Joint development of parks and affordable housing combines public green space and low-income or public housing on a single site, or on different sites in the same area, to simultaneously address park poverty, housing insecurity, and climate change-related urban heat impacts.

While these problems are all distinct, they are connected, and addressing them requires determining how to use one of Los Angeles’s most scarce and valuable resources: land. Building on the Los Angeles’ Transit Oriented Communities Program, nonprofit organizations and government agencies in Los Angeles are piloting community-driven joint development projects that combine parks and affordable housing to create access to new housing and green space without displacing vulnerable communities.

This paper provides an overview of the joint development landscape in Los Angeles, focusing on how to create efficient and successful partnerships among the entities that build and maintain parks and affordable housing developments. After describing the barriers to building parks and affordable housing, the paper describes the key entities involved in these types of development projects, as well as each entity’s funding sources, major programs, strengths, and constraints.

The brief’s recommendations include 1) updating government approval processes and increasing funding for joint development projects; 2) creating and acquiring new sites for joint development projects; 3) improving stakeholder coordination and community engagement; and 4) creating sustainable, long-term sources of funding for operations and maintenance.

Download the brief.