Around 2016 I made a chart which showed the number of units in the city of LA by the decade in which the homes were built. The purpose of the chart was to show that the “housing boom” we’d been talking about was no boom at all, by historical standards. We were on track to build far less than 100,000 units by the end of 2019, the same as we’d done the previous two decades. By comparison, we built between 150,000 and 250,000 units per decade from 1940 to the end of the 1980s.
The earlier chart still works just fine, but it’s simple enough to update the data so I’ve provided the newer chart here. As of 2019, only about 15% of LA’s housing stock was less than 30 years old. We’ve been coasting on the investments made by previous generations for a long, long time.
Here’s the chart with data up to 2019:
One note: These numbers represent existing units, so you need to take into account that some older buildings were torn down for redevelopment or other purposes between the time they were built and the time this data was collected. The actual construction numbers during earlier decades would be somewhat higher than the “existing units” figures.
Another note: I was asked to add the city’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) target for the 2020s, which is being incorporated into our housing element right now. It really illustrates how much needs to change if we’re going to meet the goal of more than 450,000 new units over an eight-year period:
