Officials, Homeless Celebrate Reopening of Skid Row Hotel

When Mayor Tom Bradley arrived at the Ellis Hotel for its ceremonial reopening Friday as a Skid Row hotel for senior citizens, Pat Nowlin sat right in front.

Nowlin, 63, had been homeless for nine months until two days ago, when she moved into the three-story Ellis.

“I was living on the street,” said the small, thin woman, who for the special occasion had worn a nicely fitted white suit and black shoes she had gotten--used--from a social service. “I’d ride the bus all night. You’d be surprised how many elderly ladies ride the bus all night.”

Nowlin will now pay $170 of her monthly Los Angeles County relief stipend of $312 to reside at the Ellis. It was people like Nowlin city officials had in mind when they started a Skid Row hotel renovation program in the mid-1980s.

The Ellis Hotel, with 58 rooms, was renovated by the SRO Housing Corp., a private, nonprofit arm of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency that upgrades single-room-occupancy hotels on Skid Row. The ceremony Friday marked the reopening of both the Ellis and, across East 6th Street, the 70-unit Regal.

SRO has now, counting the Ellis and Regal, renovated seven hotels, and Bradley declared the ceremony celebrating the reopenings “a joyous occasion.”

About 12% of the estimated 15,000 people living in the 50-block area of Skid Row east of downtown are elderly, said Faye Washington, general manager of the city’s Department of Aging, but the Ellis will be the first hotel geared entirely to their needs. Washington’s department contributed $55,695 to the hotel’s renovation to install a kitchen, she added, so that meals for residents can be prepared there.

Single-room-occupancy hotels, which charge about $240 a month for a 10-by-14-foot room with bathing and toilet facilities down the hall, are the last line of defense for low-income people. Nowlin, for example, lost her room in such a place before she became homeless. “I worked since I was 11,” she said, but in recent years found fewer and fewer people would hire her. “I don’t know,” she said, “maybe being older, that had something to do with it.”

About 200 single-room-occupancy hotels have been demolished over the last decade, city officials say, leaving 273 citywide. Of those, an estimated 65 are located on Skid Row.

Last August, the City Council voted to extend a moratorium against the demolition of the hotels for five years on Skid Row and three years citywide.

“This is a milestone occasion for us,” SRO Director Andy Raubeson said at the ceremony. “Something less than five years ago, SRO acquired its first hotel. We now have 11, with 1,080 units, seven of which are completely renovated.”