From the outside, the rows of tile-roof houses in a new community in Menifee don’t look much different from those in other subdivisions cropping up in this fast-growing city in Riverside County. But on the inside, these all-electric homes are revolutionary, offering a glimpse of the zero-emission future we should be hurtling toward to fight climate change and adapt to its effects.
All the houses in the Durango and Oak Shade at Shadow Mountain communities, two adjacent KB Home subdivisions I visited in May for an opening event, were built without natural gas hookups or appliances. Each of the 219 homes comes with rooftop solar panels, heat pumps for heating and cooling, induction cooktops and other energy-efficient electric appliances, and a smart electrical panel that manages energy use. In the garage is a battery storage system that can power the home during an outage and in the evenings when the cost of electricity from the grid is higher.
They’ll also soon be connected to a shared community battery storage facility the size of a shipping container that’s a backbone of a system known as a microgrid. It will allow residents to disconnect from the electrical grid during an outage, and use the backup power to keep their lights on for a few days.
I expected these homes to come with a premium price tag, given their futuristic amenities. But they start around $520,000, and a 2,900-square foot, four-bedroom, two-bath Spanish-style home recently sold for about $590,000. Buyers aren’t paying extra for technology that would otherwise cost $30,000, according to the homebuilder, because the project was subsidized by a $6.65 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.
The homes have other energy efficiency features such as spray foam insulation under the roof to help cool the attic and the living space below. The houses are essentially “like a Yeti cooler,” as one official with SunPower, the company that provided their solar and battery-storage systems, told me. That’s life changing in this corner of Riverside County where summer days often exceed 100 degrees and utility bills climb painfully high.
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After spending a few hours checking out the homes’ energy-smart features and listening to company and government officials talk up their climate-friendliness and resilience, I was almost envious. The people moving into these houses are living in a world that, for now, remains a distant reality for most Californians for whom a fossil fuel-free home is still very much a pipe dream. And it highlighted how much work there is yet to do by state officials to ensure all Californians start to benefit from home electrification as that need becomes increasingly obvious in a world altered by climate change.
Underscoring that feeling for me was a remark by a California Energy Commission official in attendance, who noted that new construction accounts for less than 1% of the state’s housing stock in any given year.
California has 14 million homes and builds only about 110,000 new housing units a year. So even if all new homes are built with at least one electric heat pump, as the Energy Commission expects, that would account for only about 8% of all homes by 2030, 14% by 2040, and 20% by 2050. That’s not anywhere near fast enough to slash climate-warming emissions, which means that most of this transition will have to happen by replacing appliances in existing homes.
For now, California remains heavily dependent on fossil fuel in daily life, especially the methane gas that powers the majority of home appliances. For most of us, the transition to zero-emission electric living will be far more complicated, messy and slow than buying a new home.
The furnaces, stoves, clothes dryers and water heaters in our homes and businesses may not seem like big polluters individually, but they all add up to a lot. Buildings are one of the biggest emissions sources in California, responsible for about 25% of its climate pollution. But California still lacks the kind of straightforward zero-emission targets for buildings that it has already adopted for other major pollution sources like electricity generation and new cars.
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Because home appliances like furnaces and water heaters can last 15 years or longer, scaling up action over the next few years is critical if we are to get on a path to zero out greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury and avert catastrophic levels of climate change.
A recent report by Rewiring America, an electrification-focused nonprofit organization, found that to meet those climate targets the U.S. has to dramatically increase the pace of replacing fossil-fueled appliances and cars over the next three years. That would mean purchasing about 14 million more electric heat pumps, water heaters, stoves, rooftop solar systems and electric vehicles above what’s expected.
While California has some laudable goals, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s target of installing 6 million heat pumps by 2030, state officials acknowledge that much greater numbers will be needed to put California on track to achieving a carbon-neutral economy by 2045.
State air quality regulators plan to end the sale of new gas-fueled furnaces and water heaters by 2030, and the Inflation Reduction Act and its array of consumer rebate and incentive programs should help bring down the cost of replacing them with electric heat pump models. But state leaders need to establish clear and ambitious targets for home electrification, while pursuing creative solutions such as establishing a neighborhood decarbonization programto retrofit entire low-income communities with electric appliances and infrastructure at the same time.
There are reasons for optimism, including the home construction industry’s embrace of electric technology. Heat pumps are doing particularly well, now accounting for more than 50% of the market in new construction.
But I’ve also encountered troubling stories that make me really concerned about the slow and uneven pace of change. I’ve heard from homeowners struggling to turn their houses all-electric and their travails through a thicket of contractor resistance, government red tape and other obstacles. I’ve spoken to community leaders who fear that low-income tenants and other disadvantaged groups will end up shouldering most of the burdens of electrification, like higher utility bills and rent increases landlords are likely to impose to pay for electrical upgrades. I’ve covered legal setbacks and fossil fuel industry resistance operations that are hindering the transition to healthier, gas-free homes.
At my family’s 1950s-era tract house, I want to replace the gas water heater, furnace, dryer and stove with heat pump and induction models as soon as we can afford to. But I know that will be a long, expensive journey with no shortage of complications — and electrical work.
For now, our entry point is a $100 countertop induction cooktop we’ve started to use instead of our gas burners. It boils water faster and doesn’t pollute the air, but draws so much electricity that we can’t turn on other kitchen appliances at the same time or it overloads the circuit.
Whether we rent or own or have a new or historic home, everyone should be able to live in an efficient, non-polluting and climate-ready dwelling even if it wasn’t purpose-built for an all-electric world like the new construction in Menifee. None of us should have to wait decades for that to be our reality too.
The Abbey, one of West Hollywood’s most prominent gay nightclubs, is up for sale.
Its listing calls the property, at 686 Robertson Blvd., “a generational purchase opportunity to acquire one of the world’s most iconic nightclubs and restaurants.”
The listing includes both the Abbey Food & Bar and the adjacent Chapel at the Abbey, which opened in 2016 as an expansion of the original business.
The Abbey was first opened by investment banker David Cooley as a coffee shop in 1991. Over time, it grew and expanded into a restaurant and nightclub measuring nearly 10,000 square feet. WeHo Times reported that Cooley sold a majority stake in 2006 to SBE Group for $10 million but bought it back in 2015.
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“His vision was in complete alignment with the city to reinvigorate historic Boystown and create a world-renowned gay establishment,” said John Duran, who sat on the West Hollywood City Council from 2001 until 2020.
“As one generation of LGBT passes into memory and new generations arrive, it will be fascinating to witness the changes that may lie ahead for the historic district,” he said.
