We dig into the history and how approaches changed
Cato Hernández
has scoured through tons of archives to understand how our region became the way it is today.
Published December 21, 2023 5:00 AM
Children play outside the Aliso Village, a public housing project in Los Angeles that was demolished in 1999.
(
Louis Clyde Stoumen
/
Housing Authority Collection/Los Angeles Public Library
)
Topline:
Affordable housing is an idea and policy, so how did we get here? We unpack the decades-old history of how housing programs were shaped in the U.S. and how approaches have changed.
What is affordable housing in the first place? It can be a range of things, like homes built with subsidized loans or a place you rent where a portion of the cost is covered by the government. It can also be just a benchmark for yourself — aka a dollar amount you know is affordable to you.
How is affordability determined? You can thank a congressional amendment from 1969 for that. The Brooke Amendment placed an income percentage limit on public housing, which is where we get the idea that rent shouldn’t cost more than 30% of your income today.
How did affordable housing programs start? It all goes back to the Great Depression and World War II, in a time where housing was falling apart and money was scarce for plenty of people. Read on to learn more.
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:
Remedy the unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions and the acute shortage of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings for families of low-income, in rural or urban communities, that are injurious to the health, safety, and morals of the citizens of the nation.
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.
What counts as affordable?
The general consensus today is 30% of a tenant’s income. That's from the 1969 Brooke Amendment, which placed an income percentage limit on public housing and some other units.
Initially it was 25% of income — it went up later. While this applied to specific types of affordable housing, it’s become a broader societal norm that helps people decide their rental budget and is often used by landlords in rental applications.
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.
(
Jeff Goldwater
/
Valley Times Collection/Los Angeles Public Library
)
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.
(
Javier Mendoza
/
Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library
)
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.
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.
(
David Wagner/LAist
)
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.
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.’”
President Donald Trump once insisted he had "nothing to do with Project 2025," the right-wing policy plan that became a key flashpoint during the presidential campaign. A year later, many of the policies have been implemented, from cracking down on immigration to dismantling the Department of Education.
What Trump said in 2024: Then-candidate Trump tried to dismiss the hysteria, calling the ideas "ridiculous" — and claiming he did not know who was behind it — even though key people involved in developing the plans served in his first administration. And when it was clear the firestorm would not go away, Trump went on the attack against those allies who wrote the playbook.
What he did after winning the election: Trump tapped Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget — considered the nerve center of the White House. Other contributors followed. And Trump soon unleashed a flurry of orders reshaping the government, many of which were outlined in Project 2025.
Read on ... to learn how Democratic officials have responded.
President Trump once insisted he had "nothing to do with Project 2025," the right-wing policy plan that became a key flashpoint during the presidential campaign.
The Democrats tried to turn the 900-page Heritage Foundation-led blueprint to remake the government into a political boogeyman, and succeeded to some degree, but it wasn't enough to win the election.
A year later, many of the policies have been implemented, from cracking down on immigration to dismantling the Department of Education.
"A lot of the policies from Day 1 to the last day and in between that the administration has adopted are right out of Project 2025," said Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, who has used Project 2025 to prepare legal papers against the administration.
Concerns about the project started to bubble up over the spring of 2024, but really caught fire a few months later when actress Taraji P. Henson singled out Project 2025 while hosting the BET awards.
"Pay attention. It's not a secret. Look it up!" she said, speaking directly into the camera during the show. "They are attacking our most vulnerable citizens. The Project 2025 plan is not a game."
'Ridiculous'
Then-candidate Trump tried to dismiss the hysteria, calling the ideas "ridiculous" — and claiming he did not know who was behind it — even though key people involved in developing the plans served in his first administration.
And when it was clear the firestorm would not go away, Trump went on the attack against those allies who wrote the playbook.
"They're a pain in the a--," said Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, who tore into the organizers of Project 2025 at an event hosted by CNN and Politico during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
"Look, I think that in the perfect world, from their perspective, they would love to drive the issue set, but they don't get to do that," he added.
Yet days after winning, Trump tapped Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget — considered the nerve center of the White House. Other contributors followed.
Trump soon unleashed a flurry of orders reshaping the government, many of which were outlined in Project 2025.
"As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female," he said during his inaugural address.
