Staff Reports
Los Angeles is talking about new taxes and fees again — and rightly so, people are asking why the city doesn’t first take a hard look at the goldmine it already owns. This week Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky pushed a simple, sensible idea: inventory the city’s underused land and create a dedicated development vehicle, modeled on New York’s Economic Development Corporation, to turn idle parcels into revenue, jobs and housing.
Yaroslavsky’s pitch: stop letting land gather dust
“The City of LA owns billions of dollars of real estate. Some of it sits vacant, but most is just underutilized: one‑story maintenance yards, parking lots, low‑slung facilities. We should be following New York’s lead and start putting our land to work,” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said. She’s proposing a centralized asset‑management and development entity and is reportedly working with former City Controller Ron Galperin on the plan. The numbers are eye‑opening: auditors and controller mappings point to roughly 7,500 city‑owned parcels in various inventories, yet there’s no single published market valuation. Meanwhile the General Services Department is still largely using a 2018 candidate list of about 248 sites.
Why this matters to taxpayers and housing
For years city leaders have asked Angelenos to accept higher fees or taxes to pay for services and housing. But three property sales this fiscal year brought in only about $302,000 to the general fund — not exactly the treasure haul politicians imply when they tell voters to open their wallets. If the city really wants new revenue and housing, it should stop taxing transactions that slow development and start using the assets it already owns. That won’t be free or instant: California’s Surplus Land Act prioritizes affordable housing for surplus sites, and many parcels are legally or operationally off limits (airports, utilities, parks, police facilities).
Can it work? Yes — if the city gets serious
Turning county yards and parking lots into housing or mixed‑use projects sounds great in a speech, but it takes appraisal work, zoning fixes, CEQA reviews, and often the relocation of city operations — all things that trip up government projects. The practical steps are obvious: build a true, up‑to‑date inventory; publish valuations; do a legal and zoning filter to see what’s fungible; cost out a municipal development corporation; and plan for ground leases, rentals, or sales with smart public oversight. If LA creates a new agency, make it lean, accountable, and staffed by people who have actually built things, not just written memos about them. Bureaucrats haven’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt.
Bottom line: inventory first, tax last
If City Hall insists we need more revenue, the first question should be: what are we sitting on? Yaroslavsky’s proposal is the right place to start. Before asking residents to pay more, Los Angeles should catalog its holdings, be honest about legal limits, cost potential solutions, and then choose the path that protects taxpayers while creating homes and jobs. In other words: stop reaching into citizens’ pockets and start unlocking the assets the city already owns.