Cooley did not immediately return a request for comment. In March, he also listed his Hancock Park home for about $7.7 million.
The Abbey sale is the latest development to rock the West Hollywood nightlife ecosystem. In May, reality star and restaurateur Lisa Vanderpump confirmed she would not renew the lease on her restaurant Pump, right around the corner from the Abbey.
The California Mortgage Relief program is expanding its reach again, hoping to aid more homeowners who fell behind on their payments during the pandemic.
Program officials announced Tuesday that aid would be extended to three new groups: homeowners whose mortgages had a “partial claim” or deferral, those who missed a second mortgage payment after June 2022, and those with a primary residence that includes up to four units. It also offered more aid to homeowners who had previously received help from the state.
One reason for the expansion is that the state has yet to spend most of the $1 billion in homeowner aid the federal government provided through the American Rescue Plan last year. Thus far, about 10,500 households — more than half of them earning only 30% of their county’s median income — have received an average of $28,137 from the program, for a total of just under $300 million.
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“Many California homeowners are still recovering from the financial hardships of the pandemic,” Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a statement. “This program expansion will enable the state to assist even more homeowners who fell behind on their mortgage payments. Our primary goal is to keep families in their homes, prevent foreclosures, and assist homeowners on a stable path to financial recovery.”
Tiena Johnson Hall, executive director of the California Housing Finance Agency, said the agency talked to borrowers and loan servicers to figure out how to evolve the program. “This expansion represents months of careful consideration and creative solutions that make sure the most in need get help,” Johnson Hall said.
Volma Volcy, founder and executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Ring of Democracy, said the most difficult thing has been getting eligible borrowers to take the state’s offer seriously. “They tend not to believe it because it sounds too good to be true. … This time it’s true,” Volcy said.
“I am imploring you: Come get the help, because it works,” he added.
Under federal law, households earning up to 150% of the median income in their county who suffer a pandemic-related financial hardship are eligible for up to $80,000 for past-due mortgage payments and up to $20,000 for missed property tax payments. According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, 150% of the median income in L.A. County last year was $125,100 for a single individual and $178,650 for a family of four.
A few caveats: If you’ve already paid off your mortgage or tax debt, you can’t recoup that money by applying for state aid. Nor are you eligible for mortgage aid if your mortgage is a “jumbo” loan bigger than the limits set by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Finally, you can’t obtain the state’s help if you have more than enough cash and assets (other than retirement savings) to cover your mortgage or tax debt yourself.
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Here’s a breakdown on the new targets for mortgage assistance.
Partial claim second mortgages and deferrals. Partial claims are a technique to help people at risk of losing their homes after missing several monthly payments on a loan backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Department of Veterans Affairs. Rather than demanding larger payments to cover the past-due amount, the agencies encouraged lenders to split off the past-due portion into a second, interest-free mortgage. That way, a borrower could stay current by paying just their usual monthly payment.
The partial claim second mortgage could be ignored until the house was sold, the mortgage was refinanced or the first mortgage was paid off, at which point the partial claim would have to be paid in full. In the meantime, it’s a real debt that affects the borrower’s ability to obtain credit.
Similarly, some lenders offered deferrals that bundled the missed payments into a sum that was tacked on to the end of the loan. Borrowers wouldn’t face higher monthly payments, but they would have to pay off the deferred amount (a “balloon payment”) when they refinanced, sold their house or reached the end of their loan.
The state mortgage relief program is now offering up to $80,000 to pay all or part of a COVID-related partial claim or deferral.
“Using relief funds to pay down deferred balances for homeowners who experienced COVID hardships restores home equity and puts financially vulnerable families in a stronger position to sustain homeownership,” Lisa Sitkin, senior staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project, said in a statement. “It also alleviates the anxiety of having to figure out how to pay off a large balloon payment in the future.”
More homeowners who fell behind in 2022. Previously, homeowners had to have missed at least two mortgage payments by June 30, 2022, or one property tax payment by May 31, 2022, to be eligible for mortgage or tax relief, respectively. Now, you’ll qualify if you miss at least two mortgage payments or one property tax payment before March 1, 2023.
Homeowners who need a second shot of relief. The mortgage relief program was originally seen as one-time-only assistance. Now, however, California homeowners who’ve already received help can apply for more if they have missed more payments and remain eligible. No household may collect more than $80,000 over the course of the program.
Owners of multiple-unit dwellings. Initially, mortgage relief was available only to people who owned and occupied a single-family home, condominium or non-mobile manufactured home in California. Now, aid will be available to people whose primary residence includes up to four units, such as a duplex, quadplex or a house with an accessory dwelling unit.
The program continues to offer aid to one additional group: homeowners with reverse mortgages who have fallen behind on their property tax or insurance payments.
How do you apply?
Applications are available only online at camortgagerelief.org. For help filling one out, you can call the program’s contact center at (888) 840-2594, where assistance is available in English and Spanish.
If you don’t have access to the internet or a computer, you can ask a housing counselor to assist you. For help finding a counselor certified by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, call (800) 569-4287. You may also get help from the company servicing your mortgage.
The online application process starts with questions to determine your eligibility. If you meet the state’s criteria, you can then complete an application for funds. Here’s where you will need some paperwork to establish how much you earn and how much you owe.
According to the program’s website, among the documents you will need to provide are a mortgage statement, bank statements, utility bills and records that show the income earned by every adult in your household, such as pay stubs, tax returns or a statement of unemployment benefits. If you don’t have access to a digital scanner, you can take pictures of your documents with your phone and upload the images.
The site provides links to the application in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog.
When will the program end?
The state will continue to offer help to homeowners who became delinquent because of COVID-related issues until it has spent all $1 billion from the federal government. The state estimates that an additional 10,000 to 20,000 homeowners will be helped by the remaining funds.
The money will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, with one important exception: 40% of the aid must go to “socially disadvantaged homeowners.” Those are residents of the neighborhoods most at risk of foreclosure, based on the Owner Vulnerability Index developed by UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.
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Come on, Barbie, let’s go party — at the real-life Malibu Dreamhouse.
Airbnb announced Monday that the hot-pink, beach-side mansion inspired by the toy home of the same name will be available to book for a limited time next month — with a twist. This time, Barbie’s blond beau, Ken, will be hosting.
The property rental company and Warner Bros. have joined forces to promote “Barbie” — the summer comedy starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling — by inviting “everyone in Barbie Land” to enter for a chance to win a one-night stay at the luxury estate.
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“We all have dreams, and Barbie is lucky enough to have a house full of them,” Ken said Monday in a statement.
