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According to data released this Tuesday, American home prices plunged in January at a record pace. The S&P/ Case Shiller index recorded that nationwide home prices declined 2.8 percent in value in January compared to 2.6 percent in December. Overall, home prices nationwide have declined nearly thirty percent from their peak in 2006. Locally in Los Angeles, an area particularly hard hit by the burst of the housing bubble, new statistics show that the January rate of decline of home prices was actually lower than in the previous month, prompting speculation that the housing market might already be bottoming out here. But regardless of that, LA Voice a organization fighting for affordable housing for the last two years, is advocating for a so-called “mixed-housing ordinance” as a local solution to the national housing crisis. Fourteen thousand new units were constructed in Los Angeles in 2006, right before the housing bubble burst. But 90% of those new units are affordable only to those homebuyers with an annual income of $135,000 or above.

GUEST: Jared Rivera, Executive Director of LA Voice

For more information, visit www.lavoicepico.org, or call the hotline at 1-888-531-1335.