What Makes CHIP Different
For a long time, getting a multifamily project through the City of Los Angeles meant slogging through discretionary approvals, public hearings, and a planning process that could stretch on for a year or more before a shovel ever hit the ground. CHIP, adopted by the Los Angeles City Council in early 2025, was built to change that. It rolled together the State Density Bonus Program, the Affordable Housing Incentive Program (AHIP), and the Mixed Income Incentive Program (MIIP) into one framework, and it gives developers a menu of incentives, extra density, added height, reduced parking requirements, in exchange for including covenanted affordable units in the project.
The real win here is the shift toward ministerial and administrative review for projects that meet the program’s objective standards. Instead of waiting on a Planning Commission hearing, a project that uses “on menu” incentives can often be reviewed and approved through a much more predictable, staff level process. According to the city’s own numbers, roughly 90 percent of CHIP projects are now moving through this streamlined path, and the program has already unlocked capacity for hundreds of thousands of new homes across LA in the years ahead.
Where It Still Gets Complicated
That said, streamlined doesn’t mean simple. CHIP is still a relatively new ordinance, and it touches a long list of sections in the Los Angeles Municipal Code. Figuring out which incentive program actually fits your site, calculating the Maximum Allowable Residential Density, deciding between on-menu and off-menu incentives, and coordinating between City Planning, LADBS, and the Housing Department all take real expertise. A project near a transit corridor might qualify for benefits under MIIP’s Transit Oriented Incentive Area, while a similar looking site half a mile away might not qualify at all. Miss an eligibility detail early on, and a developer can end up redesigning a project midstream or getting pushed into a discretionary track they were trying to avoid in the first place.
There’s also the reality that every city department has its own review timeline, its own requirements, and its own point of contact. Managing that coordination while also keeping an eye on construction financing deadlines is where a lot of projects lose momentum, even good ones with strong site fundamentals.
JDJ’s Role on the Ventura Blvd Project
On this Ventura Blvd development, JDJ Consulting was brought in during the early feasibility stage, before drawings were finalized, to determine which CHIP program actually applied to the site. That work involved confirming the site’s eligibility for mixed-income incentives under MIIP, running the Maximum Allowable Residential Density calculations, and deciding which incentives from the menu made sense given the project’s goals.
From there, the work shifted to coordination. JDJ managed the back and forth with City Planning and LADBS to keep the project on the ministerial review track rather than getting routed into a discretionary process, and kept the entitlement timeline aligned with the developer’s construction schedule. That kind of coordination, tracking submittal requirements, responding to plan check comments, keeping departments on the same page, is often where projects stall if no one is dedicated to managing it day to day.
Why the Process Matters
Los Angeles needs more housing, and CHIP is a real step toward getting it built faster. But the ordinance itself doesn’t guarantee a smooth approval. Whether a project moves through in months or gets stuck for a year often comes down to how well the eligibility work was done upfront and how tightly the department coordination is managed throughout. That’s the part of the process JDJ handles on projects like this one, from the initial program analysis through to permit issuance.