We’re just putting the finishing touches on another election, and once again, we’ve been listening to politicians talk about homelessness, the need for more housing for the unhoused, and the need for more housing in general.
This may be more of a rant than a blog this week, but I’m hoping we can start a real discussion about how to finally create a pathway toward where we need to be on housing.
I think everyone agrees that we need more housing across California. Every election cycle, each politician presents a plan to fix the problem, but it never seems to get resolved.
I’ve been in the commercial real estate industry in Southern California for almost 30 years. You would think that, during that time, we could have made some kind of dent in this problem. Instead, it only seems to be getting worse.
How Much Property Does the Government Own?
I did some research into how much property the State of California, the City and County of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Unified School District actually own.
The numbers are eye-opening.
City of Los Angeles
The City Controller’s Office has mapped 8,974 parcels owned by the City within Los Angeles County, including parks, libraries, parking lots, commercial and industrial buildings, and vacant land.
That includes 17,000 acres in Palmdale that were originally purchased for an airport that was never built. When every public agency is included, there are more than 14,000 government-owned properties within Los Angeles city limits alone.
Los Angeles Unified School District
LAUSD owns more than 6,400 acres across 3,200 parcels and 21,000 buildings, making it one of the largest landowners in the region.
Only recently, under its 2025 agreement with the teachers’ union, did the district commit to identifying which of its vacant and underutilized parcels could potentially be used for affordable housing.
State of California
Following the Governor’s 2019 executive order, the California Department of General Services reviewed 44,370 state-owned parcels and identified only 1,330 as potentially viable for housing.
The state now publishes an Excess Sites map showing land that may be available to developers.
County of Los Angeles
Los Angeles County tracks vacant parcels through its housing element sites inventory and periodically puts surplus vacant property up for sale through its Development Authority.
However, the County has never published one simple number showing how much vacant land it owns.
A Broader Look at Publicly Owned Land
The broadest examination of this issue came in 2023, when the Committee for Greater L.A. commissioned the Center for Pacific Urbanism to study 65,000 parcels owned by the City, County, State, federal government, Metro, and LAUSD.
The parcels were filtered based on factors such as slope, zoning, and access to utilities to identify sites that could realistically become housing or shelter.
That brings me to the part that frustrates me most.
Twenty-Six Sites—and Little to Show for Them
In 2021, a federal judge ordered the City of Los Angeles to identify properties that could be used to house people experiencing homelessness.
In January 2022, the Controller’s Office began with approximately 8,000 city-owned parcels and narrowed the list down to 26 sites.
These properties were vacant or unused, large enough to make a meaningful difference, and collectively offered approximately 1.7 million square feet for tiny-home villages, safe parking, and shelters.
The Controller said the sites could be used immediately.
The largest was a 394,000-square-foot lot on Clovis Avenue in South Los Angeles. The Controller held a press conference there in May 2022, urging the City to act.
So I went looking for what happened to those 26 sites.
I couldn’t find a single public report tracking their progress.
One Vacant Lot Tells the Story
The one property I was able to follow is a nearly 20,000-square-foot vacant lot at 1636 W. Manchester Avenue in South Los Angeles.
In September 2025—more than three years after the property was identified—the City Council asked staff to report back on what should be done with it.
In April 2026, the City requested approval to issue a request for proposals.
That RFP is for commercial or mixed-use development, which could include market-rate housing. It is not the homeless housing for which the property was originally identified.
More than four years later, the lot remains empty.
For the three largest sites—on Clovis Avenue, Western Avenue, and San Fernando Road in Sylmar—I could not find any record of something being built at all.
The Land Exists. The Management Doesn’t.
This isn’t happening because the land doesn’t exist. It’s happening because nobody is managing it like a real estate portfolio.
The City itself was told as far back as 2016 that it needed a Chief Asset Manager to do exactly that.
In my business, if you held a vacant parcel for four years without a plan, you would be out of business. When the government does it, nobody seems to be held accountable.
Could the Solution Be That Simple?
I believe a solution has been sitting in front of us all along, but we continue to overlook or ignore it: manage publicly owned land like a real estate portfolio.
That means creating a complete inventory, identifying which properties are genuinely usable, establishing clear plans and timelines, assigning responsibility, and publicly tracking what happens to every site.
As I said at the beginning, this may be a bit of a rant. But I would genuinely like to hear your thoughts.
Could better management of publicly owned property help California make real progress on housing? What other solutions should be part of the conversation?
Joe Killinger is a partner at Commercial Brokers International and founder of the CRE Affiliate Network. Come hang out with me on YouTube, Instagram, and X at @JoeKillinger, and find more at JoeKillinger.co.
