LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency’s First $100M NOFA Sets the Stage for Larger-Scale Investments Ahead

Article Contributor: Edwin Peart, Senior Associate, Strategic Partnerships | Global Policy Leadership Academy

In April 2026, the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA) reached a milestone that had been years in the making: its board voted to approve just over $100 million in financing for 10 affordable housing developments expected to create approximately 554 below-market-rate homes across the county. The awards are drawn from LACAHSA’s inaugural Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) from the agency’s production, preservation, and ownership (PPO) funds, which opened in December 2025, making more than $200 million available across LA County. These 10 awards signal a profound shift in how Los Angeles County finances affordable housing.

LACAHSA provides Los Angeles with a single, independent agency with the authority, scale, and mandate to address its housing crisis as a unified countywide challenge, similar to initiatives such as the New York City Housing Development Corporation and the Bay Area Housing Finance Agency (BAHFA). In addition to providing a coordinated vision for the region and providing technical assistance and best-practice support, LACAHSA has the authority to raise revenues, implement programs, and build and own housing.

LACAHSA received 127 applications seeking roughly $1.5 billion for approximately 11,625 units, nearly eight times the funds available. This gap indicates that projects are pipeline-ready, and LACAHSA can now provide the financing infrastructure to facilitate them. Global Policy Leadership Academy (GPLA) served as LACAHSA’s inaugural policy and organizational consultant and continues to support the agency as it transitions into its next phase of implementation.

GPLA was embedded directly in LACAHSA’s leadership from the agency’s inception, beginning in February 2024 and supporting Holly Mitchell, Inaugural Chair Emeritus & Supervisor, Los Angeles County 2^nd District, through a leadership transition to Chair Rex Richardson, Chair & Mayor, City of Long Beach. Together with agency staff, GPLA provided governance infrastructure, operational systems, and strategic clarity to a brand-new agency that needed to move from legislative mandate to real action.

Key successes included:

• Securing the agency’s financial footing before significant funding. When LACAHSA funding Measure A passed in November 2024, LACAHSA faced a critical gap: revenue from the new sales tax would not begin accruing until April 2025. The GPLA team developed the budget analysis and financial justification underpinning LACAHSA’s request for a $6 million bridge loan from the LA County Board of Supervisors, approved on a motion by Supervisors Mitchell and Hahn, which funded the hires, systems, and engagement that made the first NOFA and emergency rental assistance possible.

• Building leadership infrastructure. GPLA staffed the Human Capital ad hoc committee through all three of its defining mandates: the search and selection of the Interim CEO; the appointment of the Inspector General; and the ongoing national search for LACAHSA’s permanent CEO. GPLA directly supported the onboarding of Interim CEO Ryan Johnson and Inspector General Bolivar Vilchez and staffed the Interim CEO through his first critical rounds of planning and hiring, ensuring the agency could build its team without losing momentum.

• Developing the policy and governance backbone. GPLA translated the agency’s founding vision, industry recommendations, and early board priorities into structured policy discussions starting in summer 2024, grounding the board in potential programs under the LACAHSA Act across the three P’s: production, preservation, and protection. The team facilitated the formation of four ad hoc policy advisory committees, developed and released the agency’s first public Request for Information in December 2024, synthesized the response, and fed findings into committees, producing the recommendations that shaped LACAHSA’s inaugural Expenditure Plan and Transitional Program Guidelines – the agency’s operational foundation.

• Creating the agency’s accountability framework. To ensure measurement of success, the team established LACAHSA’s baseline and target performance metrics, working with subject matter experts and aligned County efforts to analyze the LACAHSA Act and Measure A goals with Board and public priorities across housing production, preservation, and homelessness prevention. This resulted in accountability tools that allow the board, the Citizens’ Oversight Committee, and the public to track whether Measure A dollars are reaching the households that need them most.

• Ensuring public oversight. In May 2025, the team led the full outreach, recruitment, and competitive selection process for the inaugural 12-member Citizens’ Oversight Committee (COC), now permanently seated as the agency’s independent accountability body. LACAHSA cannot develop its funding guidelines or adopt an annual expenditure plan without COC involvement. Most importantly, the team ensured that the COC body included members representing the communities Measure A is meant to serve.

For the past year, GPLA has continued providing technical support to agency leadership and staffing LACAHSA’s standing committees – the Citizens’ Oversight Committee, the Renter Protection and Homelessness Prevention Committee, and the Investment Review Committee – working closely with committee chairs and the small but mighty teams working tirelessly to get dollars out into the region.

LACAHSA’s inaugural Production and Preservation NOFA opened in December 2025, making more than $200 million available through 10 distinct financing products, including predevelopment loans, construction financing, permanent loans, light rehabilitation, and operating subsidies. The NOFA was deliberately designed to provide a single financing stack, prioritizing projects ready to break ground within 12 months with clear cost-reduction strategies.

On April 15, 2026, the board approved just over $100 million for 10 projects, all without Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) financing. LIHTC and other project types will be presented at the May 13 board meeting. The ten developments span new construction and adaptive reuse from Boyle Heights to the San Fernando Valley.

The board additionally approved just over $150 million for 10 projects, a month later, nine Low Income Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects and one non-LIHTC project (subsidy-only project). This round of project awards totals 964 units and over $715 million in project costs. However, LACAHSA’s challenge remains to support the most competitive applicants without obligating funds for projects that may never receive state funding. This ensures cost containment and readiness while also providing the public benefit.

The Social Mortgage Bond: The Next Financing Frontier

This first NOFA was funded through Measure A operating revenues, but LACAHSA is already building the infrastructure to operate at a larger scale. In April 2026, staff presented a plan to issue LACAHSA’s inaugural Social Bond, with projected proceeds of $200 to $250 million and a potential follow-on issuance in 2028. The proposed structure combines tax-exempt and taxable bonds with fixed-rate financing and a 30-year final maturity, secured by a dedicated portion of Measure A revenues. This plan was authorized during the May 13, 2026, meeting, alongside final NOFA I project awards and an anticipated separate NOFA for Community Land Trust (CLT) / Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH).

The Social Bond promises to transform LACAHSA from an agency that deploys annual tax revenue into one that can capitalize on large-scale, long-term affordable housing investment, and is a testament to the leadership and execution that got the agency to this point.

In less than two years of active operation, LACAHSA is poised to demonstrate that a centralized regional housing finance agency can move faster, cost less, and reach farther than the fragmented system it replaces. The first NOFA established the model; the Social Mortgage Bond will scale it, and the CLT/NOAH program will extend it to preservation and community ownership strategies.

The GPLA team is honored to have helped build the foundation that made this moment possible, and even more energized about what comes next. The harder, more consequential work ahead is in designing the financing systems, building jurisdiction capacity, and establishing equity infrastructure that ensures Measure A’s benefits reach the communities that have been priced out, displaced, and left behind.

For more information about our work with LACAHSA or our approach to regional housing finance, please contact Natalie Donlin-Zappella at [email protected] or Edwin Peart at [email protected].

🔗 Learn more about LACAHSA’s Production and Preservation NOFA at lacahsa.gov

🔗 Read the Social Bond and NOFA I Milestones report