The nonprofit company Restore Neighborhoods LA (RNLA) has just built a small homeless housing development in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood of LA. The cost per unit to build was a mere $225,000, less than half of the $500,000 average for homeless housing in LA. With only eight units, it does little to solve homelessness on its own, but RNLA hopes its financing strategy can be used by others to build more affordable housing faster.
How many builders get money is called the “lasagna of financing” — acquiring funding from several sources, including city, county, state, federal, and private sources. Going through this process takes time, as each different source requires a different application and approval process, and things could change between getting approval from one source and being rejected by another. It could also incur additional costs, such as application fees and hiring financial and legal experts. RNLA instead avoided this bureaucracy by opting for mostly single-source financing. They received the entirety of their $920,000 loan from a single private company called Genesis LA, and the rest of their financial support came from LA county grants and crowdfunding.
Unfortunately, it’s not likely that many builders will be able to acquire funding in this way for larger projects. Single sources simply don’t have the money, or don’t want to risk it, for a large project. The lasagna system has the benefit that no single source is incurring much risk, since they are each able to finance a smaller portion of the costs.
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