A single-family home in Los Feliz is poised to give way to an affordable housing building.
An application filed with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning outlines a proposal to demolish an existing house at 1756 North Serrano Avenue and replace it with a six-story structure featuring 40 studio and one-bedroom apartments, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. Emilson founder George Khodaverdian is listed as both the architect and owner’s representative for the project, while Eugene Vdovychenko is listed as the project applicant.
The project site is near the Hollywood/Western subway station in Los Feliz, opening the door for the applicant to utilize transit-oriented development incentives. The development will be 100 percent affordable, making it eligible for development bonuses through Los Angeles’ Citywide Housing Incentive Program. Under Executive Directive 1, enacted more than three years ago, applications for 100 percent affordable projects can skip the lengthy public hearings process and avoid city council votes, often reducing approval timelines to just a few weeks in most cases.
Emilson’s affordable housing proposal would join other such developments in the area. Nearby just off Hollywood Boulevard, an affordable housing project was recently completed on a former parking lot site, according to Urbanize. Another multifamily project at 1666 North Vermont Avenue is underway at a former car wash site. Like the Serrano Avenue proposal, because that project is near a Metro station, it will benefit from transit-oriented development incentives; the developer, Benny Pirian of Vermont Real Estate, will be allowed to build larger than zoning rules typically allow in exchange for designating 16 of the units for extremely-low-income households.
Developers in Los Angeles are increasingly valuing affordable housing construction over market-rate production. In the years after the pandemic’s outbreak, L.A. ranked among the top 10 cities nationwide in affordable housing production, with more than 9,400 income-restricted units completed between 2020 and 2024, per RentCafe. The affordable residences accounted for more than 20 percent of all multifamily construction in Greater Los Angeles during those years — one of the highest proportions of affordable units to overall new construction in the country.
— Chris Malone Méndez
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