April 16, 2015
Airbnb has been criticized for worsening LA's affordability's crisis, but could the short-term rental site actually help the situation?
"If we break it down the typical house in Los Angeles costs about $400,000 to build so you're looking at maybe 12 or 13 houses a year that could be built with a fund like this," said Richard Green, Director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
"Fundamentally, Los Angeles doesn't have the resources in order to provide the kind of subsidies that we would need to solve the problem. That would have to come from the federal level and there just doesn't seem to be a lot of willingness in Congress to do things like increase funding for the section 8 voucher program," said Green.