Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky is pushing Los Angeles to create a new development agency that would put thousands of underused city-owned properties to work generating housing, jobs and revenue.
Yaroslavsky, who represents parts of LA’s Westside, told The Post that nobody at City Hall is currently charged with scanning the city’s sprawling real estate holdings for better uses. “Nobody is looking at whether that land could be put to better use,” she said. “That’s not a criticism of those departments. Real estate is not their job. Economic development is not their job. But it should be someone’s job.”
Her office pointed to a Westside maintenance facility staffed by roughly a dozen employees as a prime example. “The prime westside land could potentially hold housing or businesses alongside the city operation,” the office said. “It could generate a ton of revenue.”
The city owns about 7,500 properties inside city limits, according to the controller’s office, though it once estimated the total closer to 9,000. The city has never published a total value for any of it.
Yaroslavsky wants LA to follow New York City’s lead, which operates an economic development corporation that works on city-owned property. New York is now advancing a plan to replace an aging government headquarters with nearly 4,000 homes, including about 1,000 permanently affordable apartments.
An LA agency could identify sites, negotiate with developers and assemble projects that individual departments would not pursue, Yaroslavsky’s office said. Some developments could pair market-rate apartments with affordable homes, using the former to help finance the latter.
The push builds on years of work by former City Controller Ron Galperin. In 2016, he mapped the city’s properties, flagged about 500 as underused and called for a chief asset manager. In 2019, he proposed a municipal development corporation after finding that responsibility for city real estate was scattered across departments. “I was stunned that the city didn’t even know what it owns,” Galperin told The Real Deal in 2019.
Galperin’s office combed through properties that the city’s own database listed as vacant. It found 26 sites covering roughly 1.7 million square feet, about 39 acres. The largest was nearly 400,000 square feet on South Clovis Avenue in South LA. Five parking lots in Lincoln Heights added about 200,000 more.
Even when the city decides it doesn’t need a piece of land, getting rid of it moves slowly. A May 2026 report to the City Council shows the General Services Department is still working from a list of 248 properties identified in a 2018 review. So far this fiscal year the city has sold three properties, for about $302,000 in General Fund revenue, with a fourth expected to close.
The same report recommends declaring 24 city-owned lots in Council District 11 surplus, also on the westside, calling them “the most valuable City properties.” Staff estimate the sales would bring in about $5.85 million.
The councilwoman’s effort comes as LA faces financial pressure. The city’s budget office projects that its most economy-sensitive taxes will grow 3.3% next year, below their historical average of 3.8%. Last fiscal year, revenue came in $160 million below what the adopted budget assumed. “It is imperative that we maintain the City’s long-term fiscal health at the forefront of our discussions,” City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo wrote this spring in his budget review.
Yaroslavsky’s office said it is now working with Galperin on a new proposal. “The City of LA owns billions of dollars of real estate,” Yaroslavsky said. “Some of it sits vacant, but most is just underutilized: one-story maintenance yards, parking lots, low-slung facilities. We should be following New York’s lead and start putting our land to work.”
Yaroslavsky’s office is drafting legislation to create the new agency.