A few weeks ago, J.T. and I went to the grand opening of a new housing project in our neighborhood. Last week, on August 4th, we had a conversation in the recording studio at the Robinson Space where we reflected on this specific housing project. More specifically we discussed what, exactly, constitutes a home or a community. What follows is both an audio recording of that conversation, as well as an edited transcript of the audio for people who would rather read than listen to our exchange. You can also listen to the audio wherever you listen to podcasts through J.T. the L.A. Storyteller Podcast as soon as this Friday, **August** 11.
—Ali Rachel Pearl
J.T.: You and I were invited to see a new housing project very recently, invited by Holos Communities (shout out to Holos Communities for that invitation). And we learned of this development that is just coming into being, right by the Vermont and Beverly Intersection, a project known as the Avenida Housing Project. And so, we visited this place a handful of weeks ago on July 20th, I believe it was, right?
Ali: Yeah, we went on a little adventure, took a trip down to this event, which was the grand opening, the ribbon cutting ceremony. There were a lot of folks there. There were folks from CD 13, Lindsey Horvath from District 3 was there, the CEO of Holos was there, and other folks from the community, people from nearby neighborhood councils and a variety of other people that helped make the project happen. We sat in the back along with some other press folks and listened to people have a conversation about what this project is and then we got to kind of self-tour the units and the property. The property was formerly the Avenue Hotel and starting in September of last year, they [Holos and the City of L.A.] began the process of turning this hotel into permanent supportive housing for unhoused folks in Los Angeles.
J.T.: One thing that a number of folks who spoke about this project cited was the relative speed with which it got online. Because if we're saying that it was just about September of last year, September 2022…and that a little over seven, eight months later, this project is now getting ready to open up for folks, that's a pretty fast turnaround. I think that's the kind of turnaround that folks all across Los Angeles are really hoping for and really rooting for. And I think that is what a number of these officials were happy to cite. They were definitely hopeful that this could serve as an example of how fast housing should be and how comprehensive it should be up to a point and how it should be a collaboration between L.A. City and L.A. County, the nonprofit services that are ready to step up and–to the extent possible–the community members who are also ready to show up for this.
Ali: We have some questions about this project. We have some critiques of this project. We have some pros and cons that we want to get into. Is there anything else that we want to share before we get into that context for folks about what this project is?
J.T.: Yes, we are talking about a project that has 75 units that are supposed to go towards permanent housing. This is what has been cited by officials overseeing it.
Ali: And on their website, they talk about having 75 units for 75 individuals and the cost of those units was…
J.T.: …approximately, at least according to one source, the cost of a single unit was about $453,000 per unit. So Ali and I are going to break that down. One immediate pro or benefit from this project that I see is that, hey, 75 units, that means you may be taking 75 people out of that 3,000 [unhoused people] who exist within Council District 13, approximately. And it's better to dent that number with that 75 than not. So there you have it, 75 units for 75 people out there; but there's also another side to this coin that you can tell us a little bit about.
Ali: So if there's approximately, according to official numbers, about 3,000 people living on the streets in our council district right now, 75 units is a pretty big chunk of units to get folks off the streets. But the website for Holos lists the 75 units as being 75 units for 75 individuals. What that language communicates to me is that these units are for one person only, which makes sense because we toured the units. They're small, they're studio sized. They're not much bigger than the little studio that we're recording in right now. And they have a bed, a bathroom, a small sink, one hot plate burner, a mini fridge, and maybe one shelving structure for storing belongings and maybe a small desk. So, yes, you're getting 75 people off the streets. But if those people are families or in a couple, it's unclear to us just based on the information that we received at this event and then online, if more than one person would be allowed to occupy those 75 units at a time, which can be challenging because if you are unhoused with your family or you are unhoused with a partner or a companion in some way…We didn't get to ask if animals were allowed or anything like that. So there's still some questions that we have about who gets to [be] housed there, what are the kind of requirements in terms of just the basic stuff, number of people, if kids are allowed, if pets are allowed, that kind of stuff.
