Department logged a record 220 cases in 2025, and officials say this year is on track to exceed that.

Public health officials say the increase is likely because human-animal interactions are also increasing. That could be due to human population expansions into areas with more animals, available food sources for wildlife in populated areas or more people owning pets.

The bacteria that causes typhus is transmitted from animals to humans through fleas.

Typhus can’t be passed from one human to another, and public health experts say the illness is completely treatable, especially if it’s caught early.

Outbreaks and how to prevent them

Most of the time, typhus cases are spread out across L.A. County. But sometimes, there’s a localized spread over a short period of time that turns into an outbreak.

Public health officials respond to a few of them in L.A. County each year.

Generally, outbreaks are triggered by high concentrations of host animals.

“Wherever these animals may be present or wherever they may be congregating, in those areas we can see an increase in the number of human infections,” said Dr. Aiman Halai with the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

The most common hosts for typhus are rats, opossums and free-roaming cats. When people or pets come in contact with host animals, they can pick up the infected fleas and bring them into homes, spreading them to other people and animals in the process.

Halai says a variety of factors can attract animals and lead to an outbreak, including overflowing dumpsters, overgrown vegetation or a well-meaning neighbor feeding local critters.

You can help prevent outbreaks by securing trash in bins, making sure food isn’t left outside, and ensuring pets are on up-to-date flea control medication. Cutting back overgrown vegetation and blocking off crawl spaces can eliminate places where animals can shelter in and around homes.

Halai also says it’s important not to feed wildlife.

Should you be worried?

Although public health experts are wary of the typhus uptick in L.A. County, the 220 cases recorded in 2025 in L.A. County are not overly concerning.

"That’s a very  low rate at the population level,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of infectious diseases at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Typhus is an acute infection caused by bacteria known as Rickettsia typhi. Variations of the bacteria also cause other illnesses transmitted by fleas, ticks, lice and mites, including tick-borne Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Doctors can test for typhus fairly easily, and it is treatable with antibiotics. Symptoms are similar to the flu, and can include fever, headaches, muscle aches and nausea. It can also cause rashes in some cases.

Most infections are mild, but they can cause hospitalization and, in rare cases, can be fatal.

Klausner said the concern is that testing for typhus is not always routine.

“The most important thing is that when patients come in to their doctor — and they have fever, they may have a rash, they may have headache, may have muscle or joint aches — that the doctor's thinking about potentially flea-borne infectious diseases because the treatment can be different,” Klausner said.

The best treatment for typhus is the antibiotic doxycycline. If a patient with typhus gets another type of antibiotic like penicillin or amoxicillin, the treatment may not be as successful.

According to Klausner, when presented with flu-like symptoms, it’s also a good idea for patients to tell their doctors if they’ve been around animals, spent time in an encampment or even just gone on a hike.

Topline:

Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.

What the protections do: Now that the Western spadefoot is a candidate for permanent protections, any development project planned for Western spadefoot habitats will have to take the amphibians into account.

Some exceptions may apply: The commission did carve out exceptions for solar projects in the Central Valley. To take advantage of federal tax credit deadlines, some projects can continue to be built, as long as they protect breeding pools and curtail construction during the season when spadefoots are most active.

What conservationists say: Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in Southern California the biggest threat to the Western spadefoot is not solar development: “It’s warehouses or data centers and road widenings and all manner of construction activities.”

What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.