Access Housing LA: how to apply for affordable housing

Access Housing LA is the City of Los Angeles's free website for applying to lower-rent apartments in buildings the city helped pay for. Make one account and send a pre-application, a short first form, to each building's lottery, a random drawing, or waitlist, a line for the next free apartment, that fits your household. Then contact each building for its official application.

What is Access Housing LA?

Access Housing LA is the Los Angeles Housing Department's website for applying to apartments in buildings the city helped pay for. Its official name is the Affordable and Accessible Housing Registry. The department doesn't own or manage the buildings, so each building's manager runs its own lottery or waitlist, and the registry is where you join all of their lists. You then ask each building for its official application.

The registry covers more than 730 older buildings that got city money and every new or rebuilt city-funded building since April 2016. You apply at the registry's listings site.

How do you make an account and send a pre-application?

You make a free account, then send a pre-application from each listing's page, following the city's applicant guide:

1. Choose Create account and pick the Housing Applicant type. Fill in the required fields.
2. Confirm your email. Open the message the city sends you and click its link.
3. Open Listings. The site shows open listings first; a Closed tab shows past ones.
4. Use Filter to narrow by bedrooms, rent, area of the city and accessibility features.
5. Open a listing and press Apply Now. Choose a language, then enter your details, your household and your income.
6. Review and submit. You get a confirmation number.
7. Track it under My Account, then My Applications.

You can apply to every listing marked "Open" or "Open for Waitlist." Each listing is its own list, so one pre-application doesn't cover other buildings, but the registry pre-fills your details for the next one. As a registered user, you can also get notices when new buildings are added, start leasing or open a waitlist.

If you made a mistake, don't send a second application. Contact the property manager, whose details are on the listing and your confirmation page.

What happens after you send a pre-application?

A pre-application only puts you in line. The city says registry applications are not rental applications, and you may have to take more steps to prove you meet the building's income and other rules. How you move forward depends on the listing:

• Lottery. New buildings usually fill their first apartments by lottery. After the drawing, the property manager updates your pre-application with your place on the list and reviews applications in that order until the apartments are filled.
• Waitlist. Buildings that are already open fill apartments from their waitlists as they come free. You can wait a long time, so keep your contact details current in My Account.

Then contact the property manager named on the listing and ask for the official application.

How do you read a listing?

A listing shows the rent and the minimum income, the least your household must earn to show you can pay the rent, for each apartment size and income level. It also shows the income limit, the most a household can earn and still qualify, for each household size, how many apartments there are and the deadline.

For example, a 2026 lottery listing for Sona Apartments in Van Nuys set some two-bedroom apartments at 50% of the area median income, the middle income in the area. Their rent was $1,703 a month. The minimum income was twice the rent, $3,406 a month. The income limit was $60,600 a year for two people at that level.

So a household of two earning $58,000 a year, about $4,833 a month, fit that apartment. It was under the $60,600 limit and over the $3,406 monthly minimum. Read every listing this way, because each building sets its own figures from the city's own income chart, which can differ from the federal government's chart.

What are "Accessible Units" listings?

Many listings are named after a building with "Accessible Units" at the end. These are separate waitlists for apartments with features for people with mobility or hearing and vision disabilities. On the Hollywood Arts Collective accessible-units listing, for example, only people with physical disabilities may join the accessible-unit waitlist.

The city's accessible housing page treats them as a separate step: you can apply to a building's regular waitlist and, separately, ask to be on its accessible-unit waitlist. If you need those features, join both. To learn your rights, see housing options for people with disabilities and how to ask for a reasonable accommodation.

Who can help you apply?

For help with the registry, call the Accessible Housing Program at (213) 808-8550 or email lahd.achp@lacity.org. To talk with someone about affordable housing in general, call the housing department's free line at (866) 557-7368 or visit one of the public counters listed on its affordable housing page.

A case worker with a housing advocate account can send pre-applications for clients. The advocate registers using the advocate guide, and the program reviews and approves the request. After that, the advocate can search, apply and track applications for clients.

Listings marked "CES only" take no applications on the portal. Those apartments go only to people referred by service providers through the Coordinated Entry System, the local system that matches people who are homeless with housing. To get help through it, see the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's page.

Is Access Housing LA the same as Section 8?

No. Access Housing LA lists apartments in buildings; it doesn't give out Section 8 vouchers, which pay part of your rent to a private landlord you choose. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, the city's housing authority (the local housing office), runs Section 8. It also runs public housing, apartments it owns. The city's housing department sends questions about both there. To get on its voucher list, see how its Section 8 waitlist works.

What should you do next?

Make your account and apply to every open listing that fits your household's size and income. See the Los Angeles listings you can apply for now on our Los Angeles page and the lotteries open across the country. Our qualify check shows which ones fit you. To understand the order you'll be picked in, compare lotteries, waitlists and first come listings.