The State of Los Angeles County Housing and Neighborhoods (SOLACHAN) is a comprehensive, data-driven examination of the region’s housing and demographic landscape. This annually-recurring report from Neighborhood Data for Social Change (NDSC), an initiative of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, provides a nuanced look at key indicators of housing access, affordability, and inequality across Los Angeles County. The analyses highlight the longstanding structural challenges underlying the county’s housing crisis and the recent shifts that are intensifying them. Overall, the report underscores the need for bold solutions, implemented through cross-jurisdictional and cross-sectoral partnerships.
Key Findings
Housing Supply: Slow but Meaningful Progress, with Modest Gains in Affordability
Between 2018 and 2025, only around 179,400 new units were certified for occupancy countywide, but there are signs of progress: 19% of new renter units built in 2025 were affordable to low-income households, nearly double the 10% affordability rate seen over the prior seven years. Another bright spot is Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), which have driven a large share of new unit growth in recent years, despite a slight dip in overall production in 2025. Moreover, Permanent Supportive Housing units – which are reserved for the most housing-precarious Angelenos, many of whom have physical or mental health conditions – have increased substantially, with the number of beds up nearly 70% since 2017, fueled by a sizable increase in 2025.
Despite this progress, the county continues to fall well short of its state-mandated housing goals. Moreover, subsidized housing remains scarce and unevenly distributed across L.A. County: only 6.7% of the county’s rental stock is federally or state-subsidized, far below peer metros like New York, with a large share of these units concentrated in low-income neighborhoods.
Population Characteristics: A Post-Pandemic Rebound, but Fewer Young Families
After nearly a decade of decline, exacerbated by pandemic-era disruptions, Los Angeles County’s population grew again in 2024, adding roughly 100,000 residents. The county’s foreign-born population is rebounding as well, rising to 3.32 million in 2024 (up 2.4% from 2023) and accounting for about a third of county residents, more than double the national share.
Despite these encouraging top-line numbers, the share of the population under 24 has continued to fall; now just 24% of Los Angeles County households are families with children. This figure is below both the state and national averages – a stark shift from a decade ago when Los Angeles County’s share of households with children exceeded the national average. Mirroring national trends, the number of single-person households in the county, which had been climbing for decades, began to decline in 2024.
Homeowners: A Market Stuck in Place
Homeownership rates in Los Angeles County remain far lower than they are in the rest of California and the country, and dropped to a near 54-year low in 2025. Homeownership rate declines in the county are occurring among all income groups over the past decade, with middle-income households experiencing the steepest drops. Historically low mortgage demand in the county may play a key role; application levels are lower than in the years following the Great Recession. Against this backdrop, racial disparities in homeownership rates remain stubbornly large, though there was one bright spot in 2025: the Black homeownership rate in Los Angeles County increased after several years of steady decline.
Residential mobility rates among existing homeowners are also tumbling to historic lows, further calcifying the market: 45% of homeowners have lived in their homes more than 20 years, compared to 36% statewide and 33% nationally, a dynamic reinforced by Proposition 13’s property tax incentives and one that limits the turnover of homes available to new buyers. A growing, though still small, share of younger homeowners hold no mortgage at all, a pattern that may reflect a rise in inherited, already paid-off homes rather than expanded access to homeownership.
Renters: More High Earners Renting, More Low Earners Burdened
Amid mounting barriers to homeownership, high-income households (i.e., those earning $150,000) are residing in rental units at considerably higher rates than a decade ago. This shift has coincided with greater strains in rental unaffordability for lower-income households. In 2024, 57% of the county’s renters were cost-burdened, and 30% were severely burdened (spending more than 30% or 50% of their income on rent, respectively). These rates climb to a staggering 92% and 70%, respectively, among renter households earning under $50,000. Cost burden is also creeping up the income scale: severe rent burden among renters earning $50,000–$100,000 doubled over the past decade, from 7% to 14%.
