Plans for Skid Row Raise Questions
The renovation of a vacant square block in downtown’s skid row district has drawn praise from city officials, driven up land prices and inspired the conversion of more than one low-income hotel to upscale housing.
But the success of the luxury residential project has raised concerns about where to house low-income people who may be displaced, and rekindled the debate about the acceptable costs of an urban renaissance.
While City Hall and downtown commercial interests are pushing eagerly ahead with a $2.4-billion downtown redevelopment project, several nonprofit groups that provide housing for the area’s poor now worry that the $150 million earmarked for low-income issues may not be enough.
The Skid Row Housing Trust, one of the best-known groups providing housing downtown, is trying to buy a cluster of once-glorious beaux-arts hotels--home to thousands of poor families and individuals--that have suddenly become attractive to developers, officials said.
Leaders of another nonprofit, the larger SRO Housing Corp., say they welcome the communal benefits that redevelopment will bring, but agree the hotels should be preserved as low-income housing.
“Even a hotel that is considered a slum ... it’s better than the street,” said Bud Hayes, who heads SRO Housing.
City and redevelopment officials have said that tenants displaced by building conversions will be relocated at public cost. Many tenants, however, are skeptical.
The relocation issue is the subject of a lawsuit against the city and the Community Redevelopment Agency filed recently by some hotel tenants and the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, which alleged that plans to relocate skid row residents and provide affordable replacement housing are inadequate. The project already has been suspended because of a legal dispute between the city and county.
Jim Bonar, executive director of the housing trust, said he would approach every private investor and public official he knows, looking for the financial backing to buy some of the large hotels.
“Our mission is to save the housing for very low-income people,” Bonar said.
The 12 hotels, which have 200 to 600 rooms apiece, are scattered around Main Street, skid row’s western boundary.
The 50 square blocks generally considered skid row are bounded by 3rd Street to the north, 7th Street to the south and Alameda Street to the east. Many of the hotels are plagued by prostitution and drugs. Several are under investigation by the city for possible nuisance abatement actions.
“They don’t serve anybody’s purpose,” said Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn., which represent downtown business interests. “They’re a problem for the LAPD and for the residents who are moving into [nearby] lofts.”
Officials with the Community Redevelopment Agency said they question housing poor families in the hotels.
“It’s not an appropriate housing situation for families to be living in a small hotel room,” said Don Spivack, deputy administrator of the agency. “There needs to be a broader solution to the housing needs of this population.”
Housing advocates concede the situation is not ideal for families, but they say the problem of the homeless--an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people live on the streets and in temporary shelters--will worsen if the buildings are not preserved as low-income housing.
“We need to buy them all,” said Alice Callaghan, a longtime skid row activist and housing trust board member. “If we lose the housing on Main Street, there will be thousands of people for whom the city will have to build a massive and costly shelter system.”
For nearly two decades, nonprofit housing providers have had little competition for properties in this stretch of the city dotted with missions and services for the poor, disabled and drug-addicted.
The housing trust and SRO Housing gradually bought and rehabilitated 42 rundown single-room-occupancy hotels, creating a supply of decent housing for the very poor, many of whom pay only a third of their monthly income--income that consists of a $220 general relief check--in rent.
The nonprofits operate roughly 2,800 rooms, or about a third of the total number of affordable rental units in the downtown area.
Now they have new neighbors, like the Old Bank District, a $37-million project that converted a block of vacant commercial buildings on the fringes of skid row into 240 luxury lofts.
The project, by developer Tom Gilmore, was the first completed under a city program designed to promote downtown housing by relaxing building requirements. The development along 4th Street at Spring and Main streets has attracted national attention and many imitators.
“All of a sudden, the heart of [an area that] used to be unthinkable for developers ... now appears to be fair game,” Hayes said.
The city’s redevelopment project and successes like Gilmore’s have caused property costs in the area to skyrocket.
The average price of a square foot has increased from $10 in the mid-1990s to $25 to $50 today, according to David Zoraster, a downtown real estate expert.
Zoraster said that, for now, developers are mostly interested in vacant office buildings with spacious interiors and high ceilings. About 40 such buildings downtown are in various stages of development.
But Gilmore and another hotel owner have announced plans to convert hotels into market-rate housing.
Gilmore said he would convert the El Dorado Hotel, which is near the Old Bank District, into condominiums within two years. He bought the hotel two years ago after it was shut down for health and safety code violations.
Hotelier Robert Frontiera recently announced plans to convert his crime-ridden Frontier Hotel on West 5th Street, near Main Street, into an apartment building. He said he would remodel the hotel one story at a time, beginning with the top floor. Frontiera said he was applying for building permits to turn the 43 rooms there into 13 loft-style apartments, which would rent at market rate, about $1,200, and less.
“The area’s changing, and we wanted to try it,” Frontiera said.
City and business leaders say they don’t want poor residents to be crowded out of the area. But they insist that downtown should be populated by residents from all walks of life.
“You have to have that mix of high-end, mid-level and low-income housing ... to make for a vibrant downtown,” Schatz said. “You have to be able to house janitors, secretaries and CEOs.”
