Granny Flats Take on the Los Angeles Homelessness Crisis

The Los Angeles housing crunch has made affordable housing difficult to find in much of the city, a few programs are trying to address the issue by encouraging home owners to rent accessory dwelling units out of their back yards. "In separate pilot programs, officials are offering subsidies of between $10,000 and $30,000 to homeowners who commit to creating accessory dwelling units — more commonly called “granny flats” — and renting them out to the formerly homeless," Jennifer Medina and Inyoung Kang write for The New York Times.

The programs are in the pilot stages and would begin at a small scale. "It is unclear exactly how many units the city will pay for with this round of money, but much of the experiment will focus on just what it will take to convince homeowners that they should rent out their back houses to the homeless," report Medina and Kang.