Local WorkSO CAL
Changing the Rules That Hold Housing Back
From Sacramento to city halls across Southern California, the Housing Action Coalition fights to make it faster, easier, and less expensive to build homes. And holds local governments accountable to state housing law.
Our Policy Strategy for the Region
The Housing Action Coalition works to end California's housing shortage by reforming the rules that govern how, where, and what kind of housing gets built. In Southern California, that means a dual-track strategy: advancing pro-housing reforms at the city, county, and regional level, while making sure that state laws already on the books are properly implemented on the ground and regularly updated in Sacramento to address homebuilders’ needs.
We bring together the developers, architects, attorneys, labor partners, and community organizations who build multifamily housing with the policymakers who shape it, and we turn that shared expertise into research, testimony, advocacy campaigns, and, when cities break the law, formal enforcement action.
Year 1 Impact
Pro-housing policy succeeds when people speak up. Here's how you can help move our campaigns. We’ve been a leading voice on reforming transfer taxes, fixing the energization process for new multifamily housing, and effectively implementing state laws around transit-oriented development and post-entitlement permit streamlining.
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City of Los Angeles
Los Angeles is the center of gravity for California's housing shortage and the policy fights that will determine whether we build our way out. HAC works at City Hall to expand where homes can be built, cut the costs and delays imposed by government, and defend the reforms that make new housing possible.
SB 79: Transit-Oriented Upzoning
As LA has begun implementing California's new transit-oriented upzoning law, HAC fought for and won improved development standards, including removing density limits and parking requirements from the city’s new Low Rise Ordinance, that turn new zoning into homes people can actually build near transit.
Measure ULA: Transfer Tax Reform
HAC is a leading voice in the Affordable LA: Mend It, Don't End It coalition effort to reform LA's real estate transfer tax by removing the disincentives holding back new multifamily home construction while preserving funding for affordable housing and homelessness programs. We helped build a broad reform coalition, mobilized thousands of Angelenos to take action, and served as an analytical resource on the tax's unintended consequences for journalists and policymakers. Read the research.
LADWP Energization Reform
Utility connection delays are one of the costliest hidden barriers to new multifamily housing in LA, routinely adding unexpected delays of months to years to a project's timeline. HAC’s work, in coalition with Abundant Housing Los Angeles and the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, helped secure LA Mayor Karen Bass's Executive Directive 19, which includes a New Business Task Force charged with fixing the LA Department of Water and Power’s energization process. HAC is currently engaging with LADWP and the Mayor’s office to help inform these efforts and enact meaningful reform.
The Million Homes Coalition
HAC is a member of the Million Homes campaign to legalize more townhomes, condos, and small multi-unit buildings across LA. In a city where roughly 70% of residential land is reserved for single-family homes and the median home price tops $1 million, the campaign is fighting to expand desperately-needed entry-level homeownership opportunities in LA's high-resource neighborhoods.
Missing Middle LA
HAC is engaging with LA City Planning’s initiative to streamline the City’s review process and remove barriers to building smaller, neighborhood-scale homes. The program aims to implement and build upon recent state laws allowing duplexes, small-lot townhomes, and for-sale of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in all residential zones, and HAC is fighting to make sure the program is successful in incentivizing these “missing middle” housing typologies.
Los Angeles County
Across the county's many cities, HAC works to make housing approvals faster and more predictable — and to hold cities accountable when they use fees, process, or delay to block homes state law requires them to allow.
Single-Stair Reform in Culver City
HAC played a key political and technical role in Culver City's landmark reform allowing single-stair apartment buildings up to six stories — a design that makes better, more affordable homes possible. Culver City remains the only city in California authorized to permit this typology, and HAC is building the case to take the reform statewide.
Ministerial Streamlining in West Hollywood
HAC's direct advocacy helped move West Hollywood toward making the vast majority of code-compliant housing projects across the city ministerial — removing discretionary delay and creating a replicable playbook for other LA County jurisdictions.
Holding Beverly Hills to the Law
Beverly Hills has long built far less than its fair share of housing. HAC has pressed the city to comply with the Housing Accountability Act on a wave of “builder's remedy” projects — including 8844 Burton Way (200 homes, 22 affordable) and three mixed-use developments on Olympic Boulevard and South Beverly Drive (300-plus homes, 60-plus affordable) — steering the city away from unlawful housing denials that carry serious financial and legal consequences.
Fighting Fee-Based Exclusion in Manhattan Beach
When Manhattan Beach proposed huge hikes in its development impact fee program in response to new multifamily housing applications, HAC filed formal objections, warning that the new fees function as a backdoor constraint on housing that should invalidate the city's state-certified Housing Element.
Fighting for Transit & Housing in Burbank
HAC is advocating to reverse the city of Burbank's illegal refusal to permit LA Metro’s North Hollywood–Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit line, which will unlock new transit-oriented zoning standards and allow the city to meet its serious housing needs.
The Broader SCAG Region
HAC's policy work reaches across the six-county region served by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), shaping regional planning decisions and holding outlying cities accountable to state law.
Getting the SB 79 Maps Right
When SCAG proposed transit maps that would have excluded many qualifying stops from the state's new upzoning law, HAC and its coalition partners raised the alarm with state housing regulators. Prompted by that advocacy, SCAG revised its methodology and restored the majority of omitted stops, protecting housing capacity around transit across the region.
Enforcing State Law in the Inland Empire
HAC intervened against the Chino's Planning Commission’s effective denial of a 210-home infill project — with none of the findings state law requires — pressuring the City Council to approve the project and filing a complaint with the state.
Defending Vested Housing in Orange County
When a fully entitled 181-home development in unincorporated Orange County faced a last-minute appeal, HAC urged the Board of Supervisors to reject it, successfully arguing that anything less than full approval would destroy the legal certainty every housing development depends on and expose the County to liability under the Housing Accountability Act.
Recent News from the So Cal Area
How We Engage
HAC's influence rests on showing up — with member-informed technical advice for policymakers and expert testimony, public comment, and formal advocacy letters at the hearings and rulemakings where housing policy is decided. Explore our active campaigns and add your voice: HAC on Action Network
This page is updated quarterly.