Heather Hutt’s district has permitted more housing per year than any other, and almost none of it is built yet

Council District 10 has permitted a net 6,558 new homes since Heather Hutt took its seat in September 2022, about 1,670 a year, the fastest pace of any sitting councilmember. The table sets each district’s permits against its member’s time in office, dated by each member’s first recorded floor vote in the City Clerk’s vote record, with unit counts from every Los Angeles building permit since 2020 that changes the number of dwellings on a parcel.

A plus sign marks the five members who took office before the permit record begins in January 2020, so their figures are floors.

Measured against its existing housing, Hutt’s District 10 has added 5.97 percent, the most of the ten members the record covers in full. Two of the partly covered districts are higher even on partial counts, Curren Price’s District 9 at 6.69 percent and Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s District 8 at 6.24.

Monica Rodriguez’s District 7 has permitted 174 net homes a year, about a tenth of Hutt’s pace, with a similar population.

Fewer than 8 percent of District 10’s permitted units are complete

Of the 6,558 net units permitted in District 10 during Hutt’s tenure, 517, under 8 percent, have reached completion. In Traci Park’s district the completed figure is negative 33, meaning that among permits that have actually finished, demolitions have outnumbered new construction. Ysabel Jurado’s district shows five completed units against 690 permitted.

Construction in Los Angeles usually takes three to five years from permit to certificate of occupancy, so completion mostly tracks how long a member has served. The longest-serving members show the highest shares, with John Lee’s district at 63 percent complete, Price’s at 51 and Harris-Dawson’s at 42, which is why this piece compares members on permits per year.

In the Valley, the new housing is backyards

An accessory dwelling unit is a backyard cottage or a converted garage. A string of state laws since 2017 took away most of a city’s power to turn one down.

In District 7, 72.1 percent of the new homes permitted are ADUs. Lee’s District 12, also in the Valley, is at 35.2 percent and Bob Blumenfield’s District 3 at 28.9. Rodriguez’s and Lee’s districts are also two of the three slowest in the first table, so much of what little housing they get is the kind the city can’t refuse. Districts 10, 9 and 13 are at the other end, with ADUs under a tenth of their new units.

Councilmanic prerogative

The council usually defers to the local member on land use in their district, a custom known as councilmanic prerogative, but it’s a custom and it doesn’t reach every project. Much of each district’s number is set by its zoning and the cost of building before any member weighs in, and a permit issued in a member’s first year was usually filed before they took office.

Method

Unit counts come from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety’s record of permits issued from January 2020 to August 10, 2026, restricted to the 48,149 permits that change a parcel’s dwelling-unit count. Net units are units added minus units removed, so a project that demolishes four homes and builds forty counts as thirty-six. Our district totals match the city’s own for all fifteen districts.

Tenure starts at each member’s first recorded floor vote in the City Clerk’s vote system, because the published roster’s start dates were never sourced. A member sworn in during a recess therefore registers a few days to a few weeks late. Because the permit record starts in 2020, totals for Blumenfield, Price, Harris-Dawson, Rodriguez and Lee cover only part of their tenure.

Share of existing homes divides by each district’s current occupied housing units, the stock at the end of the period, which understates the percentage slightly in every district.