The urban wildfires have only sharpened Los Angeles’ long-term affordable housing crisis. While the region mobilizes for cleanup and rebuilding, the need for equitable, large-scale opportunities for housing is even more urgent now. The numbers of newly homeless people are still uncounted, while the number of structures lost is estimated to be more than 9,000.

Fire zone rebuilding aside, long-proposed solutions include everything from creating time-efficient modular supportive housing, to increasing density and reforming the approval process. But few developments have made a serious dent in the unhoused population. One such success is evolving at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration (VA) campus. Another is the redevelopment of the Jordan Downs public housing community in South Los Angeles.

Both places offer rare advantages: They are large enough to accommodate hundreds of new housing units, they can leapfrog development hurdles and they benefit from careful community planning.

Projected to be the largest supportive housing community for Veterans in the U.S., the VA campus is emerging as a thriving neighborhood of 1,700 residences on 80 acres for nearly 3,000 veterans and their families. As summarized in a recent Affordable Housing Policy Brief published by UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, that neighborhood is piloted by The Veterans Collective, a consortium of two affordable housing developers (Century Housing and Thomas Safran & Associates) plus U.S. VETS, the national services and advocacy group devoted to preventing and ending Veteran homelessness. And this is just one component of a swiftly evolving plan within the larger campus, an exceptionally ample 388 acres.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter recently ruled that the VA must build more than 2,500 additional homes for low-income and homeless veterans, plus a town center with commercial services.

The new housing is already having an impact. The most recent Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported a 22.9% decline in unhoused Vets (approximately 4,000), compared to a 2.2% reduction for general homelessness. Veterans comprise a disproportionate share of L.A. County’s unhoused population. Providing for them not only lifts them from homelessness, but it also frees up shelter, homes and services elsewhere for other needy populations.

Valuable advice

These advances are aided by ULI Los Angeles, a district council of the Urban Land Institute. The Veterans Advocacy Group of America requested that ULI Los Angeles conduct one of its beneficial Technical Advisory Panels (TAP). Such panels are guided by ULI’s high-level professionals volunteering their expertise to help solve thorny development problems.

In the cases of both the VA Campus and the Jordan Downs redevelopment, the masterplan supports a vision for the overall development and creates a system for implementing it.

“It provides the developers a vehicle to make thoughtful decisions based in sound economic design and infrastructure principles,” said ULI TAP member Marty Borko, former Executive Director at ULI Los Angeles. “It also provides transparency and accountability that encourages buy-in from the community and other stakeholders.”

Jordan Downs

This dynamic is also uplifting Jordan Downs in Watts. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) oversees redevelopment of one of the largest and oldest public housing communities in the U.S. The masterplan is producing over 1,500 new affordable units, as well as market-rate housing for ownership opportunities – a crucial means for needy families to build wealth. Already emerging over multiple phases, the new Jordan Downs includes a 115,000 square foot neighborhood retail center, 45,000 square feet of commercial and amenity spaces, a large community center, and nine acres of new parks running through the center of the community. 

“The masterplan community outreach at Jordan Downs has been some of the most robust and holistic I have seen in my entire career,” said Leandro Tyberg, President of Primestor Development, Inc., who implemented the plan for HACLA along with housing developers The Michaels Organization and BRIDGE Housing Corp. “The original Jordan Downs apartments were built in the 1940s as temporary housing for workers during World War II, and they were then converted into public housing in the 1950s. The original planners didn’t design the project to include concepts such as family amenities, recreational space, essential services, job opportunities, sustainability and transportation.”

One of the most significant affordable housing phases at Jordan Downs, named Kalmia Rose, opens early 2025. Developed by Bridge Housing, the housing and land planning here is by KTGY, which has designed multiple affordable developments across the city.

“KTGY is often involved in the planning and design of large residential communities, but Jordan Downs is at scale that is truly transformative,” said KTGY Principal Keith McCloskey. “When completed, the investment made in this community will result in hundreds of new residential units, new commercial space, public open space and recreation opportunities that will infuse new life into Watts and broader surrounding neighborhoods of Los Angeles. It will fill a need for urgently needed safe and affordable housing for existing and new residents at a scale that is unprecedented in the L.A. region.”

In addition to rental housing, the expansion will also include for-sale affordable homes in future phases to enhance the diversity of housing opportunities within the specific plan.

The program mix also includes educational sites and urban farming. The long-awaited completion of Jordan Downs not only addresses the city’s housing crisis at a dramatic scale but will “offer a complete community with uniquely diverse residential experiences, all integrated with open space, parks and connecting paseos.”

In other words, real solutions grounded in a real place, at a time when Los Angeles needs it more than ever.

Jack Skelley serves on the Advisory Board of ULI Los Angeles.