J.T.: There are so many different kinds of folks with a need for housing. And that includes folks with pets. It certainly includes families, it certainly includes couples and so on. But it also does include individuals who are completely on their own. And so I think it's such an important discussion that I don't see highlighted often, the way that different people on the streets of Los Angeles have very different needs. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. But I do think a consistent reminder is important so that we're not generalizing here about what people's needs are and how we should take a one-size-fits-all approach. This can definitely help 75 individuals who would not have a roof over their heads otherwise, however, it poses or creates other challenges to think about.
A second pro for this would be that, as was pointed out by Holos Communities in particular, there's a low environmental impact. So they don't have to excavate, which tends to be one of the most expensive parts and environmentally destructive parts of creating housing anywhere. And in this specific case, since they're converting rooms that were occupied maybe as recently as just last year, they don't have to do a whole lot of refurbishing. So there is a low environmental impact here. They're not creating that much pollution or contributing to the levels of pollution at the site in a large way. And that is, I think, something to be proud of.
Ali: Yeah I think one of the challenges of housing like this that I've seen going up in Los Angeles is that these projects take a long time and they take a lot of workers and a lot of trucks and a lot of material and so…in densely populated neighborhoods like ours or, K-Town, Pico-Union, MacArthur Park, I do think there is a benefit to reclaiming existing structures and minimizing the amount of traffic construction materials and whatnot involved for …for environmental impact, but also for the neighborhood. And construction can be pretty disruptive of people’s lives in terms of starting it early in the morning and whatnot. So less construction is a great option. I think folks have been talking about seizing hotels for this reason for a long time. And so this seems to be kind of that, though I don't think this hotel was seized, but it is a former hotel that is being converted into permanent supportive housing.
J.T.: Right. The other complexity here, though, is that when we think of the environment, when we think of location, we have just delved into the various ways that location matters in Los Angeles, not just not just due to the neighborhood that you might be based in, but also due to what that neighborhood is connected to or adjacent to. And in this case, the Avenida housing project is in a very challenging built environment.
Ali: One of the cons that I think we both encountered with this project is, we were going to walk there from where we live and…
J.T.: I did walk there…
Ali: …and J.T. did walk there. But it was a very, very hot day. And I was trying to wear somewhat professional clothing and there's no trees really on that street going down Vermont, or really a lot of the routes I would take from where I live to get down there. It's super loud, very highly trafficked, both pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Vermont and Beverly are two of the most trafficked streets in our neighborhood. It's pretty chaotic. It's a lot going on environmentally. It's right off of the 101 freeway, which, as anybody who has ever lived near a freeway knows, there's a lot of pollution that comes with that.
J.T.: You mentioned as well that there's very little shade. And that also means that with little shade, there's less oxygen in the air because trees help to provide oxygen. They help oxygen flow into our cities, into our communities. And so the lack thereof in this case makes this a challenging environment to get through for us as working-age bodies or people, and certainly for people who are older or people who have different capabilities because of their body, because of their age, and so on. I think that's another key consideration for us as we think about not just what makes a [housing] project, but what makes a community, actually, with that project or through that project.
Ali: It's a classic low-income neighborhood. It's gridlocked streets, a lot of traffic, not a lot of access to green space, not a lot of trees, not a lot of shade, not a lot of services in terms of garbage cans or public restrooms. Our neighborhood does struggle with the same things as many of the other low income neighborhoods in the city.
J.T.: Because of its proximity to [the 101] freeway, it very much feels like this transit-heavy, transit-focused intersection of Los Angeles. And it's in between what is generally drawn as two maps, the East Hollywood side and then later the Little Bangladesh or Koreatown side. So it is in this very specific place. But once you start to look into the particularities of that, you realize, okay, it's going to take a while to really create [a] community out of this home that is technically a home, but only by these definitions, which we’ll also say more about in a moment.
