The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles has acquired Emerald Apartments, a 154-unit community in the South Park neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. The $51.6 million purchase closed with funding from City National Bank, and permanent financing will be taken out in 2026.
According to Yardi Matrix, Jade Enterprises was the previous owner and seller. Blake Rogers of JLL Capital Markets represented the latter party in the transaction.
The acquisition will utilize HUD’s Restore-Rebuild Program to facilitate affordability with federal rental subsidies. For Emerald Apartments, 24 percent of the units will be set aside for households earning at or below 30 percent and 50 percent of the Area Median Income.
According to Yardi Matrix, Emerald was completed in 2023. The property includes a mix of studio apartments, as well as one-, two- and three-bedroom units averaging just shy of 700 square feet. Common-area amenities include a pool, exercise facility as well as a community room and structured parking deck.
READ ALSO: National Affordable Housing Report – September 2025
Following the trade, HACLA will restrict the balance of the formerly market-rate units to households earning between 60 percent and 120 percent AMI. Rents will be no more than 30 percent of a household’s adjusted income. To further increase the number of affordable units at the property, HACLA will develop six accessory dwelling units. The agency will also add 2,400 square feet of community-serving retail space that will be constructed in the coming months.
Over the last four years, HACLA has emerged as one of the largest buyers of multifamily properties in the city of Los Angeles, closing on nearly 40 assets with more than 2,750 in that period. The majority of those units will be permanently affordable.
Last year, the agency purchased The LP by CLG, a 120-unit community in Los Angeles, for $43 million. Like with Emerald, HACLA plans to convert the property into affordable housing, as there is turnover in the units.
Addressing LA’s chronic housing shortage
Like in many parts of the nation, Los Angeles, city and county, has a severe shortage of affordable housing. The long-term trend in housing development has been down, according to a report by USC Lusk, even as the region’s population grew. Now the area’s population is shrinking, but not enough to ameliorate the housing shortage.
In the 1950s, LA County saw about 70,000 new residential units developed each year. By the 2010s, that number had collapsed to 15,000 units a year, the report notes.
Between 2018 and 2024, a total of just under 152,000 new residential units were rolled out in Los Angeles County. The vast majority of these were rental units, only 10 percent of which were affordable to lower income households. ADUs have driven recent production increases, but they remain largely unaffordable to low-income renters, USC Lusk reports.
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