Mayor Garcetti’s plan to raise millions of dollars for affordable housing in Los Angeles by charging a new fee on real estate development looks like a foregone conclusion, says the head of the area’s largest trade group for builders. “This one’s a freight train,” said Randy Johnson, president of the Los Angeles/Ventura chapter of the Building Industry Association. “The mayor really wants it and there’s no one on the City Council that is going to go against it that I know of.” The mayor, who first proposed the fee in fall of 2015 as a way to fund the much-needed production of below-market rate housing, brought up his proposal again in his State of the City address last week. Garcetti urged the City Council to pass the fee “and do it now.”
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