LA resident here. There are a number of problems with housing in LA. This will help a little, but more will need to be done. However, it should be noted that d

LA resident here. There are a number of problems with housing in LA. This will help a little, but more will need to be done. However, it should be noted that duplexes in single-family neighborhoods are not new. There are plenty of them here. I'm over in Westchester, and our neighborhood has dozens of 2 and 4-plexes. I've never heard a single-family homeowner here complain about it. My brother used to live in a duplex down in Redondo, as well. They've also built about 4 or 5 low-rise apartment complexes within 1 mile of my house in the last 3-4 years. Again, I haven't heard any complaints from homeowners. (And as one myself, I have no complaints.) People like to say the problem is that we don't have enough housing. While that's part of the problem, the bigger problem is that we have plenty of housing that nobody wants. A few years ago, the LA Times ran an article about how there were several large luxury apartment complexes built downtown that nobody wanted to move into. The problem is less that housing isn't being built and more that it's only being built for the high end, and the people at the high end have better options. Honestly, I'm not sure whether a duplex is that much more affordable than a house. Maybe your recently minted Googlers and such will move into them, but the much larger pool of people who work in the area and don't get paid those salaries still won't have anyplace affordable to live. Hopefully this is just the first step.