 So for the past 10 months, ProPublica and Capitol May have been partnering on an investigation into the loss of well-income housing at residential hotels in Los Angeles. And I'm very pleased to bring up to the stage, actually these are from here. Peter Hong, Capitol May's editor-in-chief. Peter spent 15 years at the LA Times where, among other things, he reported on the city's enforcement of development regulations in and around the downtown area. Peter also spent a number of years as a high-level aid in county governments. Fun fact about Peter, during the pandemic, when all of us were hungry down, he took off for Istanbul, where he spent a year, and then moved on from there to Mexico City. I'm thrilled that Capitol May blurred him out of early retirement to become our editor-in-chief. Peter, take the win. Thanks very much. Thank you. Before we get into the particulars of the program, I just want to thank Danny and everyone else who made this possible. Erin, I'll recap on our board chairs here in the audience. And, but really, ProPublica made all of this possible. And I think a lot of you know about the state of journalism today. The difficulty in carrying out this kind of important work. So they partnered with us and supported us by providing all kinds of resources, including the help from their very large staff, people like the editors of this series, Michael Michak and Michael Grobel, Gabriel Sandoval from ProPublica was the reporter researcher who teamed up with Robin. Their photography, social media, and events team caught a good one who couldn't be here tonight. Their communications manager, ProPublica, was instrumental in putting this together. And Lucas Waldron is here tonight from ProPublica, thank you, Lucas, for coming. Sarah Bluestain, the assistant managing editor oversees the local reporting network of which we were a part through this project. And the managing editors of ProPublica really gave us their full support. They're actually my former Los Angeles Times colleagues, Charles Hornstein and Tracy Weber. So I thank all of them. So there was a lot of journalistic heft that went behind this that you all know are the beneficiaries of. And that we've been tonight, Marco Amador, our creative director of Capitol Hill and Rupido Roscoe here, really do a great job in getting all of us together for us. So, we're here because on our first day in office, Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, declared a housing emergency. And the housing crisis is all you know. Actually, it's been kind of institutionalized in that like a sort of long before that. And around the turn of this century, some of the city's lowest cost housing, what we call residential hotels, the kind of derogatory jargon, I think it was like flaw houses, maybe a very low cost kind of low service places that people could rent for a little amount of the money. But also as many of you who supplied for apartment recently knows, you know, they got to get in without a lot of the barriers, the applications and then different things that people need to get housing. So, it really was kind of an important component of the mix of housing for people in Los Angeles. So, in 2008, recognizing this, the city passed an ordinance to preserve this type of housing. But, you know, what happened in the ensuing 15 years, which the Republican Capital Investigation, Capital Investigation found, was that multiple residential hotels, really were just operated as hotels that the residents who'd been living there on a monthly basis or longer were displaced and left. And some of them got converted to some high-end properties. Others just operated as 90 or short-term rentals. But the main thing is that this option for people to have a place to live at a low rate in Los Angeles with a low kind of barrier to entry was greatly reduced or if not eliminated. And, you know, after our investigation was published, which found that, you know, we found from our investigation that 21 of the more than 300 properties were operating this way. But that's sort of what we were able to do with our resources as a news organization. You know, the city now is investigating, but we really don't know the scale of the loss of this type of housing. So that's one thing we're gonna talk about tonight and we'll be able to find out. Actually, one of our panelists who's not here yet, but it's on his way, is Tom Gingler, who lived in a residential hotel, one right across the street, the American hotel. That exists today, where Al's bar is. But Robin is the lead writer on the story of reporters with her project. Robin is a reporter by capital name, but she's also done a lot of radio work for National Public Radio and she's written for the San Francisco Chronicle of Las Vegas Sun as well. Robin's been following the decline of Los Angeles as the affordable housing stock for several years now in 2021, she wrote a series called The Gatekeeper about the barriers to affordable housing and the loss of affordable housing in the end of like the city to preserve the affordable housing stock. And among the awards she won for that was an online journalist of the year or for that series. Barbara Schultz is director of housing justice at the legal aid foundation of Los Angeles. So in that position, Barbara manages legal aid's work on housing, houselessness and community empowerment. And as a litigator, she worked on allocation and policy efforts for her housing in Skid Row, including the 2006 settlement at the Wiggins versus Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. So that settlement assures the affordability and preservation of residential hotels in downtown Los Angeles. So Barbara was really in the thick of everything, you know, post ordinance and also CRE. And we have an important perspective from someone on the front lines here, Ray Patel is actually a hotel owner. He's head of the Northeast Los Angeles Hotel Owners Association. The association advocates for family-owned hotels like Ray's throughout Los Angeles. He has a 24-unit hotel on Colorado Boulevard in New York. And as a matter of many talents, he also has a bachelor's degree in business administration with emphasis on computer information systems from California, and his master's in legal studies from the University of California and the School of Law. And Ray is gonna have a lot of important insights about his actual experience as an owner and as a passenger of computer teams. So thank you all for coming. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the format. We're gonna start with 25 minutes of questioning of the panel for me, that guided questioning. And then there will be 10 minutes of audience questions for all of you. So when we start that part, just go line up at your microphone there and we'll call you in sequence. And after that first round of audience participation, we'll go then into another round of panelist questions for 20 minutes. And after they wrap up that round, there will be the second longer chance for audience engagement, that'll be 15 minutes until we close the evening. So thank you all very much for coming. So the first question is for Robin. You've been writing about the loss of horrible housing for several years. And how did you become aware that the residential hotels were not being used for their intended purpose? And what were your findings when you began to investigate them? I think with keeping that, I think probably our most secret to anybody here. And that's sort of that affordable housing is being built at a super slow rate relative to what we do, even though it's speeded up a lot in simply interesting months. And also that the affordable, the existing affordable housing supply has really dwindled. And so I started this looking at what mechanisms the city had to try to preserve the housing supply that we already have. And I looked about the residential a lot. It's super stringent on paper. We had described it a little while ago, but I'll just sort of lay out some of what it's supposed to do. First of all, it's supposed to preserve tens of thousands of housing units that are really by nature of what the housing is, generally one room dwellings available to the lowest income people in the city. So it's really essential. And if there are some 300 buildings that are designated and if a hotel owner wants to demolish one of those buildings, or they want to convert those rooms to short term use, what they have to do is replace each unit one-for-one or pay a super high fee to the city's affordable housing trust fund. And that consists of acquiring a land and then building a new unit that they would have taken off the market. So the lock is super strict, but as Peter