Mayor Forms Special CRA Panel on Housing

In a move that is expected to give additional clout to affordable housing advocates, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday created a special housing committee within the Community Redevelopment Agency to direct the agency’s housing efforts.

The committee will be overseen by newly appointed CRA board member Carlyle Hall, a public interest attorney who is expected to advocate an agency-wide shift away from commercial development and toward programs to help low-income and working poor families.

Details on who will serve on the committee and how it will function have not been announced.

Bradley, who has made the city’s affordable housing crisis one of his key issues in the past two years, noted that 40,000 Los Angeles families “live in garages. An equal number are said to be homeless.”