I live and work in downtown Los Angeles. Daily, I pass vacant storefronts, empty historic buildings and surface parking lots where residential towers should be. Many already have entitlements for high-rise residential towers. But instead of homes, they sit empty, as monuments to bad incentives, civic dysfunction and a city implicitly choosing not to address its most pressing issues.

As co-founder of the DTLA Residents Association – a grassroots group that has engaged more than 4,000 residents in two years – I hear a constant refrain from fellow downtowners: make DTLA denser, more livable and better able to support long-term residents and families. That requires homes, amenities and customers that come with them.

Not growing DTLA in a city choked by housing costs is hard to defend. We’re already home to approximately 90,000 Angelenos – with room for many, many more. We’re already the city’s economic engine, generating about 40% of the city’s business and sales tax revenues. And we’re already the region’s biggest job center, its civic and cultural center, and the hub of its local and regional transit network. Most great cities invest in places like this. But in Los Angeles, DTLA is an afterthought.

That is a shame, because downtowns like ours are the future of California: dense, walkable and transit-rich. But that future is currently stalled. Remote work has weakened DTLA’s street-level economy, while costs and red tape have halted construction. Barring intervention, many proposed residential towers – approximately 30,000 units – will never break ground. For a city in the depths of a housing affordability crisis, this cannot be allowed to happen.

Downtown needs a recovery

State legislator Matt Haney’s bill, Assembly Bill 2074, would help. It’s more than a housing bill; it’s a downtown recovery bill.

The current challenge is financing. Los Angeles has permitted only 17.8% of its housing target, yet even permitted (i.e., ready-to-build) projects often can’t secure financing. High interest rates, taxes and rising fees mean high-rises don’t currently pencil. Supply stays low, prices stay high and workers are pushed farther and farther away from jobs to find housing they can afford. Car reliance in L.A. County surged from 33% in 2019 to 45% in 2024. That isn’t sustainable.

AB 2074 attacks both sides of the problem. Cities could designate a major transit hub – like 7th Street/Metro Center – where high-rise housing can be fast-tracked. It also creates a state-backed, low-interest loan fund, repaid as each project is completed – a practical way to turn entitled, transit-rich sites into homes, one downtown tower at a time.

The question is not whether Los Angeles will grow; it will. The question is whether growth happens where it does the most good and the least harm. The answer is DTLA. We’re built for this: transit-rich, job-rich and full of underused land that should become homes. Better yet: downtowners want more density. Let downtown do the work. We want to.

In vast Los Angeles, proximity is affordability. Living near work, transit and daily life saves money, avoids the stress (and cost) of driving, and supports neighborhood businesses. The numbers check out: DTLA residents spend 38% of their income on housing and transportation, compared to 50% citywide.

Density also keeps small businesses alive. In a post-Covid remote-work reality – with storefront vacancies hovering around 40% – cafés, bookstores, bars, and grocers can’t survive on reduced lunchtime office traffic alone. They need residents: people who buy coffee before work, pick up prescriptions after dinner, and become neighborhood regulars.

Building tall here also takes pressure off surrounding neighborhoods. Much of downtown’s infill opportunity is on parking lots, adaptive reuse projects and underused commercial sites, where housing can be built with far lower displacement risk. Every unit built here is one less bidding war in Boyle Heights, Pico-Union or elsewhere. That means market-rate housing too; Los Angeles can’t solve a regional shortage with subsidies alone; it needs new housing to give renters options and reduce bidding wars for older, cheaper homes. A recent Pew analysis found that every 10% increase in housing supply is associated with a 5% slowdown in rent growth over seven years. 

AB 2074 is also timely. In 2028, the Olympics will invite the world to visit DTLA. We can show a city in the middle of its comeback, or one refusing to grow into the city it already is.

Los Angeles has spent decades and billions building transit, cultural institutions, civic landmarks, and public infrastructure downtown. AB 2074 is how we finally build the housing to match – and give Los Angeles an urban core worthy of its people and future.

Leslie Ridings, a native Angeleno, is the co-founder of the Downtown LA Residents Association, which organizes and advocates for downtown L.A.’s 90,000 residents.