said, what we found is that it was sort of just being ignored. It wasn't being enforced. And once we discovered that a lot of the hotels were just blatantly advertising online. They were out of touch and went out for a sign. Their buildings were just clearly designed for short-term use. And to the inspectors have been in and out of those buildings, but they really had not enforced the residential level. Reporting to low-tech tons of city records, thousands of pages to try to confirm that and figure out exactly how it's happening. And so our theory that probably some of you have read is that... Thanks, Robert. Barbara, I mean, kind of the bigger picture of low-cost housing in Los Angeles. What's the significance of the part that residential hotels play in that mix? And what's the consequence in the last 15 years of the lapse in enforcement of the law? So I think it's important to understand that residential hotels are impacted by state law, local law, and also a subset of those are impacted by the settlement agreement that we refer to. So there's a definition of residence as a residential child in the California Health and Safety Code. It's a pretty simple definition. It sticks for more guest units that are rented out. And the majority of people living there, it must be their primary residence. In other words, their tents, right? So you have 100 units, 51 of them have to be tenants and that's their primary residence. And then it's considered a residential hotel. So residential hotels in Los Angeles are a very unique housing stock because they are so protected. And the reason for that is they are exempt from the LS Act. The LS Act is the law, the state law, that allows owners to go out of the business of being a landlord. However, the LS Act has an exemption for certain cities, including Los Angeles, if they want to protect residential hotels, which is what Los Angeles did. So they pass the residential hotel ordinance. Now, what this means is, unlike any apartment building where a landlord can decide at any given time that they don't want to be a landlord anymore or they want to claim that they don't want to be a landlord anymore, an eldest building, that can't happen to residential hotels. So it's a very unique, very highly protected source of housing really easy to protect. So of course, with the local ordinance that Robin talked about, and that protects residential hotels throughout the city of Los Angeles, Robin mentioned a little bit about what it does. What it doesn't do is, it doesn't protect the affordability of the apartments. It exempts affordable housing. And it allows for a mix of both residential and tourist units, which, as you can imagine, causes some problems when it comes to enforcement. So then there's the waiting segment. And so a simple background, I've been working on residential hotels for about 20 years. I've been working alongside the Los Angeles Community Action Network, who has been working on this for the last couple of decades. And it's one of their primary missions is to preserve this housing. So we've got this lawsuit, we've got a settlement called the Wicked Settlement. Now that was in 2006. So that goes above and beyond the residential hotel ordinance, but it only protects the hotels basically downtown LA. It's in the two redevelopment areas, the city center and the central industrial redevelopment areas. And what that does is it ensures that the affordability level of the units are protected. There's no affordable housing exemption and there's no mixed tourist and residential use. It also goes a little bit beyond the residential hotel ordinance, which is about conversion and demolition, because it also is triggered when buildings are being rehabilitated. So those are kind of the different protections that residential hotels have in Los Angeles. I'll leave it there for now. So Tom, just joined us. Great, thank you. Oh, okay, so this is Tom Gameclerk and Tom actually was a resident in the residential hotel for 15 years and he'll fill us in on business screens in just a minute. So Tom, let me show it though. Rather than barbers, just kind of give the bigger overview of the law and then barbers just explain what a residential hotel is called, fits in kind of a scheme of affordable housing and then the various other laws, LSAC, how it fits in those things. But maybe you can just tell us, we talked about residential hotels as meeting a particular need in a very high-cost housing area. What was your experience? When did you move in to a residential hotel? Why was this the right option for you? And when you left, then you can tell us a little bit about the circumstances that you've been in and then when you left, what have the options been for you now since then and so did something to the type of housing that you like to look back into? Barber, do you need to say something? Oh, I see, I thought I saw you. Okay, Tom, I'll answer that. That's all I'm just going to say. Whatever you want. Yeah, that's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say. First of all, other than all over the city, there were places like for five years at a time. I lived in Beach and Canyon, I'm sharing a house with some people. That was the last thing, but some pipes broke and we had people landlord, just wanted to know all this things. But I wanted a place where I could live that wasn't just a regular apartment. You know, I'm not anywhere in the city. I want something different. So I was located in places and I never went to some of those, buy some of those things, bring new apartments. And I lived a little off on Wall Street and there was an elevated apartment thing. So if you want to be able to work in the morning, you're going to get someone to, anyone can come off the elevator so you can get out. And then I looked at the back of LA Weekly and I saw this place, it was like a loft, you know, shared bathrooms. Then I looked at it and it was kind of, I had two big rooms in the corner and it was just like a perfect kind of place that I wanted to live in. It was like above the street, you look over the street, it was near a top of the store. There's people walking around outside and you hear people talking in the morning and to share a bathroom, it was kind of what I wanted. And also I kind of had to play guitar and practice the stuff. So I wanted a place where I could make some noise, you know what I mean? If you live in a regular apartment, it's really hard to get some water. And this place was on the corner. So I could put my guitar in there and we bothered people on the one side of the one guy upstairs. It just seemed like it was locked or in the front. So even though you had to yell out the toasters to get them to yell out, you know, to get down. It was safe that way. You could don't just walk in on the toasters. So it was first part of the question, right? Yeah. And I just let them try to figure out to tighten it better. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the time. Yeah, I mean, at the time. At the time it didn't really matter about the time. At the time, I don't know. I didn't just jump in time. But I like to take those sheets for about a month. Maybe show the bathroom. So at the time, it didn't matter so much, but it was a great benefit. But then as time went on, it became a temp and they did different things to come tell us how to work in the apartment. So I really needed a affordable rent, you know. I consider a lot of places are $1,200 or more, you know what I mean? So I can remember back that far, but the tap is a big help. So the rent, you know, I started a quarter of a month. This was in the year 2019, 2019, 2001. And it went up over time. At the end, though, I really, I was a part of it a lot of the time. I worked occasionally. So I really needed a affordable place, you know, and at that time. And I wanted to stay on town because I loved it on time. I did really like the suburbs, the apartment things. And I just loved it down there. All the people were there. Our chair was here. There was an abandoned guy upstairs. So a lot of things. And I really didn't want to, I thought maybe that I would live there till I died. Honestly, I liked it that much, even though the share bathroom. Then, so I definitely did it before, but I didn't want to live anywhere else. How am I gonna question this next part? Yeah, well, it's kind of, you know, once we hear you laugh, then I don't know what it's called. Okay, so, yes. So I started to change things and kind of remodel it. And then at one point the laundry room was gone because I guess they were remodeling, but then we didn't have a laundry room. It felt like sign up for a laundry room. There was no laundry