Rent burden incidence in the county diverges sharply by race and ethnicity and by age. Black renters consistently face the highest rent burden levels in the county, with Hispanic/Latino renters facing the second highest, though each group’s trends have diverged in recent years. Hispanic/Latino renters have seen the fastest improvement in rent burden of any race/ethnic group over the past decade, while burden among Black renters has continued to rise unabated. Older adult renters remain especially vulnerable; two-thirds of them were cost-burdened in 2024.
Houseless Angelenos: Numbers Stabilize, But Unsheltered Rates Stay High
After more than a decade of steady increases, homelessness in Los Angeles County has leveled off: the 2025 count fell 5% to under 67,800 people and held flat into 2026. Although the total number of unsheltered Angelenos is at a ten-year low, this population constitutes roughly two-thirds of unhoused Angelenos — nearly double the national rate. A growing share of the unhoused now live in vehicles rather than on the street or in tents. This subpopulation residing in vehicles is distinct from the broader unsheltered population: more likely to be women, older, and employed, and less likely to report chronic homelessness, mental illness, or substance use. Women, who account for 1 in 3 unhoused Angelenos, are also far more likely to be sheltered than unsheltered.
Reflecting a longstanding pattern, Black Angelenos remain overrepresented among the county’s unhoused population. Hispanic/Latinos, on the other hand, constitute a similar share of the unhoused population as they do the overall population of Los Angeles County, yet the former share has risen since the pandemic, consistent with national trends. The vast majority of unhoused Angelenos were housed in Los Angeles County before losing their homes, and just 1% were last housed outside the United States. It follows that the current crisis is rooted in local housing affordability rather than migration from other counties or countries.
Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing in Los Angeles County: Measuring an Aging but Critical Supply
Each year, SOLACHAN will feature a special chapter on a distinct aspect of Los Angeles County’s housing landscape. This year’s chapter examines naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) — unsubsidized rental housing that remains affordable through market dynamics rather than public subsidy. This source of affordable housing units is often overlooked because, unlike subsidized units, there is no clear consensus on how to identify and quantify them.
In partnership with the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, NDSC developed an original classification scheme based on the age and size of multifamily buildings with 5 or more rental units, which together make up 1.08 million of the county’s 1.85 million occupied rental units. We identify approximately 809,000 NOAH units across three tiers: Core NOAH (460,000 units, in the smallest and oldest buildings) accounts for roughly a quarter of the county’s entire rental stock, while Expanded (248,000 units) and Marginal (101,000 units) NOAH make up progressively larger, somewhat less affordable buildings. This stock, distributed unevenly across every submarket in the county, charges meaningfully lower rents than units in newer construction. Since subsidized housing cannot be built quickly enough to replace it, NOAH units are essential to sustaining what affordability the county’s rental market still has. Renter-level data show that the racially and economically diverse tenants that reside in these units remain cost-burdened across all three NOAH tiers: 35% of income spent on rent in Core NOAH and approximately 40% in Expanded and Marginal, suggesting that NOAH lowers cost burdens without eliminating them. Preservation and continued investment in subsidized housing and income supports are thus all crucial, complementary strategies.
Conclusion
Los Angeles County enters this year on somewhat different footing than in years past. After a decade of population decline, the county is growing again. After more than a decade of rising homelessness, the crisis has begun to level off. And after years of worsening housing affordability, 2025 saw the highest share of new affordable rental construction on record. These are not signs that the region’s housing and homelessness crises are behind it — the scale of underproduction, racial inequity, and economic exclusion documented throughout this report remains substantial — but they are real, measurable indications that sustained investment and policy attention are beginning to make an impact.
Recent developments suggest this initial momentum can be sustained and built upon. Measure A has become a permanent source of local funding for deeply affordable and supportive housing, while LACAHSA continues to coordinate bold, innovative housing solutions across jurisdictional lines. And SOLACHAN will help propel these efforts by providing high-quality data and developing new tools, such as a method for estimating the total number of naturally occurring affordable housing units in the county. Preserving these units will be critical to supporting affordability at scale.
This year’s progress shows that sustained investment moves the needle. The task now is for a cross-sectoral coalition of leaders to build on it, so that all Angelenos — regardless of income, race, or neighborhood — have a stable place to call home.
