LA’s vacant land could be turned into 225,000 new homes: report

The city of Los Angeles might have enough empty lots to build up to 225,000 homes or apartments, according to a new report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

Citing public data from city and county planning departments, the report speculated that many of these lots are surface parking facilities that could be used for housing or single houses on double lots, the New York Times reported.

Other lots include land that the city could sell and use for affordable housing.

California will need to build at least 3.5 million homes within the decade in order to keep up with projected population growth, according to the Times. But to reach that goal, the current pace of construction will have to more than triple, the report found. That could cost the state up to $140 billion.

At least a handful of privately owned surface parking lots are already in the process of being transformed into housing. In Central Hollywood, Rick Selby of R. W. Selby & Company is planning an 86-unit apartment complex on the corner of Las Palmas and Selma Avenues, while an anonymous private developer is planning a 196-unit building on a 19,000-square-foot parking lot Downtown. [NYT] — Cathaleen Chen