room. And it just became difficult. I guess they were trying to, seem like, I had to think about all the stuff that I had in this, it was a long time ago. But people were moving out and they were getting some. Putting out some wood down there. And then at that time, it came to the point where I wasn't gonna be okay because I wasn't working and I was getting addicted. So I decided to take the payout to leave. I think at the time there was offering like 7,000, but I guess for 10,000, they gave me $10,000 of wood. So it was worth it to me that way. Were you able to find a house in your young house and how that was as a world? Well, it turned out that I needed like a sober living place. So in that case, it was kind of the same price like 400 months ago, but I didn't want to live. I didn't want to go back to the suburbs. I mean, the suburbs are great past scenes and I stopped and it was really nice, but I just don't, I like downtown. I wouldn't want to, as I've already chose to go there. So at the time it was okay. And now I found a group of guys from one of the church or whatever, that already had a place and they had a room that was empty, so. But now it's the rent's higher. But we're still, it was to do it okay, but I didn't say that they had to do it. So your determination was to go to a new setting? Yeah. Yeah, I'm just giving a chance. Okay. Ray, can you tell us about your experiences as a leader of an organization, representing all the developers, like yourself throughout the city? Many of them opposed the ordinance and had some concerns about its implementation. You told me earlier that you actually are supportive of, generally, of the ordinance. I've been supportive of the time. But maybe you can tell us about what your experience was and what maybe could have been done differently or should be done differently before? Absolutely, could be so, I believe maybe. I'm president of the Northeast Los Angeles Hotelers Association. It was formed back in 2005 to address adverse legislation to the hotelers predominantly the hotel that we advocate for are the limited service hotels, which since the 70s, 80s, 90s, a lot of immigrants came to America from our community back home from India and started working in these hotels, minimum wage jobs, and ended up purchasing them, the smaller hotels throughout Los Angeles. And over time, the communities grew and the acquisitions grew, where a lot of families came, started owning these hotels and the city started passing the legislation that would affect us negatively. So one of them was the residential hotel ordinance. And just for the record, our association never opposed the ordinance. It was the methodology that the staff at the Los Angeles Housing Department used to determine if we were a residential hotel. So what happened is back in 2008, during Mayor Villagrosa's time and the general manager there at that time was Mercedes Marquez and the concerns were that downtown LA big development would come in and tear down these residential hotels and they wanted to preserve them. So the ordinance was re-grafted to address that and LHD got a list of hotels based on their criteria from Los Angeles built in the safety department. We saw that they were setting out these bills called the STEP, our assaulting voices prior to the ordinance being voted in to law or into revision and they were asking for fees, about $100 a unit. And we couldn't get answers and my hotel was also a steamer, a 24 unit hotel in Utah. And whenever you called the number on the bill, nobody would answer, just ring and ring and ring. And then you would get these collection, notice type of letters from the city attorney's office. So we reached out to the city attorney's office and they basically said, look, we get these memos to them and they write what they need to send it out. So eventually the invoices stopped coming and then city council was approving this revision of the residential hotel ordinance. And so we approached the housing committee and said, hold on a second, we're getting these letters and these letters are asking us to send our 2005 guest registration cards and keep in mind this ordinance was approved in 2009. And we have to turn to these guest registrations over a specific period of October, 2005. And it would be turned over to the city staff to analyze to see if the hotel was renting as a residential hotel. And one of the parameters they used was anybody stayed over 30 days in the month of October period or so. And it would be the residential unit unless the proprietor had evidence that that guest back in 2005, three years prior to being asked these records can provide evidence that that guest was not staying there for primary residential purposes. Well, as you can see, three years moving forward, we had to go back in time to produce these records. We don't know what they were staying there for. And the market did taste to the lodging industry, how we rent. So these hotels built in the downtown LA back in the early 1900s when the motor vehicle wasn't around and travelers were accustomed to staying in a lodging establishment and sharing a restroom and shower facilities, staying as tourists in these hotels. But in no one time that the motor car manufacturing spread and people start like, are they starting traveling? So hotels like mine were being built in parking and larger rooms and they had shower and bath facilities to the market demand that it dictated that. And we were getting notified by the Los Angeles House Department we were put on this list just because our hotel was built maybe in the 40s and back then the building department they issued permits by saying hotel slash PT. So all these hotels that have this designation were part of this list that LA HD included and we're setting out notice that you are a residential hotel. However, you can turn on your records and you gotta prove to us that you're not a resident that we're on a preponderous, preponderous deal. So we were stuck to many hotels that sold over time and we're in 2009 trying to provide records that go back in 2005 and we went out on those. So we have hotels that are on that list today that are deemed a resident hotel or roadside hotels that are on that list that couldn't provide those records. In my case, I had owned that property back then. I turned over my records and indeed I wasn't a resident of a hotel but I had the wherewithal to do that. Now these hotels, any of the ones that we stood up for are owned by immigrant families. Predominant came here as immigrants that their children are running these properties like I am. I'm an immigrant, son of an immigrant and a person of color. And then we started seeing a pattern. So we approached LHD and said, wait a minute, you believe I'm fair. We don't see you standing on a notification to the full service hotels to find out how they're renting. It can be a residential hotel because they're known to rent extended stay for a long period of time. The VIPs that come to town. What about those? So they were targeting more on the long haul of hotels. Okay, fine. So we went to the committee and said, look, it's only council members. You need to step in and look at who is analyzing these guest registration cards and determining that we're a residential hotel. And so there was a fee component, close to $1,000 that the hotelers have to pay. In the first round, if you were being the residential hotel, you could appeal it, pay an additional fee. And then they would ask for more records. And if they felt you still were a residential hotel, then you pay an additional fee and then you get this arbitrator, which was also in the Los Angeles house department employed. It's the one on Black Road, on himself wouldn't handle. And then you would go into his hearing and then he would say, no, you're a residential hotel or no, you're not. And the most important thing in our industry is that if you travel, you can get through a cold whatever, the market dictates how you met. And sometimes we will have to extend the state markets and sometimes we're in tourist. If you saw during the pandemic in the city of Los Angeles, how tourism stopped in Los Angeles, travel went down. So there was this great social experiment called Hotel Room Key, where the government paid for rooms for the unhoused to stay in these hotels. And these hotels fall into the room for a reasonable rate, only because the market dictated it. And the king would wrap around services, which is great. And then you have two years later, the program ended, people start traveling, these hotels again started running into tourism. So yeah, we've never gone on a record against it. I really respect the sort of things. I saw