Trump ended diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He launched massive immigration enforcement and took the first steps to overhaul the federal workforce.
Bonta, the attorney general of California, said Project 2025 defined Trump's first year back in office. The country's 23 Democratic attorneys general studied Project 2025, consulted with each other and, he said, prepared a response for every potential action should it be taken.
"The existence of Project 2025 was the Trump administration telling us exactly what they were going to do and sending it to us in writing," Bonta said.
Bonta has filed or joined lawsuits that have successfully blocked Trump's policies requiring states like California to join his immigration crackdown, freeze of domestic federal funding and layoffs at agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education.
The White House dismissed concerns about Project 2025, calling them irrelevant theories from Beltway insiders.
"President Trump is implementing the agenda he campaigned on and that the American people voted for," said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
Jackson said the president focused on implementing the agenda he campaigned on — lowering gas prices, accelerating economic growth and securing the border.
Fueling controversy
Trump may have actually fueled the controversy by rejecting Project 2025 during the campaign, said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former White House aide to George W. Bush.
"I would say that Project 2025 was largely standard conservative fare, but with a bit more of a MAGA flavor than previously."
Troy sees little difference between what the Heritage Foundation did with Project 2025 and what think tanks on the left and right have been doing for years compiling policy proposals for incoming presidents.
He pointed to the personnel and policy ideas of the Hoover Institution that helped shape the George W. Bush administration and the Center for American Progress' influence on the Obama administration.
"If the Trump campaign had leaned into it and said, 'sure, this is an agenda that has been put out as a think tank. This happens all the time. We will look at them in due time when the election is over,' " said Troy. "By criticizing and disavowing Project 2025, it suddenly became more radioactive."
Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, says he never took the attacks personally, which he chalked up to political calculus.
He likened watching the president sign executive orders and directives that first came across his desk to being an animator who watches his or her sketchbook come to life on the big screen.
"I believe the proof is in the pudding," said Dans, who also served in the first Trump administration. "Every day that President Trump rolls out another Project 2025 item, it's really an endorsement of our work, myself and the work of thousands of patriots who came together."
Dans is now highlighting that work in a run for the Senate, against Trump-ally, Republican Lindsey Graham.
Trump did eventually embrace Project 2025 during the shutdown fight last fall.
He boasted of meeting with "Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame," while threatening to dismantle federal agencies.
"I can't believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity," he said.
President Donald Trump says his controversial push for U.S. control of Greenland comes after he failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize last year, adding he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.
U.S. president to Norway's leader: "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America."
The response: The Norwegian prime minister suggested diplomacy and noted that his government does not control the Nobel prizes.
Read on ... for more about the latest turn of events in the Greenland saga.
President Trump says his controversial push for U.S. control of Greenland comes after he failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize last year, adding he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.
In a message to Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre on Sunday night, Trump criticized the European country for not giving him the prize.
"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America," Trump said in the message.
"The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland," Trump added.
The message was reported by PBS NewsHour, and was later confirmed by Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a statement.
Gahr Støre said he received the message on Sunday in response to a text he and Finland's President Alexander Stubb had sent to Trump, in which they had conveyed opposition to Trump's proposed tariff increases on eight European countries over the recent Greenland dispute.
In their message to Trump, according to The New York Times, which received a copy of the exchange from the Norwegian prime minister's office, Gahr Støre and Stubb wrote: "We believe we all should work to take this down and de-escalate — so much is happening around us where we need to stand together."
The pair suggested a joint call.
"Norway's position on Greenland is clear. Greenland is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and Norway fully supports the Kingdom of Denmark on this matter," Gahr Støre said. "We also support that NATO in a responsible way is taking steps to strengthen security and stability in the Arctic."
Gahr Støre also pointed out that while President Trump claimed that Norway "decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize," the government of Norway is not responsible for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded by a five member Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1901.
The Danish navy's inspection ship HDMS Vaedderen sails off Nuuk, Greenland, on Sunday.
(
Mads Claus Rasmussen
/
Ritzau Scanpix Foto / Associated Press
)
The Peace Prize, which was last awarded to Venezuela's opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, is also awarded for the previous year. That means the most recent prize was awarded for 2024, before President Trump commenced his second term of office. Machado gave Trump her prize last week as a symbolic thank you for his recent actions in Venezuela.