“But now, it’s my turn, and I can’t wait to host guests inside these one-of-a-kind – dare I say, one-of-a-Ken? – digs.”
Starting July 17 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, anyone can request to book Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse on Airbnb. The company will select four lucky guests (two per night) to spend a night at the oceanfront villa for free on July 21 and 22.
According to a press release, “Ken couldn’t figure out how to put a price on Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse — after all, Ken’s thing is beach, not math!”
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The listing welcomes guests to take “a spin through Ken’s awesome wardrobe to find their best beach fit,” channel “their inner cowboy” while participating in “a line dance or two on Ken’s outdoor disco dance floor,” challenge each other to a “beach off,” sunbathe by the infinity pool and take home “a piece of Kendom” by leaving with a set of rollerblades and surfboards.
Other features of the Ken-ified dreamhouse include a cowboy-themed salon, an observation deck with a telescope overlooking the ocean, an outdoor bar and grill, an outdoor gym and a deck with a fire pit.
On his Airbnb profile, which features Gosling’s character poster for “Barbie,” Ken says he lives his life “by two Bs: Beach and Barbie. And rollerblades if you count that B.”
“There’s so much stuff to do [at the Dreamhouse] — some days, I’m not sure what to do first,” his profile reads.
“I mean, do you catch waves before or after firing up the grill? And how do you know when to visit the horses? Anyway, I’m excited for you to stay the night so you can do it all and more!”
This isn’t the first time Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse has popped up on Airbnb. In October 2019, the residence was briefly available to rent for $60 a night.
The latest Airbnb listing for Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse is just one facet of the robust marketing campaign Warner Bros. and Mattel have launched for “Barbie.” Leading up to the film’s release, the movie studio and the toy company have created custom dolls based on the characters, partnered with Xbox to add Barbie and Ken’s cars from the film to the racing video game Forza Horizon 5, teased “Barbie’s Dreamhouse Challenge” on HGTV, dropped a new disco anthem by Dua Lipa (who also appears in the film) from the “Barbie” soundtrack and hosted advance screenings of the film, among other things.
Directed by Greta Gerwig, “Barbie” opens in theaters July 17.
Four days a week, Leticia Ortega de Ceballos sleeps in her car so she can pay for a house more than 100 miles away.
Her workweek begins with the Sunday night shift at Loews Hollywood Hotel, where she cleans the hallways and lobby. When she finishes, exhausted, there’s just an hour until she starts her second job cleaning hotel rooms at the Hilton in Glendale.
Then she has six hours to shower, eat and sleep before she starts all over again. Loews, Hilton, shower, eat, sleep. The 56-year-old sees the house in California City and the family within it on weekends.
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Gladis Ávila, 39, can spend more than two hours in traffic commuting to her job at the W Hollywood Hotel from her new house in Victorville, a 90-mile drive away. Some nights she gets home just as her youngest children are getting ready for bed.
“At the end of the day, when I’m heading home,” Ávila said, “I wonder if it’s worth it.”
The women, both hotel workers, grapple with all the difficulties of the housing market in California today, the high prices that push first-time buyers increasingly far from work, the scarcity of anything they can actually afford.
Housing concerns have been at the forefront of contract negotiations for hotel workers. Thousands of workers recently went on a three-day strike, demanding higher pay and better benefits. It was the first wave of walkouts anticipated this summer after contracts expired.
But Ortega de Ceballos and Ávila are looking for more than just shelter.
Sure, they want a home to live in now. But they also want to one day give their children the financial footing they themselves never had. The key is more than just hard work and a savings account with a laughably low interest rate. The key is a house, the kind of investment that can grow over time.
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Investing in a house is their way of building the kind of generational wealth that has long been out of reach for Black and brown families in the United States. The typical white family in the 21st century has five times the wealth of the typical Latino family and eight times the wealth of the typical Black family, according to the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finance.
And while homeownership represents an important component of wealth, there is a significant divide in who is able to achieve it. In California, in 2021, the Latino homeownership rate stood at 45.6%, compared to 64.5% for white families. The Black homeownership rate stood at 35.5%, according to census data analyzed by the Public Policy Institute of California.
The typical route to owning a home is to rent first and eventually save enough for a down payment. But with rising rents and wages that aren’t commensurate, that dream has become increasingly out of reach.
“Traditionally, owning a home has been the way that most families accumulate wealth,” said Marisol Cuellar Mejia, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “That has happened for many years, and that was in some ways a manifestation of the American dream.”
Ortega de Ceballos, who emigrated from Mexico in the 1980s, started working two jobs, in part so she could help her sister back home study at a university. The two were orphans. Ortega de Ceballos wanted her sister to follow her dream.
She started a family while living in North Hollywood, but as it grew she moved to Sun Valley to find a larger place. Then she moved even farther away, to Lancaster, where she rented a house for a decade and raised her three children. That’s when she started sleeping in her car to save time and money on gas.
Ortega de Ceballos has juggled both jobs for more than 20 years. At the Hilton, rooms can go for more than $200 a night. At Loews, they go for around $300. Ortega de Ceballos earns $22 an hour.
It wasn’t until four years ago that she was able to finally accomplish her dream of buying her own home. The only catch — this time the house was even farther north, in California City, about 105 miles from her jobs in Hollywood and Glendale. Although it has a population of around 15,000, to Ortega de Ceballos it’s a “pueblito,” a small town. The typical home price is less than $300,000, compared to nearly a million in L.A.
She shares the three-bedroom home with her husband, who is disabled, and her youngest son, who is 29 and studying nursing. The home, severely damaged when the couple bought it, has now been renovated. When Ortega de Ceballos is home, she tends to her trees in a garden out back.
Owning her own home helped Ortega de Ceballos secure a better future for herself in addition to her children. She knows whatever retirement income she receives won’t be enough to pay rent in L.A.
“When I retire, I’m not going to be worried about all of these costs. I’m not going to be worried that I’m going to have to rent and I’ll be without money to eat or anything to live,” Ortega de Ceballos said.
The trade-off to accomplish her dreams has been brutal. The grueling, almost three-hour commute back home would be impossible, so she doesn’t return from Sunday until Friday. She sleeps in her red Kia more often than she does in her own house. She’s endured heat waves and at times feels as if she’s homeless.
Sometimes she goes out to eat, but often she relies on food she can get from the hotel, where she also showers. She drinks hotel coffee morning and night to keep her going.
On Fridays, her husband drives to Lancaster and then takes the train to his wife so he can to drive her home and prevent her from falling asleep at the wheel.
