The General Plan. Los Angeles, like every city and county in California, is required to develop a general plan — a comprehensive policy that guides future growth and development. The big picture of how Los Angeles will handle population growth is set out in the General Plan Framework which is available online at www.cityofla.org/pln. The General Plan also contains a number of "elements," which go into more detail about how the big picture ideas will be carried out.

The City has the following elements in its General Plan:

• General Plan Framework
• Land Use Element (35 individual Community Plans)
• Air Quality Element
• Transportation Element
• Housing Element
• Infrastructure Systems Element
  (garbage, power, way & sewer systems)
• Open Space & Conservation Element
• Noise Element
• Public Facilities & Services Element (libraries, recreation, schools)
• Historic Preservation & Cultural Resources Element
• Safety Element (fire protection, safety, seismic safety)
• Urban Form & Neighborhood Design Element

The Housing Element. The Housing Element is the City's plan for ensuring we have housing for everyone in the community. The Housing Element includes an assessment of how many new homes and apartments Los Angeles needs to build for our growing population. The needs assessment sets out the number of affordable units families and individuals in four different income groups will need.

The Housing Element also identifies specific sites where new housing construction could occur — with an emphasis on making certain that enough land is zoned for new residential development. The current Housing Element calls for 60,000 new homes and apartments to be built between 1998 and 2005 (7.5 years). That translates to 8,037 units/year in new construction citywide. At the end of 2003 we were about 14,000 units short of our goal, about one-third of the total.

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