In a phone interview with NBC News on Monday, Trump again claimed that the Norwegian government has control over the Nobel Peace Prize. "Norway totally controls it despite what they say," he said. Trump also said he would follow through on his threats to impose further tariffs. When asked whether he would use force to seize Greenland, the president replied: "No comment."
The European Union is set to hold an emergency summit on Thursday, in which attendees will discuss how to respond to the threats. In a statement on social media, the EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc had "no interest to pick a fight" but would "hold our ground."
Trump's message to Gahr Støre comes as tensions rise between Europe and the United States over the status of Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark that is strategically important and rich in resources.
On Monday, the World Economic Forum said officials from Denmark would not be attending the meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week. "We can confirm that the Danish government will not be represented in Davos this week," a spokesperson, Alem Tedeneke, told NPR.
On Sunday, in a collective rebuke to President Trump, the leaders of Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement condemning recent U.S. tariff threats. The eight countries, which are all members of NATO, said that Trump's proposed tariffs "undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral."
On Saturday night, President Trump had written on his Truth Social social media platform that he would impose tariffs on imports from the countries, after they had deployed limited military personnel to Greenland to participate in a Danish-led Arctic exercise known as 'Arctic Endurance.'
Trump said America would levy a 10% tariff on goods from the eight countries starting on Feb. 1, which would rise to 25% on June 1, and remain in place "until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland" by the United States.
The open dispute comes after weeks of increasingly assertive U.S. rhetoric regarding Greenland, in which Trump has repeatedly said that Greenland is strategically vital to U.S. national security, citing its location and untapped mineral deposits.
In his text message, Trump questioned Denmark's right to claim Greenland. "Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a 'right of ownership' anyway? There are no written documents, it's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also," Trump said.
Trump made similar comments last week, saying "the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land," drawing mirth on social media, with comedians like Jon Stewart noting on The Daily Show "how do you think we got our land?"
Copyright 2026 NPR
Keep up with LAist.
If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.
Kavish Harjai
reported from Exposition Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Updated January 19, 2026 6:18 PM
Published January 19, 2026 2:34 PM
People gather outside the California African American Museum in Exposition Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
(
Kavish Harjai
/
LAist
)
Topline:
At the California African American Museum’s annual King Day event, museumgoers listened to and reflected on a speech the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered less than a year before his assassination.
“Three Evils of Society”: As part of its program celebrating the civil rights leader, the Exposition Park museum played King’s keynote address to the 1967 National Conference on New Politics in Chicago. Attendees participated in a group discussion after.
Youth musicians: Later, the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles performed.
Read on … for more about the Martin Luther King Jr. Day event.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend is typically busy for the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. On Monday, the orchestra finished its third performance of the weekend at the California African American Museum, which included a musical rendition of the civil rights leader’s seminal “I Have a Dream Speech.”
It was flautist Tionna LeSassier’s first time playing with the orchestra on the federal holiday. Tionna said she began playing flute when she was 12.
“I feel really relieved that I was able to accomplish such a big performance for a really big holiday,” Tionna, who has been playing flute for more than two years, said. “I cannot believe I’m here playing with these amazing musicians.”
The orchestra’s performance, which included pieces like “We Shall Overcome” and the “Afro-American Symphony,” capped off the museum’s annual “King Day” celebration.
The event is held on the federal holiday that honors the legacy of the Baptist preacher whose nonviolent protests and eloquent speeches helped shift American attitudes about race in the 1960s and beyond and lead to landmark Civil Rights legislation.
Earlier in the day, museumgoers listened to and reflected on a recording by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1967. Nearly 60 years later, event participants said, the words still feel fresh.
“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are incapable of being conquered,” King said in “The Three Evils of Society,” his keynote address at the National Conference on New Politics in Chicago.
Cameron Shaw, executive director of the Exposition Park museum, told LAist on Monday that the speech has “incredible relevance to the political and social moment and what we’re going through as a people today.”
In a brief discussion after the speech, one attendee spoke about the need to interrogate racism as a systematic ill, not just as one-off acts, and another commented on the importance of standing up to injustice.
Shaw says the museum’s celebration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day has evolved over the last several years, but one of the main throughlines she sees is the continued message of “speaking truth to power.”