“It’s cost me a lot of sweat and tears,” Ortega de Ceballos said, her voice choked with tears. “Everything requires sacrifice. I’ve had to make sacrifices to get to where I am.”
“The most important thing is that my kids feel secure that they’ll have something one day,” she added. “For their future.”
Ortega de Ceballos has thought about finding work closer to home, but it’d be much less pay. It’s a cruel irony, where the income is better in L.A. — just not enough to live there without throwing the bulk of her paychecks at the rent.
That fact has become a major focus as the hotel workers’ union Unite Here Local 11 tries to negotiate new contracts for its members. Thousands of workers at hotels across Southern California walked off the job over the busy Fourth of July weekend.
In a Unite Here Local 11 survey, 53% of workers said they had either moved in the past five years or will move in the near future because of housing costs. Hotel workers reported commuting hours from Apple Valley, Palmdale, California City and Victorville.
In contract negotiations, the union has proposed creating a hospitality workforce housing fund, in addition to better wages, healthcare benefits, pensions and safer workloads. The hope is that an additional tax on hotel bills could go toward the construction of workforce housing for hospitality workers, said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11.
“I think every working person in Los Angeles is struggling to afford to live in Los Angeles,” Petersen said. “Our position is that those who work in the region’s most important and prosperous industry — tourism — need to have the ability to live in Los Angeles.”
On the Fourth of July, around 30 people, including housekeepers and cooks, picketed outside of the W Hollywood Hotel, where rooms go for more than $300 a night. They twirled noisemakers, banged on pots and pans and used megaphones to amplify their chants. At times, onlookers threw eggs at them.
Ávila was among those picketing. She usually commutes from Victorville to Hollywood from Sunday to Thursday. She has been a housekeeper at the W for 11 years, but she hasn’t worked at the hotel for the last few months as she helps organize her colleagues in her capacity as a union steward.
When Ávila first arrived in L.A. in 2009, she squeezed into a studio apartment with her parents, sister and her young son. After she started her own family, she rented a one-bedroom in Hollywood for $1,700. She, her husband, Armando Guzmán, and their three kids shared the room, splitting up among bunk beds.
A year and a half ago, she and Guzmán found a five-bedroom house in Victorville where her children — ages 17, 9 and 7 — could each have their own room. They pay $2,000 a month toward something of their own.
The two-story house has a pool, where the family spends weekends. She has space for exercise equipment, which saves her money on a gym. Although her oldest son had been reluctant to leave L.A., she said, he was happy to have a room of his own.
To stay awake on drives that can sometimes last three hours, Ávila keeps candy and gum in her car. She rolls down the windows and calls other hotel workers throughout the commute.
Guzmán, a construction worker in L.A., will sometimes stay the night with his mother or sister on days where the sun has beaten down and left him too drained to drive home.
Ávila thinks about how much she struggled in life and how she wants to ensure a better future for her children.
“I know that one day, when I’m not here,” Ávila said, “my children can have this home and know, ‘my mother made a sacrifice for us.’”
Wedged between two cream-colored apartment complexes on a knoll in South Pasadena is a time warp.
The 180-year-old Adobe Flores is one of the last remaining structures from the time that Southern California was part of Mexico. A small grove of palm trees surrounds a cactus garden in the front. To the side is a flagpole with the American flag above the Mexican flag. Bronze plaques on the porch state that the whitewashed one-story building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is where Mexican Gen. Jose Maria Flores stayed before agreeing to a ceasefire in 1847 during the Mexican-American War.
It’s a private residence now, so all I could do when I visited last Saturday morning was stare at it from the driveway. Then, Felix Gutierrez and Lori Fuller Rusch showed up.
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He’s a retired USC journalism professor; she teaches art history at Cal State L.A. They’re members of the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation. Together, they took me back to a time when grasslands and cattle covered what today is asphalt and cars, and made the argument that July 4 should mean something more to Southern Californians than just Independence Day.
“This was all open space up to the [110] freeway 50 years ago,” Gutierrez said, waving out to the horizon as we stood in the shade of the palm trees. Two cars sat in the driveway. I wondered if we could go inside.
“The last time the residents allowed us inside was 12 years ago,” he said with a shrug.
On this day 175 years ago, the United States and Mexico proclaimed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War. The agreement established a new border, which meant the northern half of Mexico became the modern-day American Southwest. It also guaranteed to the Mexicans who stayed “the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of” their new country.
We all know how that worked out.
American history has long treated the agreement as a bump on the road to Manifest Destiny. Mexico, meanwhile, sees it as one of its most humiliating moments. For Mexican Americans, the treaty is a psychic wound that has never healed, proof that the American government — and gringos, by default — can never be trusted.
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Activists used its broken promises to organize resistance. In 1972, for instance, the Brown Berets occupied Catalina Island for nearly a month, arguing that since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo didn’t mention it, they were reclaiming the Island of Romance for Mexico.
I’ve always associated grievance with the treaty. Gutierrez and Fuller Rusch wanted me to see it in a completely different context. He came armed with a folder full of clippings and a book about the history of the treaty; she carried an iPad.
“There’s been a lot of focus on the land that was lost” because of the Mexican-American War, Gutierrez said. “But there should be equal emphasis on the people that remained.”
“We [California] are a microcosm of where the world is going to be,” Fuller Rusch added. “Living together is not always harmonious. So we have to learn from each other and respect each other and fight for each other.”
“And that fight” for Mexican Americans, Gutierrez said as he gestured toward the Adobe Flores, “started right here.”
Gutierrez, whose ancestors came to Southern California in the 1840s, grew up with stories of Californio bravery in the face of American empire. The Mexican government had stripped them of heavy artillery, so all the Californios could fight the “Yankees” (Gutierrez’s term, not mine) with were lances, lariats and pistols.
Those invaders initially “got the rear end kicked out of them,” the profe said with a satisfied smile. The Californios won battles through the fall of 1846 in present-day Dominguez Hills, the San Pasqual Valley in San Diego County and the San Gabriel River near Montebello. But American forces, led by men such as Kearney, Fremont and Stockton, whose last names still pepper the California landscape, were marching on Los Angeles with more men and firepower.
Flores and other Californios gathered at an adobe ranch house in Rancho San Pascual, a Mexican land grant that encompassed most of Altadena, Pasadena, South Pasadena and San Marino. Those discussions culminated in the Treaty of Cahuenga, which the Americans and Mexicans signed in modern-day Studio City on Jan. 13, 1847. Decades later, the adobe was named in Flores’ honor.
“Flores told the Americans, ‘If we don’t come to terms, we’ll become guerrilla fighters and flee to the hills,’ ” Gutierrez said. “It’s the only peace treaty in American history dictated by the losing side.”