what was happening in downtown LA and sort of the owners of these smaller hotels, but we weren't part of that. And oftentimes what happens is legislation or our council people pass laws for good and tense, but then that pendulum swings. And that's a term they use. And it's long outside of downtown LA throughout the city. And most hotels didn't oppose it because they're like the American men, they share bathrooms on the floor, 50 gas and shower or something. They don't have partners. So the market dictates that they have to charge a certain rate and then accommodate guests that are interested and stand there. But hotels like mine that charge $100 a night when this program was started, they were screened, I go, that's not affordable. What are you doing? What is the purpose of this service? Make sure you preserve affordable residential hotel. You don't convert properties into residential units. You preserve that with the purpose of it. Just as many of these hotels over the time were designated as a part bit slash hotel, doesn't mean they were residential. I was just a destination back then. So we felt very much like taking advantage of it. And we try to bring that to the council attention. And at that time, when council would topple a lot or the round and different council and general manager Mercedes Marquez got a presidential appointment, the amount of research she took at the housing of all of America, the interim director was Ilana Chavez. So they called it the council because it was a concern of some of the council members. Ilana asked her point of mind. What does this mean? Are they gonna be forced to go over the rails? Right to suck away? She said, no, we just want to make sure we preserve residential units, whether it be the entire hotel or certain amounts, but there's nothing in there that says how you're gonna rent or what the charge, we're not imposing that. And you can't, you know. So moving ahead now, Robins, you know, investigators, I welcome that because this needs to be settled that a lot of the hotels on the list are not residential hotels, probably a small percentage actually. And the ones that you saw that are renting on XBDM, looking down, I don't know which one specifically, but even back in 50 years ago, we made that argument to the city attorney's office and to the law side to help me on that these hotels are renting rooms on XBDM booking.com. They're not residential hotels. They have the facilities to accommodate the traveling tourists or corporate traffickers. And there is something called extended stay market where people stay a week or two or month or longer than they're in town for something. And how can you ask a lodging establishment to go back in three years and provide those records and explain if somebody stayed over 30 days that they weren't here for a prior residential put. So we just don't feel it's fair. And we looked at the group of hotels that are grouping in, they're pretty good on people who look like me. Right now. Thanks very much, Rene. So now we're gonna start our first audience participation segment and would love to hear about any personal experiences from you with affordable housing, residential hotels, or otherwise. But also any questions you have for anyone on the panel, please call for the microphone. Anyone has questions, please come up here. Hello, thank you so much for your time. Mr. Giselle, I had a question for you who explained the difference between what's been designated as residential hotels and saying that a lot of hotels were in your group were not considered that. But if they're renting for more than 30 days and the person is primarily living there, I'm trying to understand how that wouldn't be considered if I'm a resident, if that person's only resident's there, and I'm trying to understand what you were saying a little bit, can you help me to understand a little bit? So one of the criteria is that LAHD was looking at when they were looking at our guest registration cards specifically in 2005 is if somebody stayed with 30 days, we had to provide evidence that they were there for primary residential purposes. So other than the guest registration card, the address was different, that's all we had. We can't locate the guest, you know, and inquire, or we'd bother to send a letter. That was in time because when they sent us the notice for this inquiry, they said, pay the fee if you dispute being a residential hotel. We look at the timestamp on the letter, you only had a less than a week to respond. And then, so we turned those records over and we made them to turn it over and they had abundance of records because they had it, like because the ordinance itself says for 55 years, your family will never be able to sell this hotel because if you do, wherever you sell it to you, you have to rebuild this product down the street and if you can't rebuild it, you've gotta pay the city 100% of the real estate land value and 80% of the electricity cost. Now we're small business people and you know, we come from, as immigrants, you come to America to achieve something called the American dream and didn't finally get to your entrepreneur, you have your land, you have your business, and you want to pass it on to your children and the market may not be there for this type of roadside hotel or hotel or stuff and so you may have to sell but you can't leave from selling because you can't rebuild this product. That's what's been happening a lot. That's a strange story Mark. Thanks, Eric, I have a couple things. The original residential hotel where we did this was passed in 2006. I, you know, why it took them so long to start administering it? It's a question beyond your name. What I believe happened is they looked at hotels that weren't paying the hotel tax, the transitory occupancy tax. And so I think an assumption was made that if you weren't paying DOT, which is the law, when you're operating as a hotel, then you were presumed to be a residential hotel and that's when they asked the owners of these hotels to try to prove that they weren't because they weren't paying the DOT. Yeah, that wasn't the case. It's untrue that a lot of our hotels that we had been here was untrue. It was a lot that might have been that but the reality is from what the building department explained to us, because they were really beef over a seer of this and they weren't doing a good job. So that's why LA HD wanted to pick it up. And so then they told us, hey, we were just given certain criteria and we provided the hotel with these kind of licenses. And my case was APD slash hotel, so that's where the whole situation was. But we were paying transit and occupancy tax. Did you need to surround the requirements for that? So you were able to help LA HD? When you and I spoke, I believe this is what you first acquired, I explained to you that the instructions were so common to me because depending on who you spoke to in LA HD, we wouldn't get a consistent guidance there. And so what we tried to do to our advocacy and the only counts is try to get some format so these small businesses would be able to follow it and they wouldn't get the hoodwinked where they missed something when they turned in something to the government. And so we try to get that format there. And then with that format, these small business owners were able to follow that. Some that we didn't get to in time were converted to residential units. And these are still your roadside hotels. You said about 100, you were able to get off the list. So how many do you think are not? The original list was 311 again, the original. And today we just don't know because things have changed, notices have gone out, corrections are made. So at this point, we don't really know. We're just, our whole issue is when the government comes, there should be clear instructions and it should be fair. If we don't fail, that process was fair. And that is our biggest problem with this ordinance. It's not that it's preserving actual residential hotels, which the market dictate they have to be because of their facilities and what they offer. We call amenities in our industry. Next question. Yeah, I was just hoping that Barbara could talk a little bit about the patterns and practices of many owners of residential hotels, particularly like 28 day shuffle in the way that reverends were actually doctored to make it seem like folks were residents. And so I'm not making second decision with you, Mr. Patel, because it sounds like you didn't have a residential hotel, you used the fair process and you were released from the ordinance. So I'm not understanding or thinking around how unfair it is. But it actually was much more unfair to tenants than it