Another pro here is that it is close to Metro and that can be very helpful for jobs and, assuming that part of the goal for those who will be housed here is for them to pick up a job so that they might provide income for themselves, metro should be conducive to that. The less that people have to drive around and get on the freeway to make massive commutes across town, the better. So this is another big plus for the neighborhood, a big plus for the project, I would say.
Ali: For sure. That access to transit is how a lot of the projects that I've seen lately are getting their funding, partly because they are close to transit access. You reported earlier this year on the Little Tokyo Service Center project that's going up at Vermont/Santa Monica, and a big part of that project being greenlit in terms of, I think, the number of floors, was that the number of stories it [is] allowed to be exceed[s] the zoning regulations historically. And that was allowed because it is at a Metro transit stop.
J.T.: Transit Oriented Communities (TOC). I imagine that some of the grants that were allotted to this development coming through made use of exactly that, some sort of exemption, I hope, because that funding does need to go somewhere. And if it's not being utilized correctly, then it's wasteful spending on our part and/or on the part of our government's allocation.
One more pro on my side is that they're actually near the Eco Village. We published a story on that through Making A Neighborhood just earlier this year. And the Eco Village is an eco-friendly community land trust. A few folks from [there] actually came out to the event, so that was interesting to see and to know that there may be a possibility of creating a bridge between something like this project and, say, the BVCLT or the Eco Village over in the K-Town area. That would be a great thing. I'm certainly crossing my fingers for it and I hope that there are conversations taking place to that effect so that these folks can be brought in as new members of the community.
Ali: It was really interesting to be at that event with Lois Arkin, who our collaborator Samanta [Helou] Hernandez, had just done a profile on earlier this year because [Lois] was one of the co-founders of this Eco Village, this cooperative living space that's very environmentally oriented and has existed for quite a long time. And it's definitely a model of living that is different than what we're used to. It's a very different model of living than the Avenida [lot] that we visited. It's less reliant on city or state or governmental infrastructure or funding, if at all. I think it is a great benefit that people who know how to build community, who are very invested in building community, who have spent decades literally building community, not just in the broader ways we talk about it, but infrastructure—there's a community garden there, there are multiple buildings there, there's community spaces there.
And they are in partnership with Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust, who owns the land that they're on. That organization itself is very interested in different kinds of housing models than the ones that we're used to. So maybe the proximity of the Avenida to BVCLT, to the Eco Village, could be a helpful connection. Because we talked about one of the cons being how to create community when you live right next to a freeway in a very chaotic built environment with, yes, transit access, but not a lot of third spaces, green spaces, not super walkable, not even a ton of resources nearby really either.
J.T.: It's interesting because as when we mentioned, say, the Eco Village, and even the BVCLT, these are resources that came to be created by people. And so actually impacting the environment is not something we should dismiss. Impacting the environment and recreating the environment is something we should continue to talk about and analyze and push for to the best of our ability. Because in our discussion alone, what we're pointing out is that we like trees, we like less pollution, we like walkable streets, we like people, third spaces.
Ali: Parks, stuff that everybody wants, but that low-income communities like ours almost never have.
J.T.: Online, I think I saw people pointing out that there is a spot right next to the Avenida housing project, an old abandoned building that has been sitting there without use for a long time. I personally am fairly confident that L.A. Metro oversees that building or the land for that building because they have a Metro station right underneath; and cheers to the possibility of converting this into green space someday or converting it into more housing that also includes green space, that takes away more of this asphalt and places trees on there for people to live and play and create their community to the best of their ability, even within this massive juggernaut that is Los Angeles.