The armistice allowed Californios to keep their property and promised “equal rights and privileges.” But the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stripped those guarantees a year and a half later. It’s that loss, Gutierrez said, that we should remember on the Fourth of July, especially since this country has for too long treated Mexican Americans as little better than vassals.
“We [Mexican Americans] have rights as American citizens,” is the Californio message that should still resonate for everyone 175 years later, he said. “We’re just as good as you [Yankees]. Just give us a chance to show it.”
I asked Fuller Rusch what she learned about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo growing up. “Zero,” she said with a laugh, then added: “It’s one sentence in high school textbooks today. Maybe.”
The profa takes pride in teaching her Latino students about the treaty in classes where she’s “the only gringa in the room. I tell them, ‘Your ancestors are right here, and you should not lose their history, so go find it!’
“The younger they are,” she added, “the less they know — but the quicker they learn.”
Fuller Rusch flipped through photos and paintings of Adobe Flores through the decades: as a ranch house, a boarding house, a tea room, an abandoned mess and finally the gleaming slice of California history it is today. She noted that Anglos were the ones who preserved it instead of demolishing it, like too many buildings of the era. The same family has owned it since 1967, holding it as a rental property.
“Others are able to tell its history,” she said. “This is a model for how to live.”
Tenants from nearby apartment buildings blithely walked past Gutierrez and Fuller Rusch as they gave their mini-lecture. Cars drove past us. The happy shouts of families enjoying a picnic bubbled over from nearby Garfield Park.
Gutierrez posed for a photo in front of the flagpole, with its dual national flags, and cracked, “I’ve been waiting 175 years for this moment.”
As the pandemic shut down office life in Los Angeles’ downtown financial district, Claude Cognian tried to keep his gastropub Public School 213 open. But the evacuation of white-collar workers made way for an influx of homeless people and drug users — and more than a few troublemakers striding in the front door.
“It was hard to keep hostesses at the door, because they got scared,” said Cognian, chief executive of the restaurant’s parent company, Grill Concepts Inc.
Three break-ins cost as much as $12,000 each time just to repair the windows, all while the bottom line was cratering in the absence of the office employees who used to gather for lunch and after-work drinks. With sales down 75% from pre-pandemic days, his company closed the downtown gastropub in August and is not planning to return.
“Our bet was that downtown was going to come back, and it hasn’t,” Cognian said.
For decades the Los Angeles financial district was the beating heart of downtown, the corporate muscle that gave the city of sprawl a soaring glass skyline. But the pandemic and the wave of remote work hollowed out its skyscrapers and helped shut many restaurants and businesses that relied on crowds of workers. Though the neighborhood shows signs of recovery, few expect it to return to being the bustling hive of suits and ties that it was.
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To many insiders — the urban planners, real estate developers and business owners with interests in it — the area will recover only if its identity grows more textured than a zone of white-collar office space.
Desirable office addresses were already spreading beyond the financial district before the pandemic, as downtown experienced a renaissance in housing, art and entertainment on blocks previously shunned by investors and residents.
To the south, billions of dollars were spent improving the blocks around Crypto.com Arena with hotels, housing and entertainment venues. Obsolete century-old commercial and industrial buildings to the east were renovated into desirable housing and fashionably unconventional offices. Billions more were spent north on Bunker Hill where the Music Center including Walt Disney Concert Hall and office skyscrapers have been joined by museums, apartments and a high-rise hotel.
The housing boom drew residents to the financial district as well, and that has kept it from turning into a ghost town.
But for the area to truly come back to life, many say it will need to follow the path of Lower Manhattan. The financial capital of New York faced an exodus after 9/11, but city officials and investors staved it off by making it a place of more diverse uses. It is still an office district but is far more lively than it used to be since it also became a residential neighborhood with more shops, restaurants, parks and hotels than it had before the attacks. A performing arts center will open in September.
“Cities evolve. That’s what they do,” said downtown L.A. business representative Nick Griffin. “From natural disasters, wars and pandemics. They evolve with market changes, customer preferences and cultural shifts. Downtown has evolved pretty dramatically over the last 20 years and the next five or so are going to be very interesting.”
Many companies have returned to their offices, but on a limited basis as their employees work some days from home. “For Lease” signs clutter building fronts, tacked over restaurants and bars that once served lively hordes of office workers. Graffiti marks windows.
At Public School 213, the chairs are stacked neatly on tables as if it just closed for the night. Other former restaurants have been gutted by their landlords. Sidewalks are quiet, sometimes eerily so.
Downtown’s centers of gravity have shifted numerous times since its days as a remote Spanish pueblo.
The plaza by Olvera Street near the Los Angeles River was el centro until the late 19th century. When the railroads arrived in the American era, the business elite shifted the commercial district south from the plaza toward 1st Street in the Anglo section of the racially divided city, said Greg Fischer, an expert on the history of downtown who worked on planning matters for former City Councilwoman Jan Perry. Main, Spring, Broadway and Hill streets became the business hub.
In the early 20th century, elite social clubs such as the Jonathan Club, the California Club and the Los Angeles Athletic Club erected new buildings on the west side of downtown where property was relatively cheap. Soon the rooming houses, small apartment buildings and ramshackle Victorian homes there gave way. Richfield and other oil companies headquartered there, the seeds of today’s financial district.
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In “the Jetsons era,” as Fischer described the 1960s, corporate leaders viewed the Spring Street-centered office district as increasingly obsolete and passé and moved to newer buildings in the financial district. Downtown lost a lot of itslifeblood during that time, he said.
“In the years after World War II, downtown was a shopping, office and entertainment area,” Fischer said. “By the 1960s the office component had shifted west, most entertainment went to suburbs and housing just evaporated.”
Among the big businesses with offices in the west were the Richfield, Union, Signal, National and Superior oil companies. Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. was headquartered there and Bank of America had a big presence.
The boundaries of the financial district are not officially outlined, but property brokerage CBRE defines it as the office center south of Bunker Hill and 4th Street, flanked on the west by the 110 Freeway and on the east by Hill Street and extending south to 8th Street.
By the 1980s, much of downtown was moribund; buildings that once thrummed with commerce were dilapidated and vacant or underused. There were pockets of vibrancy, notably the Jewelry District and a Latino-centric shopping zone that emerged among aging buildings along Broadway in the Historic Core. The Civic Center around City Hallremained one of the largest concentrations of public administrative buildings in the country, employing thousands of workers.
But the financial district was the shinythriving part of the city, a high-rise office park for lawyers, bankers and accountants who piled into their cars for a mass exodus at the end of each workday.