was to owners and still remains that way in the way that tenants in hotels are really ignored, overlooked and there's a practice in which their rights are taken away. Yeah, thank you for that question. You know, when we talk about and Robin talked about the fact that there's an enforcing problem, but to me, you have to step back even further and say there's a perception problem about residential hotels. And there's a perception problem on the part of our policy makers, I believe. And there is this thought, first of all, especially back into the early 2000s, there was a perception that residential hotels have all transient gases. And so the 20-day shuffle was practiced in most of the hotels, which was when owners would tell someone after approximately 20 days until you got a leave for a day and then come back in order to avoid creating a tendency or you have to move the rooms in order to avoid creating a tendency. So we advocated with the city and actually got that practice to some extent, at least, especially the downtown hotels, it wasn't used as much. So that is one way in which owners were trying to pretend that these tenants were tenants, that they were transients. But there was this perception around the city as well and we really had to fight that. But I think that the other perception, which persists, is that this housing isn't good enough. It's not good enough to be from that house. You have to share a bathroom, there might have to be a kitchen. So therefore, it's not really worthy of main housing. And what we say is, we absolutely wish that there was enough housing that a housing where everyone could have their own bathroom and their own kitchen, it would be completely habitable. But we're not there. So as I said before, we have this stock of housing that is so special, especially protected. And yet, the city doesn't embrace it in the way I think they should. They don't use the tools of the disposal. They don't, as Robin found, they're not enforcing the residential tolerance. They most certainly are not enforcing the legal settlement. And so this is such a wasted opportunity and they're wasted tools when we have such an unpromised crisis. Thanks Barbara. Do you have any other audience questions for this round and talk to us more? Hi, my name is Dr. Ramos and I chose to participate. I'm so short, I'm sorry. Thank you. And I serve with disability rights in California. And as a disability rights activist and advocate being a disabled person, I'm really concerned on the Olympics coming to Los Angeles. And I am also really concerned by the notion that people come to America for the American Dream, which equals money, right? Because I think we have ethical and humanitarian rate. There's reasons outside of money that people come, sometimes it's those protections, right? That some people are entitled to. I have been cleaning office rights for over a decade now, but I remember being in some of the hotels in the area that you described. So I have my own personal observation what I experienced and how I saw the law being circulated in different ways. So with my own experience and now surveying the capacity that I do and with really harmful laws that are being passed by fake Democrats like Newsome and Judith Eichmann, I'm really concerned that the mayors are turning a blind eye to the dangers of the Olympics coming to town. And because there are such an influx of attention to downtown LA, I am concerned for the well-being of other disabled people. I've been able to visit some of the hotels alongside of leaders at LA Cannes and I'm really troubled to see how extensibility is as they mourn. So with what we know with the Olympics coming, how do you perceive the Olympics impacting some of what's happening and do you think this will be prepared? Is that, that might be something that our panel is into in the nature of Olympics? I mean, the only thing I would say is, you know, history will not repeat itself but unfortunately it often does and I think the people most at risk are the unhoused, the unhoused people because as we know, you know, when we're through the world stage, everyone's going to be watching LA and you know, policy makers are not going to want the world to see a lot of unhoused people. So what's going to happen in the leading up to Olympics? Are they going to be step ups in streams? You know, I'd like to say that I really will have so many new housing units that this won't be a problem but I think we're all realistic enough to know that that is unlikely to happen. Thanks Barbara, with that we can transition into the next round of questioning. So Barbara, why was the residential ordinance important to the overall picture-preserving affordable housing? Well, you know, it was important because of the local practices that were occurring in residential hotels. So, you know, there's the way in the shuffle. There was that kind of walllessness. There were all sorts of illegal lockouts. You know, you don't think this person is attending that you don't have to go through the eviction process. You just lock them out, right? So, you know, to that extent, you know, LA can and I also did a lot of going to, you know, the means of police officers to tell them why it was illegal for the owners to just lock them out, right? This is a problem that still persists beyond residential hotels, obviously. The legal lockouts are a huge issue for tenants in LA. But, you know, the residential hotel ordinance was the city's declaration that this was permanent housing, that these were tenants, and they were owed protections. But also, you know, it did acknowledge that this one housing stock was exempt from the other side. But, you know, as Robin said earlier, having a law on paper is one thing. Can you just explain what the significance is at this point, with the exemption from the LS Act? So, my understanding is, the LS Act allows somebody who owns an apartment building to say, I'm not going to use it as an apartment building anymore. So, I can evict people and make a difference. So, how does this fit with the residential hotels? Because of that. Because it can be, you know, an affordable housing forever. So, there are only three cities right now in the state of California that can use this exemption. The exemption is limited to jurisdictions that are over one million, or, as they wanted to include San Francisco, are both the city and the economy. So, basically, it applies to San Francisco, LA, and San Diego. So, I'm sure that in the future, some of the populations will grow in other jurisdictions, and then, globally, they need to decide that they want to pass a similar ordinance. So, I think that was important because there was finally the acknowledgement that this was not transient housing, that this was permanent housing. And, you know, we often called it the housing and glass resort, which, you know, I don't know if that's the greatest phrase, because, you know, I think some people, you know, absolutely informally want to live in this housing. But, you know, the fact is that, particularly, a lot of the hotels, you know, in skin row, were kind of seen as the last stop before the script. So, you've identified, you know, this problem that existed of what we had used that was going on in this type of housing, right, it doesn't seem like you dispute that that problem existed, and you were saying, you know, there were good intentions behind the ordinance, but from what I heard. So, it was kind of in its execution that there was a problem. Absolutely. It wasn't a fair process. We informed council, formed LHD, but, you know, then this confidence thing, okay, we've got to provide housing, even though it was improperly converting hotels to residential hotels. Like I said, the market dictates it, but the 311 hotels on L.S., many of them had no property, because that was their market. So, you know, what really bothered me was all the tax dollars are being accumulated, right? We need to have the city of Los Angeles build affordable housing. And I don't know where the problem is. L.A. County, HHH, tax revenue for the property tax, we're still talking about the need for affordable housing. The city of Los Angeles, hundreds of million dollars out there, you've got Home Key 1, 2, and 3, what we did before, this is the best opportunity to start applying properties or holding them. And that big social program called Room Key shows that you can't just go when you have something, house the house and not continue that service and just merely use residential hotel as an opportunity to say, this is your house, no, why are you lowering our taxes? Let's go back, there was a problem that I identified, an ordinance that wasn't