Ali: That's the dream. I think there are still some cons that we have to talk about about this project, but I think a lot of times folks hear conversations like this or see work like we've been doing with the newsletter (if you're familiar with the sort of larger body of this work we've been doing, which is very focused on our neighborhood, what is the history of this neighborhood? What are the current conditions? What does it look like the future is going to be?) One of the comments that we get often is that people are frustrated with the “negative attitude” we have toward the neighborhood or in our work, or that we are anti-change or anti-progress or whatever. And I think we're hopefully trying to use this conversation in part to point out that you can be dissatisfied with something and express that dissatisfaction without being negative about it or without being anti-change or anti-progress. It's more just that, we are seeing some things work well, and we're using this housing project as an example because we just went to it. But it's one of many things of its size, shape, whatever that these critiques could apply to, which is that there's a lot good about it and there's a lot that could be different. I think conversations about what could be different and what could be better are always going to be important. And they are not inherently negative or inherently anti-change. It's just, whose idea of change are we valuing here? Whose voices are we valuing in this conversation?
J.T.: I think what is important to note as well is that nowadays, with so many people in a rush with their jobs, with where they have to be, maybe they're reading through something like what we have described, and given all of the influx of news and media that they're likely consuming on a day to day basis, they may for some reason be under the impression that when we discuss change and also discuss it in a long-form manner, that we're engaged in just complicating things for the sake of that. But no, we are actually taking complex ideas and doing our best to get them out to as many of our community members as possible so that more of us can participate in a comprehensive analysis and collective response. And that does still matter even in the age when so much is supposed to be reduced into just a sound clip for you that you engage with very briefly and then move past. This is not that. And I think that's a big deal.
Ali: One thing that you noted after the event is that the system in general—media systems, digital culture, the internet, the communities on the Internet, maybe the state itself in this instance, or nonprofits…they're getting a lot better at the optics and this sort of narrative that things are getting better. One thing about this event (and again, this isn't trying to target this particular organization or this particular project), it's a lot of people getting up on a podium and applauding the work that they've done, that other people have done. They had a resident, who is going to be the first resident of this building, come and speak. And that stuff is easily condensable down into one Instagram post, a set of pictures, a one minute video or whatever. And what you lose with that sort of narrative of “Isn't it so great that we're getting people off the streets?” is questions like the one I'm about to address. What does it mean to get people off the streets into “permanent housing?” Is permanent housing like this actually a home?
J.T.: One final con for us is exactly regarding home and the question of home..
Ali: One of the things that we noticed when we toured the space—and I want to preface this by saying I'm not sure what the stages of finalizing this project are—but from what we can tell from the promotional materials on the Instagram and from the rooms that we were able to see, they're pretty small they have they have the furnishings of a hotel room. I'm not sure if it's the same stuff that was in the actual hotel before or if they got new stuff. But it's pretty limited.
We're in this room and we're looking around and we're like, okay, so there's a bed, there's a desk, there's a little shelf, there's a bathroom, there's a very small mini fridge. There's the world's tiniest sink, like maybe not as tiny as an airplane bathroom sink, but pretty small. You could maybe fit one textbook, a large textbook in it. It's not a very deep sink. And then one little stove top, but that could fit [only] one skillet or one pot.
One thing that makes a home to me is the ability to cook. And one of the hard things about traveling or being on the road at all is that you can't really cook, so you have to eat out. And eating out costs a lot of money unless you're eating stuff that is maybe not as high quality, not as good for you, not as healthy, but a lot of times those are the only options. So if folks are calling these kinds of units a home, then I'm curious what that means to people, because I can't imagine washing dishes in that tiny little sink. I can't imagine trying to cook a meal on that one little skillet. I've utilized spaces like this, but they're not what I would consider a home. They're very small. There's not really room for if you had people over. There's nowhere for people to sit or to gather. There's just not much in there. And so to me, that reads as temporary housing. You can give folks a shelter temporarily while they get back on their feet, but this is being pitched as permanent housing.
J.T.: The phrasing is a big deal. The difference between permanent and supportive housing, that tends to matter up to a point, because what they may be getting to here is the fact that there's not a specific time limit on this housing, meaning that individuals who access it are not under one of those more rigorous timelines that they tend to encounter at other developments and in other housing projects. So I think rather than it meaning that this is supposed to serve as indefinite housing, really the emphasis might be that there's no specific date for this person to leave, and therefore, in that sense, it technically qualifies as permanent supportive housing. But it's not meant to serve a person's needs indefinitely.
