by Alejandro Garita
www.protocol.com
- LA’s tech scene is on the rise. The number of unicorn companies in Los Angeles is growing, and the city has become the third-largest startup ecosystem nationally behind the Bay Area and New York with more than 4,000 VC-backed startups in industries ranging from aerospace to creators.
- As the number of tech companies in the region grows, so does the number of tech workers. The city is quickly becoming more and more like Silicon Valley — a new startup and a dozen tech workers on every corner and companies like Google, Netflix, and Twitter setting up offices there.
- But with growth comes growing pains. Los Angeles, especially the burgeoning Silicon Beach area — which includes Santa Monica, Venice, and Marina del Rey — shares something in common with its namesake Silicon Valley: a severe lack of housing.
- According to the most recent Regional Housing Needs Assessment, from 2020, which determines how much housing must be built between 2021 and 2029, Los Angeles needs to construct more than 456,000 units of housing, or around 57,000 per year, to keep up with demand. But the city is anticipated to build just short of 231,000 in that period, or around 29,000 per year. And the flood of new tech workers is only exacerbating the problem.
LA is a growing tech hub. But not everyone may fit.
LA has a housing crisis similar to Silicon Valley’s. And single-family-zoning laws are mostly to blame.
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