really implemented effectively by our estimation. And it seems like what happened then, though, was that after the pushback from the owners that the city just kind of stopped looking and pretended that it was a sort of seen-on-evil idea that you could correct it if this is a wrong order. So for both Rain and Barbara, where we are now, right, after some years of just kind of looking the other way, if we wanted to try to go back to correcting the or remedying the problems identified early on when we passed the ordinance and to do it in an effective way, what did the two of you think could be done for the city? You know, this, when they, now I'm forgetting to understand why they started allowing this mix of tourists and residential use. But that makes it almost impossible to enforce because, you know, anyone can say, well, yes, of course I have units on booking.com because I have X number of tourist units and X number of residential units. But unless they are designated which units are which. So, you know, number 101 through 150 are residential and 151 to 170 are tourists, you know, and then start telling that I think they're going to have a really hard time enforcing it. So, and it doesn't sound like you're, you may be in disagreement on that, right? You're saying that, you know, your hotel principle was use as a hotel. And maybe the problem was this kind of keeping, you know, different types of uses in a property. And then Robin, though. I was just going to clarify that the city has a list of these properties. It's very small. So, yes, they probably do that a lot. But roles of them are considerably residential. Right. That was the test they asked the ordinance, the revised ordinance 2009 for all of these hotel owners. We want your 2005 records. We want to analyze it. We have analysts at LAHG that know your real estate as you know the hotel market, you know. And so, they took the red cards and basically, if you had somebody over 30 days have to look for it, prove to us that they were there for primary residential purposes. We had to go back in time. Many properties were sold after that. So, they didn't have the books. They got the hotels. I still own them. I said, well, they're not books. And, you know, they looked at it and said, okay, this is not a resident. But we got on the list because the parameters that LAHG asked the building of state gave them the parameters. That's where that regional list came from. So, when you say mixed use of some, that's because if a property had 100 units or 20 units and 30, the trigger was oh, this one was 30 days, prove to us this individual that stayed three years ago at your hotel did not stay in that room for primary residential. We're done with the fact that the red card didn't have the hotel address for the guests. That's all the most property owners were able to say. But then, we would end up going through an appeal process. You pay an additional fee and then you pay an additional fee to get in front of their judge which was the guy who wouldn't handle the Black Road that was still an LAHG employee. That's how it came out. So, we really feel chided on this and you know, I'm glad we have this panel because it's a simple fact that there is a purpose for residential. But my personal base, not speak for the order, I don't think we need to just shoot for residential care. We need to hold our elected officials to the fire. They run for office and they always tell us we're going to get you a quarter of a while and we're going to take care of the house when they get in. Then it's always we recognize the problem. Why do we got to accept them to manage the problem? We want solutions today and they keep getting re-elected and then they get in office and they'll send 40% to legal aid and all these groups get all this money but nobody's building affordable units in the city of Lausanne. The city owns a lot of land. I don't see how difficult it is to build it with a money standard. Why do we have to accept the lowest standard saying you, the elected officials, are managing the homeless problem? Or the affordable? No. Built it. The mayor just purchased the main fair hotel, right? $60 million grand. But it came with streets attached. When the government said, we'll give you the $60 million but this is transitional housing. Nobody deserves to stay in a hotel permanently. Better find a better accommodation. Everybody deserves an apartment and everybody deserves to grow a family. These little 195 square foot rooms how do you grow a family? How do you entertain your guests? You deserve better. Everybody deserves better. In my industry, especially in the service market, we are fed up being pointed to and burdened with the problem and they're putting this housing issue on our shoulder when it should go back on the politicians when they campaign to begin to get into that office, they come to us and say they're going to solve this. When they get in, now it's all about management and this is what this president is going to manage it for you. No, don't accept it. You want to partners. You want to grow your family. You want to entertain your guests. You want to place a partner vehicle. That's what you deserve. These hotels were built back in the 1900s or the mid 50s and the market dictated their residential not only because they have no markability so they lowered the rates and there's nothing wrong with shared battles if you're right. It's fun to live right here as a society we've got to look how do we grow? I can expand. You can't just live in a box and wake up in the morning waiting in line to use the toilet. That's unacceptable in Los Angeles and we've raised enough money they've taxed the business community now and I don't know where that money is going and when these guys get in we're managing it. I recognize a private business. Thank you. What do you think the developers and the big developers have on this account? I don't want us to spread misinformation there's a lot of affordable housing being built and going online now it takes a long time to build affordable housing partially because of all the regulatory scheme which in the last week or so the state just passed a law to try to expedite the permit process for affordable housing but there have been a lot of units built and going online it's way too expensive but you know that is that's not the fault of affordable housing developers you know the one thing that I know we're coming to the end one thing that I certainly agree on is that the city needs to do better but as Angelinos we always have to say that the city can do better and the city can always do better and my concern my primary concern right now for residential hotels and actually affordable housing in general is there is such a focus right now in the mayor's office about about getting rid of visible homelessness that the all all thoughts and all effort is towards income housing and that one thing I absolutely do not want to see is permanent housing in residential hotels converted to income housing because it's not good in terms of income housing that is just that right and that is a total 180 about the housing first model that LA was one of the first to adopt so that is really my concern about residential hotels and about the direction we're headed right now it sounded like you may not be in disagreement though with removing this kind of ambiguity with just saying something is residential or it's a hotel and not along this excuse is there a constituency of hotel owners that wants to continue this sort of mixture I don't see the problem that makes this ordinance actually LA is interesting most laws that they pass like it comes from San Francisco and then it trickles down here and that makes use of it there in the realities that they have they're trying to determine if back in time that room was rented over 30 days you've got a crew who wasn't a prior resident the other rooms when you turned over the records 30 days in October of 2005 so that's okay we're not going to scrutinize that room so this pattern that they have is our issue with the ordinance LAHB explained to us that you know there's a percentage of rooms that they're going to find if you hit that mark then they'll probably determine it's 100% residential there's that mixed part right there but I don't think you can just go in and say you've got 10 rooms out of 100 that are re-determined so the whole hotel is going to be residential because I don't think anybody here agrees that the proprietor owns a property especially these small businesses which are on this list and you say okay now you're residential hotel so here's the thing for 55 years if you try to sell your business you want to retire