Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin said a new map released by his office Wednesday that provides data on government-owned properties could help put some of those locations to "better use."
"There are underutilized and vacant properties owned by the city and other public entities with tremendous potential to be used for a variety of things, including affordable, workforce and senior housing, or economic and business-development projects," Galperin said. "Property Panel can help identify these properties, get governments to think more strategically about them and engage residents and stakeholders who may have excellent, unconventional ideas about how they could improve our neighborhoods."
The interactive map has information on about 14,000 publicly owned properties within Los Angeles, 7,508 of which are owned by the city, the office said.
The Office of the Controller released a map of city-owned properties in 2017, and Galperin said new software and data from the Los Angeles County Assessor's office gives the map an upgraded interface and includes all city- owned properties as well as other government-owned properties.
"It is my hope that the additional data furnished by the Assessor's Office will prompt more creative approaches to how publicly owned properties are utilized in order to better address the pressing issues confronting our communities," said Jeff Prang, the Los Angeles County assessor.
The Property Panel can be accessed at www.lacontroller.org/propertypanel. People can search the map by typing in an address to find public properties and scroll through data dashboards that filter results by government and neighborhood council boundaries.
