L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Defends Her Housing Record as City Scores Worst for Affordability

As Los Angeles ranks as the nation's least affordable major metro, Mayor Karen Bass is vigorously defending her housing record, maintaining that her administration remains "laser-focused" on cutting through red tape to bring more homes within reach of buyers.

The issue took center stage after the glittering, sun-soaked capital of the U.S. film industry received an F grade in the 2026 Realtor.com® Metro Report Cards released on Wednesday, after earning the lowest overall score measuring both affordability and homebuilding metrics among the 100 largest U.S. cities.

In a statement to Realtor.com addressing the report, Bass, who is running for re-election in November, says that since taking office in 2022, she has been working to accelerate the building of affordable housing "after decades of inaction."

Her camp highlights several key initiatives, including Executive Directive 1, which streamlined approval for nearly 47,000 units of 100% affordable housing. About 6,000 of those units are currently under construction.

"Under Mayor Bass’ leadership, the City has implemented the largest local rezoning program in modern history that creates the capacity for half a million new homes and opens up more of the city to housing—along major corridors, near transit, and in neighborhoods where people already live and work," reads the statement from Bass' press office.

California requires all cities and counties to plan and zone for denser housing to meet the needs of residents at all income levels—and punishes those that refuse to comply.

Other measures touted by Bass' office include updating the Rent Stabilization Ordinance for the first time in 40 years, expanding the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance citywide to convert vacant office buildings and parking lots into housing, and issuing Executive Directive 19 to simplify how the city processes building applications.

That last move, according to Bass' representative, was in direct response "to the barriers that applicants, developers, and contractors have identified as impediments to building in L.A."

L.A.'s housing hurdles

Despite administrative efforts at local and state levels, Los Angeles continues to grapple with a severe housing shortage paired with an acute homelessness epidemic. The twin issues have been front and center not only in the mayoral campaign, where Bass faces a challenge from City Councilmember Nithya Raman, but also in the contest for California governor. 

"Tens of thousands of Angelenos who are struggling to afford rent will agree that Mayor Bass has not done enough to address the housing crisis in this city," Raman tells Realtor.com.

Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has been campaigning on accelerating the pace of construction to alleviate the housing deficit. Earlier this year, she proposed a ballot measure to exempt newly built multifamily, commercial, and mixed-use buildings from the Measure ULA, commonly known as a "mansion tax," for 15 years, arguing that it was slowing housing production.

In a statement, the mayoral hopeful says she is “not at all surprised” that L.A. got an F grade on affordability. 

“Los Angeles has a housing crisis that has been growing for decades, and I’ve made housing affordability the central issue of my campaign,” continues Raman. “We’ve made it too difficult, time consuming, and costly to build homes in Los Angeles.”

According to the councilmember, while there is a broad agreement that the city’s housing crisis is caused by a shortage of inventory, L.A. treats residential construction "as a nuisance" rather as a necessity and has made is “functionally illegal” to build affordable units accessible to working families. 

“Too many working Angelenos have stopped believing homeownership is possible due to the direct consequence of policy choices this city made and failed to fix,” adds Raman. 

Under the California Department of Housing and Community Development's Regional Housing Needs Assessment, L.A. must plan for more than 456,000 new homes between 2021 and 2029 to keep up with demand.

To meet that goal, roughly 57,000 new units must be built annually. However, in 2025, just 18,000 units were permitted.

By May 2026, the city's pipeline had expanded to an annualized 28,500 units, but even at this accelerated rate, production remains at less than half the pace required to hit targets.

"We really need to open up more inventory, and we can’t build our way out of the problem fast enough, especially since the development and permitting process is so slow here," Victor Currie, a real estate agent at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Los Angeles, tells Realtor.com.

Behind the F grade

L.A.'s ongoing housing struggles are laid bare in the Metro Report Cards.

The ultraexpensive, critically undersupplied city received 12 out of a possible 100 points, driven by a worst-in-class affordability component score of just 0.9. At 23.1, its homebuilding component score was only marginally better.

For comparison, top-performing Des Moines, IA, earned an A+ and a total score of 83.4, bolstered by equally impressive affordablility and homebuilding component scores of 88.3 and 78.4, respectively. 

Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner says L.A.'s poor showing comes down to how out of reach homeownership has become for all but the very wealthy.

In L.A., the median earner must spend 84.4% of their income to afford the mortgage payment on the median-priced $1.12 million home, assuming a 10% down payment and a 6.5% 30-year fixed mortgage. That is nearly three times the 30% typically recommended to set aside for housing needs.

Put differently, a typical income earner cannot afford the typical home in L.A. unless they are able to offer a massive 68% down payment amounting to approximately $768,000.

L.A.'s other weak spot is its permit-to-population ratio measuring how many homes are being built relative to the number of people in the metro, which currently sits at 0.47. That means the city is building less than half the national average of homes per resident.

Considering these lackluster metrics, Berner says Angelinos should not expect to see supply-driven relief on housing prices anytime soon.

L.A. is one of 13 large, mostly coastal metros that flunked on affordability and homebuilding, with the Golden State claiming seven of them. The other F grade recipients include Providence, RI; New York City; Honolulu; Boston; Oxnard, CA; San Francisco; Worcester, MA; San Diego; Stockton, CA; San Jose CA; Miami; and Riverside, CA.

How the metros were ranked

The 100 largest metros by population were ranked on a 100-point scale based on two criteria carrying equal weight: housing affordability and homebuilding. 

Affordability, which accounts for half of the final score, measures how accessible homeownership is for typical earners and takes into account the Realtors® Affordability Score.

The remaining half is determined by homebuilding activity. Eighty percent of that score comes from the permit-to-population ratio measuring how many homes are being built relative to the number of people in the metro. The remaining 20% comes from the new-construction premium—the extra market cost of buying a brand-new home versus an existing one.

Each metro on the list receives a total score out of 100 and is assigned a grade from F to A+.

The 13 cities at the bottom of the ranking earned a grade from F and each scored lower than 30 on both the affordability and homebuilding components.