5 of 6 New LA Apartment Permits Are Nearly 100% Affordable

Of the six new-construction apartment permits the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety issued between Sept. 18 and Oct. 9, five are not market-rate housing at all. They are near-100%-affordable projects, most using density-bonus incentive programs. Across all six permits, 424 of 465 units, 91 percent, are income-restricted.

Why it matters

For a builder reading the Los Angeles permit queue right now, the signal is blunt: the incentive stack, not the standard entitlement path, is what is actually moving through LADBS. Programs like AB 1763, AB 2345, the city’s ED-1 executive directive, and LAMC 12.22.A.25 trade density and streamlined review for affordability commitments, and five separate project teams went nearly all-in on affordability in a three-week window. A market-rate project without that stack is now the minority in the queue. Whether that reads as a fast lane to copy or a market segment to avoid depends on a builder’s own numbers, but it is no longer a fringe path in this city.

The numbers

• 1025 S Crenshaw Blvd (permit 25010-10000-04418, issued Sept. 25): 7 stories, 70 units, 100% affordable, 55 low-income and 14 moderate-income, $8,025,000 declared.
• 4327 S Vermont Ave (permit 23010-10000-01459, issued Oct. 2): 5 stories, 188 one-bedroom units under ED-1 using AB 1763/AB 2345, 150 low-income and 37 moderate-income, $5,883,370 declared.
• 570 N Normandie Ave (permit 24010-10000-03855, issued Oct. 9): 5 stories, 60 units under LAMC 12.22.A.25, 1 very-low, 47 low-income, 11 moderate-income, 1 manager unit, $5,593,888 declared.
• 6144 N Hazelhurst Pl (permit 25010-10000-01465, issued Sept. 25): 4 stories, 49 units, no parking, 38 low-income and 10 moderate-income, $3,816,000 declared.
• 316 S Catalina St (permit 24010-10000-03137, issued Oct. 7): 5 stories, 57 units, 2 very-low, 45 low-income, 9 moderate-income, $3,500,000 declared.
• The exception: 5600 W Franklin Ave (permit 20010-10000-02776, issued Sept. 18), 4 stories, 41 units, only 5 set aside for extremely-low-income, 12 percent, the old minimum-set-aside model rather than 100% affordable, $8,426,000 declared.
• Excluded: 4720 W Oakwood Ave (permit 25010-10000-03434), coded as an apartment permit but filed as a 128-bed mental health rehabilitation center.

All dollar figures are applicant-declared job valuations, not sale prices or total project cost.

What’s next

Six permits over three weeks is suggestive, not proof. A pattern needs enough observations to be a pattern, and this one covers a single month of LADBS activity. The desk will keep tracking the next permit window to see whether the 100%-affordable share holds, or whether this cycle simply caught a cluster of projects timed to the same incentive deadlines.