To many, the neighborhood felt like a corporate fortress, invisibly walled off from the rest of downtown. Business leaders were painfully aware that downtown L.A. lacked the vibrancy of other big cities because it had so few residents, but was stuck in a chicken-and-egg dilemma: People didn’t want to live there because it lacked restaurants, grocery stores and other typical city-life amenities, but merchants didn’t want to set up shop because few lived there.
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The stalemate began to break around 2000 with an ordinance that made it easier to redevelop obsolete office buildings into housing. The relocation of the Lakers, Clippers and Kings pro sports teams to the new downtown arena then known as Staples Center brought thousands of sports and music fans and led a wave of development south of the financial district.
Decades of efforts to add rail service and thousands of apartments and condominiums helped create a more vibrant downtown that was taking on the flavor of other big cities before the pandemic.
“All of a sudden people were walking dogs and pushing baby carriages,” architect Martha Welborne said. “New restaurants came in, even destination restaurants that weren’t just for the people who worked downtown or lived there.”
Fortunately for downtown’s future prospects, its apartment towers remain nearly fully occupied. More than 35,000 units were built after 1999, when so few people lived there that downtown didn’t even have a big-chain grocery store.
Three new hotels have recently opened and a 42-story apartment tower will start leasing later this year. Bottega Louie, one of the region’s top-grossing restaurants before it shut down during the pandemic, reopened in 2021. A few blocks away, legendary Beverly Hills steakhouse Mastro’s also opened a seafood restaurant last year near Crypto.com Arena.
And last week, Metro opened its new Regional Connector, a 1.9-mile underground downtown track adding three stations and linking different lines to make travel more seamless.
Though some business owners have abandoned the financial district, others see an opportunity to get in at an affordable price during what they hope is a temporary economic dip.
Restaurateur Prince Riley recently leased a spot on Grand Avenue that was last home to the Red Herring restaurant. He grabbed it because he liked the location and it was already built-out for upscale dining.
“You can see all the love and care that went into this space,” he said. “They were a casualty of COVID.”
Riley and his wife plan to open their restaurant, named Joyce, in July, featuring a raw bar and Southern-style seafood such as crudo and ceviche. They moved into the apartment building upstairs to be close to it.
The couple like being near Bottega Louie, a popular Whole Foods grocery store and the recently opened Hotel Per La, which took over a lavishly refurbished 1920s building last occupied by another hotel that closed early in the pandemic.
“I can see business picking up,” Riley said. “This is an opportunity from a terrible tragedy like COVID. We wouldn’t have had this otherwise.”
A key factor keeping downtown teetering between recovery and a further downward slide appears to be discomfort with the streets and the sense that they are not as safe as they were before the pandemic.
The blocks close to Metro’s underground 7th Street/Metro Center station, where multiple light and heavy rail train lines meet, are among those that have changed the most since the pandemic as the Metro system struggles to combat rampant drug use and serious crimes such as robbery, rape and aggravated assault on its lines.
Thegrowing number of homeless people on the streets has been an issue in other cities too, said Cognian of Public School 213. His company also closed restaurants in Seattle and San Francisco because customers at their urban locations trickled away as unhoused people commandeered the sidewalks.
“Hopefully, we as a city, as a state, find a solution for the homeless,” he said. “If the homeless situation doesn’t get solved in some fashion that allows tourists, office workers and businesses to operate, it’s just going to bring down the area.”
Real estate broker Derrick Moore of CBRE, who specializes in matching restaurant and shop operators with landlords, said leasing of retail space downtown has improved in recent months, especially compared to the dark days of the 2020pandemic shutdown when downtown fell silent.
“It seems like ancient history,” Moore said, “but it was very devastating to one’s psyche.” And to downtown businesses.
In the wake of the COVID shutdown, downtown overall lost more than 100 food and beverage establishments with a combined footprint of more than 1 million square feet, Moore said.
“That’s restaurants, bars and lounges, juice bars, boutique coffee operators and even national brands,” Moore said. “A good portion of those remain vacant.”
Replacement tenants like Joyce restaurant are starting to come in, he said, with leasing and property showings picking up in the first quarter at a “resoundingly” busier pace than early 2022. Moore has taken potential tenants to the empty Public School space, where across the street the failed Standard Hotel just reopened under new management as the Delphi.
Faced with a challenging market, retail landlords have cut their asking rents as much as 50% from pre-COVID prices, Moore said, and more than doubled the amount they are willing to spend on tenant upgrades such as installing restaurant kitchens and restrooms, and providing periods of free rent.
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The financial district also faces a struggle of changing tastes, with many firms bypassing the gleaming skyscrapers that were the height of prestige in the late 20th century in favor of campus-style offices anda more laid-back vibe.
Even legal firms, long a stalwart in the financial district, are turning elsewhere in some cases. One firm established in February recently opted out of putting its office there.
“When we started to look at space it became very clear to us that locating in the financial district was a very different proposition than it used to be,” said Matt Umhofer, a partner at Umhofer, Mitchell & King. “Downtown has changed dramatically, and we wanted to rethink what it means to be a law firm in Los Angeles and let go of preconceived notions of needing to be in the financial district in order to be relevant.”
The fledgling firm opted instead for an office in Row DTLA, a campus of shops, restaurants and offices created out of century-old warehouses near the Arts District, east of the financial center, even though office rents in the Arts District are often higher than they are in the glitzy skyscrapers.
“The short version is, being in the financial district isn’t as cool as maybe it was in the past,” Umhofer said.
The spotty attendance of office workers has changed the character of business centers across the country, said Mark Grinis, leader of consulting firm EY‘s real estate, hospitality and construction practice.
An analysis by EY found that offices are being used at only 25% to 50% of the level they were before the pandemic.
“In some locations, three-quarters of the people that normally would have gone in, didn’t,” Grinis said. “People are not on the subway, ordering sandwiches at lunch or having a drink after work.”
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Vacant offices and storefronts can hinder recovery, he said, because people shy away from empty spaces.
“Three blocks of vacant houses in a residential neighborhood ultimately becomes a negative,” he said. “An office center is not that different.”
The physical appearance of vacancy becomes more alarming when graffiti, litter and grime follow and create a bad “multiplier effect,” Grinis said.
Stopping the spiral starts with making the streets safe and getting homeless residents into better housing, but there are also public policy decisions that could help landlords convert office buildings to housing if they are no longer competitive on the office leasing market.
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And the market has been brutal. Owners of some of downtown’s office high-rises have faced defaults, foreclosures and rushed sales in the face of falling demand, real estate data provider CoStar said.
