Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is placing a significant wager on her affordable housing strategy, spotlighting a landmark housing effort that City Hall touts as the most extensive development sanctioned under her expedited building scheme.
Planned as Viva L.A. at Warner Center in Woodland Hills, this ambitious project aims to introduce close to 3,200 affordable assisted living apartments for seniors, marking it the largest endeavor to navigate Bass’ streamlined approval pathway.
Spanning about 2 million square feet, this development is set to reinvent a portion of Warner Center into a high-density haven for senior citizens. City officials underscore the necessity of this initiative, highlighting Los Angeles’ pressing shortage of affordable housing coupled with a swiftly aging population.
On Tuesday, Mayor Bass teamed up with Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who serves the neighborhood, and project developers to commemorate this pivotal achievement. She hailed the development as a testament to her administration’s success in diminishing bureaucratic hurdles to deliver tangible outcomes.
“Since the beginning, my focus has been on eliminating red tape and fostering quicker, more reliable approvals to tackle our affordability crisis head-on,” Bass remarked. “Viva L.A. at Warner Center will offer nearly 3,200 affordable senior housing units, the largest undertaking under our Executive Directive 1.”
The mayor’s office says nearly 47,000 affordable housing units are now in the pipeline under Executive Directive 1, which allows qualifying 100% affordable housing developments to move through the city’s approval process more quickly.
Blumenfield credited the project to a combination of Bass’ executive order and the Warner Center 2035 Specific Plan, which he helped shepherd more than a decade ago.
“Viva L.A. at Warner Center will become a transformative investment in the West San Fernando Valley,” Blumenfield said. “This project expands affordable housing options for our aging population while making meaningful progress in addressing our housing crisis.”
Developers say the project is designed to challenge the traditional model of assisted living.
George Kutnerian, co-founder and CEO of Wellpointe Inc., said affordable assisted living has long been built in sprawling suburban campuses instead of dense urban neighborhoods where seniors can access transit, shopping and healthcare.
“Viva rejects that premise,” Kutnerian said. “Affordable housing, paired with assisted living services as needed, can be delivered at the scale and density that California’s aging population actually needs.”
But not everyone welcomed the announcement.
The proposal quickly ignited debate online, with some Los Angeles Reddit users expressing concerns about the size of the development and its impact on the surrounding community.
“They call it ‘Viva.’ I call it ‘The Necropolis,’” one commenter wrote, while another pushed back saying: “3,500 units. That’s a lot of people.”
Others questioned why another affordable housing project is being targeted toward seniors instead of younger working adults struggling to afford Los Angeles’ soaring rents.
“Affordable housing? When do I get that? I’m drowning over here,” another user posted.
Many others, however, defended the project, noting that seniors are one of the fastest-growing homeless populations in Los Angeles and often survive on fixed incomes that make market-rate housing impossible.
Supporters also argued that creating thousands of senior housing units could free up single-family homes and apartments currently occupied by older residents, increasing housing supply for younger families.
“If older folks move out of single-family homes to move into this development, that’s potentially a few thousand homes coming on the market,” one commenter wrote. “In a housing supply crunch, all new housing is good housing.”
The Viva L.A. project will still need to complete additional planning and construction before welcoming residents.