The City of West Hollywood has received a $150,000 funding award from SCAG, the Southern California Association of Governments, which aims to support the City’s efforts to achieve housing goals. Funding is part of SCAG’s allocation of $45 million in Lasting Affordability Program funding in support of 14 innovative housing finance projects across Southern California.
The $150,000 SCAG grant for the City of West Hollywood will be dedicated to a feasibility study for the creation of a community land trust within West Hollywood. The City’s Long Range Planning Division will explore the creation of a community land trust to expand approaches for achieving affordable housing and affordable homeownership. The anticipated outcome from forming such a community land trust includes progress toward meeting the City’s objective of creating 500 new affordable housing units by 2029.
The Lasting Affordability Program is one of the three funding areas in the Programs to Accelerate Transformative Housing (PATH) program, which is part of SCAG’s REAP 2.0 Program Framework. REAP 2.0 is a statewide grant administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) that aims to accelerate progress towards state housing goals and climate commitments. It makes $45,000,000 available to support programmatic level investments in housing trust funds, community land trusts, and catalyst funds.
The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is the nation’s largest metropolitan planning organization, representing six counties, 191 cities and nearly 19 million residents. SCAG undertakes a variety of planning and policy initiatives to plan for a livable and sustainable Southern California now and in the future. For more information about SCAG’s regional efforts, please visit www.scag.ca.gov.
For more information about this project and Long Range Planning in the City, please contact Francisco Contreras, the City of West Hollywood’s Long Range Planning Manager at (323) 848-6874 or at [email protected].
So, $150,000 is going to help come up with ideas no one has ever thought of before?
Doesn’t sound feasible.
Another consultant project. Why can’t the folks hired on Cuty Staff do some critical thinking?
A community land trust might be a great idea.
Looking forward to more information.
It might be a better idea in a City with more space rather than one where everyone seems anxious to develop. This just seems like money misdirected toward an affluent City when other cities could probably put these sort of program to a more effective use. West Hollywood is one of the few cities valiantly working toward our housing goals and actually seeing results. A Land Trust in West Hollywood looks like another solution in search of a problem.