The City of West Hollywood has prioritized the 4,145 new names it has added to its inclusionary housing wait list, which now contains a total of 5,000 applicants. There currently are eight affordable units available to rent.
Last month the city held a “virtual lottery” that decided where those who applied and have qualified to be on the waiting list would rank. “The lottery was an automated randomization of the current interest list and was run three times and finalized,” said Alicen Bartle, project development administrator in the city’s Rent Stabilization and Housing Division. “The final results were added to the end of our existing housing waitlist which is used to fill available rental units in the inclusionary housing program.”
Those who applied by now have received notice of their place on the waiting list. You don’t have to live or work in West Hollywood to be placed on the list. However, preference is given to those who do. One’s priority on the list is determined by the following factors:
- Current West Hollywood residents
- Senior and disabled households, including those with HIV/AIDS
- Persons who have been displaced by removal of the unit from the rental market
- Households that are rent-burdened, defined as rent being more than 50% of gross household income
- People living in over-crowded quarters, defined as more than two persons per bedroom
- Persons currently working within the city.
- Households whose current rent significantly exceeds inclusionary rent and who have declined units on more than one occasion.
Affordable housing includes that for people with very low, low, and moderate incomes, which are determined as a percentage of the median income for the area. Developers of projects of ten or more units are required to make at least 20% of them affordable. One West Hollywood resident who is on the wait list and is a senior, HIV positive, and rent-burdened shared his ranking with WEHOville. He is No. 2,474 on the list.
If close to 20% of West Hollywood’s population is struggling to pay rent perhaps many of the City Council’s priorities are misplaced. During the AKA West Hollywood litigation it became apparent that the City failed to monitor to insure that this projects affordable units were even filled. In the meantime Pali house’s affordable units somehow got lost in the mix. Just saying you have a commitment to affordable housing is not enough when the City approves demolition of rent controlled buildings to help commercial developers, (the Edition, Center for Early Education) or fail to aggressively defend long term tenants from… Read more »
What about city workers that were chosen before others years ago to live in Affordable units in the Hancock loft building still there to this day? Fraud ? Corruption ? Very bad optics if nothing else.
I question the approved City Affordable Housing Developer building in Los Angeles, are they not able to move people off this list?
Are you referring to the West Hollywood Community Housing Corporation (WHCHC), the non-profit affordable housing developer headquartered in West Hollywood? If you are, these are, for the most part, not the units the article is talking about. Each of those buildings have their own lists, usually lists specific to each building. The article above is referring to the affordable units that are built by developers throughout the City that are a result of the City’s mandatory Inclusionary Housing set aside.
What about the people in cash businesses who lie on their application – does an application also include verification ? There’s a bit of fraud going on, I know a few people in affordable units that do not deserve to be there.