Los Angeles is taking an unconventional approach to its housing crisis by roping the city's real estate talent into a competition that aims to transform thousands of small lots into starter homes.
Public officials may open up underutilized properties across the city to developers through a partnership with the University of California, Los Angeles, the nonprofit LA4LA and the region's building community. The design competition, called Small Lots, Big Impacts, calls on architects, designers and developers to create innovative and cost-effective housing solutions.
The competition is the latest city initiative to address California’s affordable housing crisis by making room for 450,000 new units by 2029. The city's average rents of $2,311 are among the highest in the country, outpacing the national average by 32%, but Los Angeles isn't alone in its efforts to increase affordability. Other U.S. cities are getting creative in their housing strategies, from offering incentives for office-to-housing conversions to easing up on zoning laws to spur more development.
Los Angeles, on the heels of passing an ordinance focused on clearing red tape to boost housing density, is calling on professionals and students to submit designs for compact, sustainable homes that can be built quickly and affordably. Winners will have the opportunity to work with development teams to bring their ideas to life on city-owned lots, part of a larger goal to set a precedent for future private-sector projects.
Historically, thousands of small parcels across Los Angeles have been deemed too difficult or expensive to develop. Many of these lots, byproducts of the city’s midcentury zoning laws, sit vacant or underutilized in residential neighborhoods. Small Lots, Big Impacts challenges the assumption that these sites are infeasible, instead proposing that creative design and streamlined development can turn them into housing, according to Dana Cuff, the director of CityLab UCLA.
“Los Angeles is in dire need of more affordable and dignified housing to confront our housing crisis,” Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in a statement. “With thousands of small lots sitting underutilized, this initiative creates a unique opportunity to create resilient, affordable starter homes that working Angelenos can actually afford.”
Designing the future of city-owned land
The Small Lots, Big Impacts competition will take place in two stages, beginning with a design phase open to architects, designers and students. Participants will be asked to submit proposals for housing on a selection of city-owned small lots.
There are tens of thousands of such lots located throughout Los Angeles, under a quarter acre in size and zoned for residential development.
Submissions should demonstrate not only architectural creativity but also cost efficiency, a quick construction timeline and resilience in the face of climate and economic pressures.
The competition is organized around two site categories. The first, Gentle Density, focuses on small-scale multifamily housing on infill lots, while the second, Shared Future, seeks to revive mid-rise, missing-middle housing that Los Angeles once embraced but has since abandoned, according to Cuff.
A panel of judges will evaluate entries based on five criteria: staying power, livability, performance and replicability, resilience, and adaptability. Winners will be selected in both student and professional categories, with top student entries receiving cash prizes. Up to 20 professional winners will be invited to participate in the second phase of the competition, which pairs architects with developers to bring projects from concept to construction.
Following the design competition, the city will issue a request for qualifications to identify development teams capable of building housing prototypes on the selected small lots. These projects will serve as real-world test cases, demonstrating how compact housing can be built efficiently while maintaining high standards of design and livability. The city plans to make lessons from the initiative publicly available, creating an open-source blueprint for future small-lot development in and outside of the region.
Organizers hope the competition will attract fresh thinking on urban housing and inspire broader adoption of innovative infill development.
“We need to see what’s possible for L.A.’s near future,” Cuff said. “By bringing together the best architects, developers, and builders, we can invent a new generation of ‘SoCal starter homes’ that provide dignity and joy while respecting the environment.”