WHEN

Friday, May 29th & Friday, June 5th

8:00 am – 12:30 pm (both days)

WHERE

AIA|LA’s Center for Communities located at 4450 West Adams Blvd. LA, CA 90016.

Per new tradition and to expand access, we’re organizing the 11th annual Design For Dignity conference as a two-part conference held on two consecutive Friday mornings = Friday, May 29th (8:30 am – 1:30 pm) and Friday, June 5th (8:30 am – 1:30 pm).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

AIA CES: TBD

By the close of both conference sessions, participants will be able to:

1. EVALUATE LOS ANGELES’ COMPETITIVE POSITION IN HOUSING PRODUCTION
Articulate the specific regulatory, financial, and political barriers that prevent Los Angeles from being competitive as a place to build housing with dignity — and evaluate reform strategies, from Executive Directive #19’s Development Services Streamlining to City Charter amendments, most likely to dismantle those barriers in the near term.

2. APPLY CONVERGENT DESIGN PRINCIPLES FROM THE ST. VINCENT BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CAMPUS
Apply the design, financing, and community-engagement lessons of the St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus to their own projects, identifying the partnerships, inclusive-design protocols, and phased delivery strategies that made the “village” model replicable across the behavioral health and supportive housing continuum.

3. DISTINGUISH HOUSING FIRST AS PHILOSOPHY FROM HOUSING FIRST AS OPERATIONAL PIPELINE
Distinguish between Housing First as a philosophical commitment and Housing First as a structural delivery system — and specify what changes in funding, permitting, inter-agency coordination, and design are required to implement the model at scale, including under conditions of federal policy volatility.

4. ASSESS LAHD’S STREAMLINING REFORMS FOR NEAR-TERM PIPELINE IMPACT
Evaluate LAHD’s proposed streamlining recommendations — including covenant approval reform, concurrent agency review, and case management enhancements — and identify which interventions would have the greatest near-term impact on affordable housing timelines in Los Angeles.

5. ANALYZE PLACE IDENTITY, STEWARDSHIP, AND DESIGN ETHICS AT WILLIAM
MEAD HOMES
Analyze the relationship between place identity, community stewardship, and housing design at William Mead Homes, and extract principles applicable to the equitable redevelopment of other legacy public housing sites across the region, including best practices for resident engagement and design ethics.

6. ASSESS THE TYPOLOGICAL AND FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SINGLE-STAIR REFORM
Assess the typological, life-safety, and financial implications of single-stair reform under AB 2252, including its potential to unlock new mid-rise building forms on infill lots currently rendered unfeasible by dual-egress requirements, and identify the design standards needed to ensure the typology delivers dignity alongside density.

7. CRITICALLY EXAMINE MEASURE ULA’S DUAL ROLE AND EVALUATE REFORM OPTIONS
Critically examine Measure ULA’s role as both a rent-relief funding mechanism and a production disincentive — including current research on its suppression of multifamily construction — and evaluate precision reform options for the November 2026 ballot that preserve the fund’s mission while restoring the production pipeline.

8. APPLY CENTURY HOUSING’S OPERATE-AND-MAINTAIN FRAMEWORK FROM PROJECT INCEPTION
Apply Century Housing’s operate-and-maintain approach to the earliest stages of project design, understanding how long-term stewardship considerations — including unit mix, material selection, capital reserve planning, and service-delivery integration — should shape decisions from concept through construction.

From Crisis to Construction — Building a “City of Yes”

Day One (May 29) asks what it would take to make Los Angeles genuinely competitive as a place to build housing with dignity. We open by confronting the systemic barriers to competitiveness — siloed permitting, regulatory burden, and the political will the moment demands. We examine the St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus as a living model of convergent design: healthcare, housing, inclusive practice, and community partnership on a single site. We hear from Sam Tsemberis, the founder of Housing First, about what the evidence demands — and why the gap between the model and the city’s reality is a political and structural choice, not an inevitability. And we close with LAHD’s own streamlining agenda: the concrete, department-level reforms that could cut months from the affordable housing pipeline if implemented with urgency.

Day Two (June 5) turns to built reality and hard reform. Measure ULA forces a candid conversation about a well-intentioned tax that is simultaneously funding critical renter protections and suppressing the production pipeline it was designed to support. William Mead Homes asks what we owe to places with long memories. Century Housing demonstrates the discipline of designing for stewardship — building long-term dignity into every material choice from day one. And Single-Stair Reform opens the door to an entirely new generation of mid-rise, mid-block housing on the sites our city needs most.

Design for Dignity was founded on the belief that the housing crisis is, at its core, a design problem — and that design, done with dignity, is the solution. Eleven years later, that belief is more urgent, more contested, and more consequential than ever. We invite architects, planners, policymakers, developers, advocates, and residents to join us for two mornings of honest reckoning, grounded analysis, and the kind of specific, actionable insight that only this conference produces.

Because dignity is not a concept. It is a place where someone sleeps safely, wakes with purpose, and belongs. Let’s build that place.

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS – for MAY 29th or for a 2-Day Pass to both days!

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS – for JUNE 5th!

AIA Member – $100 per day or $175 for a 2-day pass

Non-Member – $160 per day or $235 for a 2-day pass

Students – $50 per day or $80 for a 2-day pass

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