The owner of two of the financial district’s premier office towers, 777 Tower and Gas Company Tower, said in February that it defaulted on loans tied to the buildings. Other high-rise owners are in similar straits.
In the face of rising vacancy rates, “those defaults could signal pain to come for the 69-million-square-foot downtown L.A. office market,” CoStar said.
Owners of buildings facing foreclosure sometimes don’t have enough money to build out new tenants’ offices, as is customary, which hinders strapped landlords from recovering financially.
Commercial landlords are getting hit on multiple fronts, said Jessica Lall, managing director of the downtown office of CBRE.
“What we’re seeing is a perfect storm when it comes to the office distress in downtown L.A.,” she said.
Loans on large-scale properties are maturing at a time when interest rates are high, making refinancing a challenge, Lall said. There is widespread uncertainty among tenants about how much space they will need to rent in the future if employees work remotely at least some of the time.
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Those issues are compounded by “the general perception around downtown being unsafe,” she said. “All urban centers are grappling with that issue right now.”
The downtown office vacancy rate — the share of total space that is unleased — climbed to 24% in the first quarter, up from 21.1% a year ago, according to CBRE. More empty space is coming, the brokerage said, pushing estimated availability to a daunting 30% as some companies shrink their offices or move away from downtown.
Law firm Skadden, for example, a large longtime tenant in downtown’s Bunker Hill district, has decided to move its offices to Century City .
The landlord of the U.S. Bank Tower, downtown’s tallest office tower at 72 stories, remains bullish on the market in spite of its troubles and recently spent $60 million to make the building more attractive to tenants by adding hotel-like amenities.
“People need offices,” said Marty Burger, chief executive of Silverstein Properties, which owns the tower. “Not every company in every industry needs an office, but the majority of them do.”
Among the reasons for offices are collaboration and education, he said. “How do you mentor the young folks who are coming up in your industry if the older people aren’t in the office for younger people to learn from? There is a whole ecosystem where you need people in an office now.”
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Companies may end up using their offices fewer days of the week than they used to as remote work and shortened schedules grow in popularity, he acknowledged: “Fridays may never be Fridays again.”
Burger says his optimism about downtown L.A.’s potential for improvement has a foundation in New York, where Silverstein built One World Trade Center on the site of the Twin Towers.
“After 9/11, everyone said that no one would ever live there or work there again,” Burger said.
In 2001, the neighborhood had about 20,000 residents and saw little activity after office hours. Now rebuilt, the neighborhood has about 75,000 residents and a greater mix of office tenants including businesses in tech and advertising in what was mostly a banking center before, Burger said.
“It’s a vibrant 24/7 community,” he said.
Many see this as the best future for L.A.’s financial district.
The city’s tight housing market combined with the downturn in office rentals opens the possibility to convert some office buildings into housing or hotels.
More residents and visitors would make the neighborhood more dynamic and better able to support restaurants, shops and nightlife, said Griffin, executive director of the privately funded Downtown Center Business Improvement District, a nonprofit coalition of more than 2,000 property owners.
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“If we trade some office for residential, that’s a good thing.”
The pandemic’s blow to the office market “is an opportunity that none of us ever imagined happening,” Welborne said, “transforming office buildings into residential buildings and reimagining our entire downtown.”
Amid a housing shortage that’s pushed low-income renters onto the streets and made it difficult for moderate earners to find affordable options, California lawmakers introduced new measures this year to mitigate high costs of living and prevent evictions.
Here are two bills to help renters that cleared a major hurdle and one proposal that flopped this week as the Legislature took action before a key deadline on Friday:
Passed: Limiting security deposits
The Assembly easily approved a bill to ban landlords from charging more than one month’s rent as a security deposit.
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Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat who authored Assembly Bill 12, said that surging rent has made it increasingly difficult for renters to pay security deposits, which can equal up to three months worth of rent, or more than $10,000 in some cities.
“This means a security deposit can be as much as a down payment on a house in many parts of the country,” Haney said before the Assembly approved the measure. “This pushes many families, including those with individuals making minimum wage, to either forgo necessities such as food and utilities or acquire more debt in order to be approved for housing.”
Groups representing landlords opposed the measure, arguing that the lack of affordable housing units, not security deposits, is the real issue facing California renters, and that AB 12 would harm homeowners.
“Charging security deposits allows for rental property providers to balance risk associated with renting out property,” the California Rental Housing Assn. wrote in a bill analysis. “Without the ability to collect enough in security deposit to cover potential damages, rental property providers may decide to remove their homes from the rental market — further exacerbating the housing supply crisis.”
The bill will now be considered by the Senate, which has until Sept. 14 to vote on it.
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Passed: Curbing evictions
In 2019, the Legislature hashed out a deal with landlords and realtors on a bill to establish new rules against evictions and cap yearly rent increases to 5% plus inflation.
But state Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) said those protections didn’t go far enough. Durazo introduced Senate Bill 567 this year to lower the rent cap to inflation, not to exceed 5% annually, and strengthen oversight of allowable evictions to ensure landlords aren’t exploiting what she described as loopholes in the law.
Facing pressure from business groups, apartment associations and moderate Democrats, Durazo later removed the rent cap provision of the bill. But advocates pushed hard to keep in accountability measures that would ensure landlords are not using evictions to remove a lower-paying tenant to later jack up the rent.
“We are all feeling the impact of the homeless crisis in our districts,” Durazo said during a Wednesday debate over the bill. “Part of what we have to do is stop the flow of families and people into homelessness.”
The changes Durazo made to the bill did little to appease the opposition. Republicans and a handful of Democrats opposed the measure as unfair and costly to homeowners.
“This bill will affect small rental property owners the most,” said Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones of Santee. “This bill goes a little bit too far.”
The measure narrowly passed the Senate and now heads to the Assembly.
Failed: Rent control expansion
Lawmakers this week killed one proposal to give tenants more protections through a measure to expand rent control.
State Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) introduced Senate Bill 466 to update a 1995 law that limited rent control in California and allow for some newer buildings to become eligible for the price capping.
“We allow landlords to raise rents with impunity while taxpayers foot the bill for a problem that could be mitigated if jurisdictions were allowed to enact common-sense rent regulation policies,” Wahab said during a Wednesday Senate floor debate, while holding up a sleeping bag as a prop to make a point about the worsening homelessness crisis.
California voters have rejected an expansion of rent control twice in recent elections. Landlord groups, including the California Apartment Assn., contend that rent control stymies construction and discourages homeowners from putting new units on the market.