or whatever or your children in here they want to sell it for whatever because it's not working out well then you've got to make sure you build the city an equivalent property in that vicinity for paying 80% of the construction cost now who in this room thinks that's fair okay Barbara wants to I just wanted to explain the 2005 date so again this ordinance was passed in 2006 when ordinances are passed you know council talks about them for six months for a year and what they don't want is for one of those conversations are going on for you know for people to do whatever it is the ordinance is protecting them so in this case they didn't want a bunch of owners to elicit their buildings and go out of business so that's why it was backdated and this happened with many ordinances particularly ones that are protective ordinances so why the city took so long to you know send out notices and you know and do the procedure I have no idea why I can understand how frustrating that is I think that city bureaucracy frustrates most of us and certainly tend to find it equally frustrating so I agree on that too that's an excuse for the government because no wash do you pass and then you retro back to the citizenry and ask them to defend it yourself that's exactly what they did what about you in North Mexico audience participation now so any questions come on out my name is Daniel I was mayor of Culver City until last year we approached two motels that are yet to be open through Project Tonki we're dealing with similar issues even though we're a small city and even though I live in the city of Los Angeles right now but it's really a little bit more complicated than politicians not doing what they are told to do it's really about the most powerful lobby in the state of California the real estate lobby and that is the reason that we don't have more affordable housing the reason the politicians aren't doing what they said they would do is that their campaigns are sponsored by the real estate lobby I think we need to be honest about that or we're not really talking about reality I think the residential hotels are one of those instances where culture preceded policy there was no affordable housing available so people who needed housing found it where they could that is why it exists so this discussion about the residential hotels is really about not dumping people out onto the street more than anything and also not exploiting people who have no other choice and nowhere else to go but the street my question is how do we really talk about residential hotels in a real way when we are talking about building more permanent supportive housing and we are talking about building more affordable housing often times even people who think they're built to be progressive think of residential hotels where there are only drug addicts and sex workers because that is what we've been taught by American folks and I feel like if we incorporated this type of housing more purposefully into our world comprehensive discussion of housing then we would have a real conversation did you want to share your questions to someone specific on the panel Robin did you want to say and that is certainly true that a lot of people that I've talked to have lived in residential themselves people still do because they're really into any affordable housing and you know just people that are living on social security they might be disabled they might be low income workers and those places are by housing for people who otherwise wouldn't have it next question yes there's been a lot of talk about the housing department and the city bureaucracy in general and it's failure I guess to enforce the law and we see this in this particular case we see it with any residents we see it with systematic code enforcement and my question I think probably for Robin and Barbara is what is your take on what's going on there the city council says we insert the housing department or whatever city agency to do XYZ and it doesn't happen and what is the thing that is and what is it that the city can do to solve that problem because it seems like it eliminates any power that the council has to do anything yeah well I can start I mean as to why I really can't talk about why I mean why the city council seems to pass laws and not do anything about them like the ones that the tenant harassing ordinance that you mentioned one thing I should say though is that the day after our report was our first story was published the housing department said it was going to investigate these hotels the same day the mayor told the housing department that it needed to prepare a report on the hotels and also to report within 45 days on this region of enforcement and to report on how they could prevent this from happening again and those 45 days are up today or tomorrow so we're waiting for that additionally they did start giving out citations which they had done a little bit in the past but what we hope to do is keep an eye on this and keep it before the public see if they really do pursue what they say they're going to pursue I would just go back to my perception comment I just don't think it's a housing stock that the city has really embraced as being important quite honestly to the enforcement evidence I will say although this is a relatively recent problem I would say just like so many sectors they are very understated not to provide an excuse for them but that is true and that's tampering a lot of people doing a lot of things what's the question? what's talking? Hello I'm really curious about some of the moderations what might be perceived as a residential hotel when we talk about the definition that you referenced of the residential hotel that's a typology of a building there are other typologies of buildings that kind of navigate this kind of great area of exemption when it comes to habitable space that's running to a person and the protections that come with and the guarantees that come with habitability you talk about some of those provisions where a unit in ABL is but what are some of the implications of the conversion of some of these buildings that are doing things like room rentals that might exist in the oldest fashion in the 1950s building or something that might be a modern building that was built in 2023 Good question I think there's also room houses is another type of housing stock and I think there are more and more of those types of housing and it can be very hard to enforce the right to the tenants when you're in that situation I don't really have any other answer to that Next question My name is Beth Stryker I'm the Executive Director here in our Chair LA We have affordable housing for the community here we have 30 units upstairs so we know firsthand the challenges of maintaining affordable housing stock and I think that the questions that you're asking especially that you started with what resources are available for affordable housing is one that's being very close to us in that material concern I have a question My question is about I'm not very familiar with this practice but how effective is this program and enforcement aside in the sense that they're not necessarily checking for people's income when they move into these hotels they're receiving really affordable housing in that sense they don't seem to use any certification that goes on over time to ensure that there are actually people in need of affordable housing so is this even the best program in the first place to maintain affordable housing so that's my question I think my comment is that there's some concern among people here in the community because we are neighbors with the American hotel and the individual landlords I think we've heard from Mr. Fischel about some of the challenges that they're facing about some questions around the program and I think that in particular some of the reporting highlighted the artists who were it sounded as if like the creative community is abyssyrated but we were here to witness that there are many artists who continue to live there some of them are here in the room I know some folks who have been long-term staff of ours actually in the American hotel they're one of our staff Terry Ellisworth they're abyssyrated up into this step and so we also seem good that the American hotel is down to the creative community and to provide affordable housing for artists which you know here at Art Share we're trying to keep affordable affordable housing for artists affordable housing for artists here in the Art Sage of Disability critical and we have seen them do so on that work so I just want to share that moment and I would love to learn more about how this program can thank you Well, as