Ali: Maybe it's just a means to get folks back on their feet, get them support and resources that they need while they have shelter, and then they can move on from there. But in the meantime of trying to get back on your feet, it's a pretty hard space to utilize, I would imagine. And I think there are probably folks out there that would say, “well, this is better than nothing” or, “on the street they didn't have any sink or anything.” And what always troubles me about that discourse is, having worked in unhoused communities for a long time, I've had conversations with folks about what it would look like for them to go inside, what they would want. And I think people are so quick to say, “okay, these folks have nothing. So anything we give them is better than nothing.” And, you know, to some extent maybe that's true. But [L.A. mayor] Karen Bass recently described people as housing resistant. And that's a narrative that I think a lot of us who work in this area are pretty frustrated [by]...calling somebody housing resistant because they don't want to be forced into a system that's…inadequate, isn't really fair. There's been a lot of critiques of and discourse around the tiny home stuff and, “why don't we just put folks in a tiny home?” I think the question that we're going to talk about a little bit more is, ”Would you live in this housing?” Like if somebody is here to propose a style of housing or an alternative to living on the street, they should ask themselves, really honestly, if you can be really honest with yourself and not just on a kind of PR stunt, like would you live here? Would this be a choice that you would make for yourself or your family?
And this one doesn't seem to have curfews. I don't know if there’s going to be regulations, so in that way it's maybe less fraught than some of the other alternative housing stuff that I've seen for unhoused folks. Shelters or some of these other communities that the state is trying to build to house people are pretty intense and very strict about what can be brought in, who can come in. I don't know if this is going to be that. It doesn't seem like it's going to be. But that still doesn't mean that it is a home. If we're going to be out here calling things home, what does that mean? What does home mean?
J.T.: I think it's such a crucial question for everyone to ask themselves. And especially if we place into perspective the neighborhoods we call home, the city we call home, the environment, including the built environment that is a part of home, one realizes we have inherited these environments and they have played this major influence in our own interpretation of home. And similarly, those with more have also inherited a system that defines home in a different way for them. And I think a more comprehensive discussion looks at the various definitions. It is a crucial question to ask not only of our officials, but really for all of us, just what it is that makes our home and and what things we're willing to sacrifice when it comes to maintaining a home and which we are not willing to let go of. Because I think people do define it differently. And this is especially true given that equity looks differently for everyone. My needs today are very different from a person who has nowhere to sleep tonight. And so if this can make that major difference for them, then by all means, just as we've pointed out. But we also keep in mind the range of needs, the range of support that folks need out there.
Ali: Absolutely. We were going to end with some further questions that we have and one of them is about money. And again, not to target this project, [because] I've heard similar conversations around money about a lot of projects like this. The money for this project came from Project Homekey, by the way, and I think Holos had a quote on their website about how much each unit cost.
J.T.: $453,000 a unit.
Ali: Okay, so the cost per unit, that $453,000 goes to paying for services…
J.T.: Services and I imagine paying for basic infrastructural needs like electricity and water and management of other resources.
Ali: But that's exactly the point is that we don't know. So when someone quotes, it takes X amount of money, it takes $453,000 per room to house someone and keep them housed—maybe this information is out there and I just haven't been able to find it—but I would really love to know the breakdown of that money. Why is it that much money? Is that even…enough money? Just, where does that money go?
J.T.: Councilmember Hugo Soto Martinez's office actually noted that the rate at [the] Avenida is essentially a third of the general rate it takes to create this type of housing. So at $453,000, or nearly $500k generally speaking, it is at least two times more affordable than what is out there at the moment. Avenida’s total cost rounds out to about a third of the cost it generally takes for these projects to go online. So it is extremely expensive, but this is also because when one is creating housing, one has to create a whole network, just as we've sort of alluded to in our discussion, right? It's not just the built housing and the built structure. Then you have to think about the people who will be there, how long they'll be there, and so on.