“When we celebrate Dr. King today, we celebrate all of the folks past and present who have been brave enough to speak truth to power,” Shaw said. “That is something we truly need.”
Monday’s event also featured a faux stained glass workshop inspired by an exhibition the museum has on display about architect Amaza Lee Meredith.
In South L.A., an annual parade drew thousands of people, with a march concluding in Leimert Park. "It was a wonderful and powerful tribute to Dr. King’s memory to march down MLK Boulevard alongside so many friends and community members in the historic Leimert Park neighborhood," L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.
A report of a stabbing marred the end of the event. Bass' statement said city officials were investigating and ensuring people got home safe. She added that "Los Angeles has zero tolerance for this type of violence."
Italian fashion designer Valentino died Monday at his Roman residence. He was 93.
Valentino's legacy: In the world of haute couture, Valentino embraced sophistication, elegance and traditional femininity through his dresses. His work embodied romance, luxury and an aristocratic lifestyle. He dressed the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Onassis, as well as modern stars, including Anna Wintour to Gwyneth Paltrow and Zendaya.
How he got his start: Valentino owed much of his success to his former lover and business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti. The two met in Rome in 1960, where Valentino had opened his first couture studio. They founded Valentino Company the same year. Together, the pair built a fashion empire over five decades.
Retirement: They sold the Valentino company in 1998 for nearly$300 million. It made $1.36 billion in revenue in 2021, according to Reuters.
Read on ... for more about Valentino's early life.
Italian fashion designer Valentino died Monday at his Roman residence. He was 93. His foundation announced his death on Instagram.
Dubbed an "international arbiter of taste" by Vogue, notable women wore his designs at funerals and weddings, as well as on the red carpet. He dressed the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Onassis, as well as modern stars, including Anna Wintour to Gwyneth Paltrow and Zendaya.
The image of style and lavish living, Valentino's signature features included crisp suits and a "crème brûlée" complexion — due to his fervor for tanning. He was heavily inspired by the stars he saw on the silver screen and had a lifelong fixation with glamour.
"I love a beautiful lady. I love a beautiful dog. I love a beautiful piece of furniture. I love beauty. It's not my fault," he said in The Last Emperor, a 2008 documentary about him.
In the world of haute couture, Valentino embraced sophistication, elegance and traditional femininity through his dresses and trademarked a vibrant red hue. His work embodied romance, luxury and an aristocratic lifestyle.
He was born Valentino Garavani and named after the silent movie star Rudolph Valentino. A self-described spoiled child, the designer acquired a taste for the expensive from a young age; his shoes were custom-made, and the stripe, color and buttons of his blazers were designed to his specifications.
His father, a well-to-do electrical supplier, and his mother, who appreciated the value of a well-made garment, catered to their young son's refined palate and later supported his fashion endeavors, sending him to school and financing his early work.
Growing up in the small town of Voghera, Italy, he learned sewing from his Aunt Rosa in Lombardy. After high school, he moved to Paris to study fashion and take on apprenticeships.
Valentino owed much of his success to his former lover and business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti. The two met in a café on the famed Via Condotti in Rome in 1960, where Valentino had opened his first couture studio.
They founded Valentino Company the same year, and its first ready-to-wear shop opened in Milan in 1969. Together, the pair built a fashion empire over five decades.
They separated romantically when Valentino was 30 but remained business partners and close friends. Valentino knew little about business and accounting before meeting Giammetti; together, they formed two parts of a whole — Giammetti the business mind, and Valentino the creative force.
"Valentino has a perfect vision of how a woman should dress," Giammetti told Charlie Rose in 2009. "He looks for beauty. Women should be more beautiful. His work is to make women more beautiful."
They sold the Valentino company in 1998 for nearly$300 million. It made $1.36 billion in revenue in 2021, according to Reuters.
Even after his retirement in 2008, he couldn't completely leave fashion behind and continued to design dresses for opera productions.
Once the fashion world became more accessible to the public, millions of aspiring fashionistas bought jeans, handbags, shoes, umbrellas and even Lincoln Continentals with his gleaming "V" monogram. By the peak of his career, Valentino's popularity would rival that of the pope's in Rome.
