LA CAN’s Work in Residential Hotels

Residential hotels provide housing to extremely low-income residents throughout the Los Angeles region. These hotels, often once luxury hotels in older parts of town, are now in mostly extreme slum conditions but provide much-needed housing at fairly affordable rates. For years, residential hotels were ignored by the City of Los Angeles; they were not included in the Housing Department’s jurisdiction for the most part and their tenants were viewed as transients.

The Central City East community is unique in that our housing stock is comprised almost solely of residential hotels. There are approximately 8,000 residential hotel units in our community, and about 3,000 of those have been renovated and operate as safe, affordable housing by non-profit organizations. The remaining units are largely operated by slumlords who have long histories of tenant rights violations.

LA CAN has organized residential hotel tenants since our inception. In fact, our first member meetings were held at the Rossmore Hotel. About 80% of our current membership lives in residential hotels. Hotel tenants are a diverse group, except for the fact that they all have extremely low incomes. Hotels are home to elderly people, families with children, people with disabilities, low-wage workers, and others not served in our tight housing market. Many of our members have lived in their current housing for decades. Therefore, hotel conditions and tenant rights have been on our agenda for years.

In 2001, members brought to our attention the long-standing practice of moving tenants out of their hotel units every 28 days in an attempt by landlords to avoid establishing any legal tenancy in their hotels. However, we found that this practice was illegal under State law. We coined the term, the “28-day shuffle,” and began a campaign to end this practice.

In 2002, the City of Los Angeles designated the City Center and Central Industrial Redevelopment areas that encompassed our entire community. These plans prompted our tenant organizing and housing preservation efforts to step up even further. The plans called for the loss of over 3,000 residential hotel units that were targeted for conversion to market-rate housing. The plans characterized the hotels as transient.

Our victories in changing the view, both politically and legally, of residential hotels and tenants are many. They include:

• Assisting hundreds of individual tenants in defending their tenant rights and preventing illegal evictions and lockouts
• Organizing tenants to participate in Illegal Business Practices lawsuits, with our partners at Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, resulting in monetary benefits to tenants and accountability for slumlords to change their policies and practices
• Organizing tenants to participate in the LA City Attorney’s legal actions against slumlords in the downtown area and providing key evidence for the cases
• Working to establish two key changes in the City’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance that created equity in tenant rights between residential hotel tenants and all other LA tenants (including a local prohibition on the 28-day shuffle)
• Moving the jurisdiction of residential hotels from the City’s Building and Safety Department to the Housing Department, resulting in Systematic Code Enforcement Program (SCEP) inspections and several buildings being placed in the Rent Escrow Account Program (REAP) requiring landlords to improve living conditions
• Preserving over 5,000 low-income housing units in a community facing gentrification by:
• Advocating for the passage of a Citywide moratorium on any demolitions or conversions of over 15,000 residential hotel units in Los Angeles (one-year moratorium passed in May 2006, with possibility of up to two six-month extensions while the City develops permanent solutions)
• Working with the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) to establish Design Controls and Guidelines for residential hotels in the downtown LA project areas - the Design Controls require one-for-one replacement of any hotel units demolished or converted, as well as relocation plans for tenants and the right to access replacement units

Next Steps for LA CAN’s Housing Work:

• Work to develop and pass a permanent Citywide Residential Hotel Ordinance, based on San Francisco’s successful model that has been in place for two decades
• Continue to organize tenants around the issues of housing access and the need for new, deeply affordable housing downtown and throughout the City
• Organize tenants to demand upgrades in the conditions of their housing, as they are entitled to by law, via:
• Moving buildings into the City’s REAP Program and encouraging tenant participation in the program
• Using legal intervention, including lawsuits, to force slumlords to clean up their properties and end tenant rights violations
• Continue our legal clinic to intervene and prevent individual tenant rights violations that often lead to displacement and homelessness