Patrick Tighe Believes the Future of Los Angeles Is Affordable

Since as far back as the days of Garbo, Bogey, and the old Red Car trolley line, affordable housing in Los Angeles has typically meant one thing: new houses, most likely built in some previously undeveloped patch of dust and chaparral. There have always been apartments, of course—in particular the midcentury "dingbat" type, hoisted atop thin pilot is—and here and there a smattering of postwar public housing projects. Yet by and large, the area has remained the poster child for all-American sprawl, countering rising real estate costs by letting private developers follow the freeways, littering single-family homes along the way.