Reason: Affordable Housing Regulations Crushing New Home Construction in L.A.

When Los Angeles voters were considering Proposition JJJ—an initiative last year to mandate affordable housing requirements for new developments—critics from Habitat for Humanity to the Los Angeles Times warned that the measure would lead to less housing construction in one of America’s most expensive cities. Now that the law has passed and is in full effect, those warnings are being borne out. From March to June, developers submitted just 5,117 applications for new housing construction permits in the city, down from 9,226 for the same period last year, according to a study released by the Building Industry Association of Southern California (BIA).