far as our residential hotel it doesn't have any income in terms of barbecues it's a little bit more about weekends because it does but the idea is just that for a one-room place the market might not bear more than an affordable rate and so that's the idea of preserving residential hotel rooms and and I think that's a really great question because we did see a lot of hotels you know settling seeking students I know there was a lot of business students and so the historically low income hotels you know I'm not to say students don't need affordable housing as well but I think that you know that the clientele of residential hotels have really changed a lot and Robert's right there's no affordability attached to the residential hotel ordinance there is affordability attached to the Wigan settlement when somebody you know triggers Wiggins then they're placed the units at the same affordability level that existed in 2006 not the same rental amount but if a unit was affordable to someone at 40% area meaning income then the new housing would have to be affordable to that same group of people I'd like to add that in explaining how the market dictates how lodging establishments rents their rooms the hotels that conduct market tourists were attracted to travelers that expect a certain rate especially the hotels that have shared facilities for battles so the rates automatically the market forces to prepare to bring the rates down to attract that customer and then they stay there you know over time we're seeing now that the market is changing again students coming in and say hey I'd like to stay here so now they stay there that's what the market dictates the analogy I can give you is a dollar and treat things were a dollar over there can go to a dollar and treat now can you imagine if the government passed a law that said okay since you have products between one and five dollars we don't want you to raise that anymore even the cost of milk will go up you've got to keep it between one and five dollars because it helps a certain percentage of the population that cannot afford to pay six dollars for a gallon of milk so you can keep your product within one and five dollars so when you see the market change hoteliers change with that because the cost goes up also insurance has gone up astronomically utilities have gone up maximum labor has gone up the upkeep of a building the cost of labor contractors go up so how can we allow ourselves to accept an ordinance it doesn't say by the way you've got to keep the rates a certain value the rates can go up because you've got to pay your bills the proprietor has expenses there's no way you can expect a proprietor to keep a low rate because maybe ten years ago they were renting their rooms at four hundred dollars a night and now they need to rent it for six hundred dollars just to pay the expenses one thing we should say clarify though is that residential hotels are mostly covered by a friend if you're a residential hotel you can't raise from four hundred to six hundred you can raise the rent to about four percent a year absolutely that's why our association was advocating for fairness that a lot of these lodgings that were not residential hotels they were improperly being designated by LHD because we have costs and if we were put into that residential hotel program that barrier would not allow us to pay our expenses very well yes my name is Susan Sanford and I have a question for Rod but first I want to thank you so much for doing this investigative reporting because as we know journalism is something that looks like it's more an hour in the past and if we don't have investigative reporting we don't have the facts and the truth but I think that we were supposed to hear what the mayor's response was to this report and that's what I'm hoping I know that you touched on a bit there coming to do with the 45 days but is there any more that you can tell us about the mayor's response to the report? Not today because there's not a report yet I mean it was supposed to be released today or tomorrow so we're waiting on the agenda for seats for that they claim it's going to be on time but we'll see this will be our last question it's been established that each affordable housing situation is weak each hotel has a different job so I'm here on my own not solicited to represent the American Hotel which is right across the street my name is Jesse Easter I first came to the American Hotel as a low income housing tenant in 1983 I still currently live there existing so young social security at the time I moved into the American Hotel was basically a low rent block house many health hazards bed bugs, drug issues, lack of sanitary conditions it was not uncommon to find heroin other drug paraphernalia in the showers the previous owner let the hotel insist disarray and disrepair he not only showed no regard for proper living conditions but was later fired by his own partners at the point of Mark Verge becoming the new owner the American Hotel was about to be red tagged and most probably closed down and torn down Mark Verge believing in the concept of yard statistic began the restoration of the hotel after spending an incredible amount of money millions of dollars and time he completed the repairs of the roof the electrical plumbing, the windows, the air conditioners the bathrooms which are beautiful nicely tiled and much improved all living conditions giving new life to the old hotel he was able to provide a clean and safe living space for the existing tenants and the visitors from out of town allowing a clean and safe experience of the neighborhood frankly I don't want to go back to I don't want the hotel going back to what it was 30 years ago if the homeless were given vouchers to stay as an American it would soon be left as a crime pit with drugs drunkenness and violence affecting not only the hotel but the neighborhood in general some would incorrectly use the argument oh, anywhere but my backyard for the homeless crisis this is not bad this is simply realizing that it is an improper solution serving a law that would render an extremely negative outcome for the newly revised hotel and neighborhood and by law, when people said well it's a law, I would also add what about the underage girl that's raped by a murderer she can't have an abortion there needs to be interpretations on laws, it shouldn't just be quiet statements Pro-Publica would have done well to new and expedite these on the real problem, millions of dollars which were awarded by city hall to mayors Vera Bogosa and Garcetti who not only failed to assist a solution but allowed the homeless crisis to grow by leaps and bounds this is a crime my opinion is millions of dollars awarded by the city could have gone into the building of homeless centers who are housing, food, professional mental health, career counseling to be received not simply using hotels to eradicate the visual problem without addressing the court issues of why we have homeless crisis I am proud of you and Angelina I love downtown LA I love Georgetown I want to see a real solution of bringing the homeless off the streets and into state environments attacking the American hotel and its owners is not the way to do it when Mark Kerchin held a meeting right here at our chair and reducing himself when he took over letting all the tenants know they would not be asked to move out of the building he also explained that if anyone did not want to experience the noise and dust of the next year's rebuilding process they would not be allowed to receive financial compensation or payback if they chose to leave which he did do for those who left in closing for a public capital remain ultimately incorrectly as a slumlord a pit bull, a beauty who disadvantaged and dispossessed one and true all they did was to kick a service animal trying to serve the neighborhood by rescuing a dying hotel providing clean and safe conditions with hotel jobs and reasonable rates from travelers visiting your community for public capital remain they got it all wrong thank you and with that wrap up I'll just say that we did give Mr. Berge a chance to participate in this story we commented several times we included his comments as a piece and he was like everyone else in the public he would come here tonight to show us too so I think we all saw that solutions are complex and what we hope to do is bring together environments like this to have these discussions and do our coverage to inspire further dialogue so thank you all again for coming and please continue to read us at capolmain.com and you can also subscribe to our newsletter there to get a heads up on future coverage so thank you very much