The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

Los Angeles County is in an affordable housing crisis. This crisis is particularly pronounced for low-income workers. With the government and private sector unable to solve the crisis on their own, many labor unions are looking for ways to get involved. Our client, UNITE HERE Local 11 (UH11) – a hospitality workers’ union – is looking into creative methods of addressing the housing crisis for its members, other hospitality workers, and the rest of the region’s working class. This report investigates two solutions: converting hotels and motels into housing and establishing housing cooperatives. This research employs a mixed-methods approach consisting of literature reviews, document analysis, quantitative data and spatial analyses, and expert interviews. On the hotel/motel conversion side, our findings suggest that there are opportunities to convert hotels/motels into housing, but further municipal action is needed to implement this model at scale. Our findings on the cooperative side suggest that financial, tax, and legal challenges may stymy the establishment of new cooperatives, but community land trusts present a feasible intermediate model. Our report concludes with several recommendations: regarding conversions, UH11 should pilot conversion projects and advocate for certain state and local reforms to further facilitate conversions; and regarding cooperatives, UH11 should partner with existing community land trusts to develop cooperative housing. With these strategies, UH11 can play a pivotal role in expanding affordable housing options for its members and other low-income workers in Los Angeles County and provide models for union-led initiatives to address housing insecurity in other high-cost metropolitan areas.