Ali: I would just love to see a transparent cost breakdown for these projects instead of telling me how much it costs to house one person. Just to get a better understanding.
J.T.: It's more than [a] fair enough question to ask and to reflect on. And it delves well into our next question, which we've already asked, but which I think is important to bring back: What is home to each person? How do they define that? I think this is critical work for community organizations to look into with people, because this allows us to visualize just how it is that all of us have come up with slightly different versions of home. But there are general themes, right? And these general themes should be generally applicable. That is, we should generally apply them to housing when we create housing as we need to do in our city over the course of the next few decades. What is home to each person? As sappy as that might come off for a moment, I believe it is important for us to do that analysis together so that we can really visualize the future for our neighborhoods, visualize what we need to keep and what we would like for others, including those who have greater needs to inherit when it is that they finally have access to some of these resources.
Ali: If you're going to take that question and make it actionable or make it applicable to the circumstances we're talking about, when folks are creating housing solutions for unhoused folks, whose voices are involved in those projects? Because if you are designing something for somebody, but a representative [from] those groups of somebodies is not involved in that process, you're just doing a liberal fantasy of saviorism, of “I'm here, I know the solution. I have the answer. I'm going to create this kind of situation.” And then the person who needs the support might be like, “whoa, this is not what I need.” But if those folks’ voices were not part of that conversation, then I'm not quite sure what folks are doing.
If you are going to be creating housing for folks and really getting beyond the ideological, really getting down to, Where is it going to be located? What is the built environment going to be like there? Just having a board of people who, even if they're professionals, even if they're experts in housing or architecture, if you are not the community being served by this project, yours can't be the only voice involved in the conversation. And for all we know, maybe folks in this project did consult unhoused folks in terms of the process or other projects like this, I'm not sure, but I think there are definitely enough projects out there that do not involve the broader community and ask those questions. And that's how we end up in neighborhoods that we didn't really have a say in. And this is the environment that we live with now.
J.T.: On that note, I want to make a shout out to the Robinson Space and also the Young People to the Front Podcast, because it is a podcast dedicated to uplifting the voices of those who've experienced homelessness, especially in their youth. And I think capturing that and getting that out to more of the community, including these groups that are designing and defining the next moment for housing in Los Angeles, that is a big deal. So this conversation is very much friendly to that…is very much in community with that.
Ali: We’re recording at the space where those conversations happen, and if the content is out there, if the folks are using their voices to talk about their experiences and to say what they need, then service providers, the state, whoever, should be listening to those conversations.
J.T.: Yeah, that's certainly what our work together has developed so far…the sense that these voices matter, that these voices can and should be heard, that these voices should play a crucial role in shaping the neighborhood going forward because they've already shaped so much of it as is. They continue to do so even despite a myriad of obstacles around them. So I really have appreciated this comprehensive discussion, and I think we've provided some great questions for our listeners to consider. And those of you all who are interested in responding to some of these questions, by all means get in touch and let's continue moving the needle forward step by step, convo by convo. This is exactly how that happens.
Ali: I really hope we get more housing for folks. I really hope that we're able to get some of the folks that live in this neighborhood off the streets and into housing if that's what they want in this neighborhood where their communities are. That's a part of it that we didn't touch on is, what happens when there's a centralized service provider that has to place people across the city? I know people that would love to live in this housing, even temporarily, but they're probably not going to be the people that get in because they're not currently connected with a service provider or they're lower down on the list of people getting housing. Somebody from a faraway neighborhood might end up in housing over here, but lose access to the community where they came from. And so there's so much more to this conversation. We're trying to add to that discourse. Hopefully other folks will add to that discourse in the service of creating better housing options and better housing models. And we're not here to propose those at this moment. But we just wanted to break down one example of something that we saw that we found value in and that we also would like to see be a little bit different.
J.T.: So here’s to adding to the discourse!
—
**This article has been updated from the email version with the correct month for the release of our conversation via J.T. the L.A. Storyteller Podcast.**