The L.A. City Council's Housing Committee has voted to move forward with plans to building affordable housing on behind the Westlake Theatre.

On June 26, the committee approved a staff recommendation from the Housing and Community Investment Department to begin negotiating the sale of a city-owned property at 619-633 S. Westlake Avenue to the Cesar Chavez Foundation, which intends to construct an affordable and permanent supportive housing project on the land.

Per a staff report to the Housing Committee, the project is imagined as a 77-unit development - featuring one-, two-, and three-bedroom dwellings - priced for households earning at or below 30 and 60 percent of the area median income.  Plans call for 39 residential units to be reserved as permanent supportive housing for homeless households.  The project, in accordance with the Tier IV incentives of the Transit Oriented Communities guidelines, would not include parking.

LOHA is designing the proposed development, which is depicted as a contemporary five-story edifice.  The design concept was "based on a set of building blocks," stacked to provide a semi-public park space at the center of the property.  Other project features would include a community kitchen, a tot lot, a central laundry facility, music practice rooms, a dance studio, and visual arts space.

The project would cost approximately $47 million, according to an application by the Cesar Chavez Foundation for Measure HHH funds.  The developer is seeking $4.2 million in HHH dollars, and would obtain the remaining balance from other sources.

The full City Council is scheduled to consider the item on July 3.

Interested in finding affordable housing? Visit housing.lacity.org.