Your starter pack for understanding LA’s housing crisis — and how to help solve it

You’ve seen the headlines and felt the squeeze: L.A. is deep in a housing crisis. For years, the housing shortage has driven rents and home prices higher and higher. The cost of living here has pushed many into homelessness. Over 75,000 people in L.A. County are unhoused, according to the latest count.

Experts agree that building more housing is essential to getting out of the crisis. But why does it seem like so much of what’s getting built in L.A. is luxury apartments? Where’s the affordable housing and how do we get more? Why does it take so long to build, and why aren’t elected officials doing more to turn old buildings into new housing?

LAist’s new newsletter series Building Your Block is here to help answer these questions and a lot more. The series is a starter pack for understanding the big picture of L.A.’s housing crisis. It also includes a guide to flexing your power to advocate for the housing future you want to see.

Who wrote the newsletter series

That would be me, Brianna Lee. I’m the civics and democracy producer for LAist. I spent years trying to understand the housing debates I was reading about online or in the news, but every time I finally seemed to grasp one part of it, I’d hear a new argument that would just bring up more questions and take me back to square one. When we asked readers to send us their questions about housing development, it was clear others were having the same experience, too.

Most of the time, my job involves making elections accessible through our voter guides, but when it comes to an issue like housing, there aren’t a ton of resources out there to make sense of it all. That's what this series is for.

What’s in the series

There are seven issues in this series, each tackling one big question around housing development. Here’s some of what you can expect:

• A breakdown of the big reasons why L.A. isn’t building enough affordable housing 
• Arguments for and against building luxury housing, along with what the research says 
• A guide to zoning, the rules that shape what can be built and where
• A look at why community opposition is so often able to block new development 

The series caps off with eight concrete ideas for how to take action and get involved with your community’s housing plans for the future.

Unlike other newsletter lists, we won’t keep popping up in your inbox. This is a limited-run series. Once you receive all seven issues, you’re all done.

Where to sign up

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