That argument prevailed in the Senate on Wednesday, when SB 466 failed by a large margin as several Democrats either withheld their votes or joined Republicans in opposing the bill.
It’s unusual for Democrats, who control the Legislature, to bring bills to the floor knowing they will fail because it exposes divisions among the ruling party. Wahab said she anticipated her bill would fall short, but that it was important to see who would go on the record in support.
“I think it’s important for advocates and activists to understand who will go up on a tough issue and who really cares about affordable housing,” Wahab said. “I thought it really mattered.”
Living in a 1,400-square-foot home, Xiyin Tang and Paul Laskow wanted more space for their growing family. Now, they have it: A 320-square-foot prefab accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, that extends their floor plan while preserving their historic 1936 Streamline Moderne home.
The couple purchased the historic-cultural monument in the Fairfax District for $1.5 million in the summer of 2020 after it had sat on the market for several months.
The three-bedroom, two-bath home was designed by architect William Kesling as a Hollywood hideaway for actor Wallace Beery and was problematic for several reasons, including that it was tenant-occupied and has historic status, which could prove challenging for future renovations. And to top it off, it was small.
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However, small-space living was not a deal breaker for the former New Yorkers, who had rented an 850-square-foot apartment in Dimes Square before moving to an apartment in West Hollywood.
“It was big for two people by New York standards,” says Tang, 35, a professor at UCLA’s School of Law, about the house.
When the couple and their 2-year-old daughter, Catherine, finally moved in, Tang was pregnant with the couple’s second child.
Suddenly, with another baby on the way, the couple worried they couldn’t accommodate visits from their greatly missed parents who lived on the East Coast.
“We felt like we needed more space,” says Tang. “We intended to build something in the back, but the timeline changed when I got pregnant. We needed to build something very quickly.”
Because of the home’s historic status — it was designated a historic-cultural monument in 2018 after a developer purchased it and filed plans to build condos on the site — the couple was required to work with the Cultural Heritage Commission on exterior and interior alterations.
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They loved the home’s Streamline Moderne details and decided to preserve the house with minor changes, including a new roof and kitchen. They added the ADU behind their home on the spacious 7,000-square-foot lot.
Working with Los Angeles-based Cover, which specializes in one-story prefabricated ADUs manufactured in L.A., the couple wanted to install a custom ADU (priced between $275,000 and $295,000, depending on site-specific conditions) before Tang delivered their second daughter, Maggie, in November 2021.
For its part, Cover offers fixed pricing upfront and manages all aspects of the building process. But it could not contain the issues that arose during the pandemic.
“One of the advantages of a prefab ADU is that it can be built more quickly than a traditional ADU,” Tang says. “Unfortunately, we tried to build an ADU at the worst possible time because of COVID. There was a lumber shortage. Permitting took a year. Everything was back ordered.”
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After the permits were finally issued, the ADU was installed on site in 43 days using a panelized building system manufactured in Los Angeles. Seven months later, the permits for occupancy for the ADU were completed in time for Maggie’s first birthday party.
“One thing that is different about our prefab system is that we ship flat-packed panels from our Gardena factory rather than shipping large room-sized parts that require a massive crane,” says Alexis Rivas, co-founder and chief executive of Cover. “Overhead power lines and trees can prevent you from building with a big crane.”
The steel studio comprises an open-plan bedroom, kitchen and living area with a small desk between the kitchen and full-height built-in storage. A bathroom with a walk-in shower faces a stacked washer and dryer that is a hit with guests. A floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door allows easy access to the backyard, and narrow floor-to-ceiling windows look onto the main house and the pool, connecting the two homes. There are also integrated wall-mounted LED lights that add illumination and help keep lighting things simple.
“The main house has a lot of windows, and you can see people coming and going to the back house,” Tang says. “It’s nice to talk to your friends and family through the doors and windows.”
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Tang, who loves to cook, was drawn to Cover because of its high-end kitchen appliances, including an under-counter Sub-Zero refrigerator and a Wolf induction cooktop, oven and hood.
Sitting side by side, the austere square-box ADU, with its warm oak floors and white composite exterior, complements Kesling’s curved walls and ocean liner details.
“The main house is so distinctive,” Rivas says. “I think it’s much better to contrast it than try to match it.”
In an ideal world, one home would be able to accommodate multiple families, but that’s not always possible. Tang says one of the hardest things about moving to L.A. was leaving family. Now, the ADU allows everyone to stay close.
“Our parents have come out to stay with us multiple times,” she says. “The ADU allows us to put them up in the back, and everyone can go their separate ways. Catherine loves going out back and waking up our guests. Recently she went outside early in the morning in her rain boots and umbrella and brought my mom an umbrella to ensure she didn’t get wet. It’s a wonderful image in my mind. It’s so nice to be able to share those moments.”
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“About a third of our customers have put them in for their family members to live in full-time,” says Rivas, who lived in one of Cover’s 450-square-foot ADUs for a year.
Tang and Laskow also have a lot of friends from New York who come to stay in the ADU, which is in use every month. “This past month, we’ve had one friend, their dog and 2-year-old stay for a week — and another couple stay for three weeks,” says Laskow, 35, who heads transportation at online resale site the RealReal. “Our friends from New York always say, ‘Wow, this is so big. This ADU would be a covetable apartment in New York.’”
Despite the many challenges and delays because of COVID-19, the couple is happy with the outcome. Their modern ADU blends well in the historical context and allows them plenty of room to accommodate their family and work-from-home needs.
“It’s such a wonderful change,” Laskow says. “And not just the house. We love having outdoor space. We are so happy we could add the ADU and retain some patio space and grass for the kids.”
If P-22,the late mountain lion, was the unofficial mascot of L.A., then Pinky the papier-mâché bird was the decidedly less majestic mascot of Eagle Rock, the small, hilly neighborhood tucked on the city’s northeast boundary.
No one’s quite sure how Pinky popped up. Around 2014, the bird appeared in a nest atop “Pillarhenge,” a famous (or infamous) series of columns built as the foundation of a would-be Great Recession-era housing development on Colorado Boulevard.
The development was never finished. Abandoned since the 2008 housing crisis, the property has served at times as a homeless encampment, dumping ground and playground for graffiti artists.
The pillars became a white elephant of the recession, an eyesore that locals have come to love, hate or begrudgingly accept. While Stonehenge evokes mysticism and Wiccans, Pillarhenge evokes confusion and dysfunction, serving as a concrete reminder of L.A.’s inability to deal with its housing woes.
The bird had a deeper fan base, becoming an Eagle Rock celebrity with a line of T-shirts and tapestries. For the last eight years, Pinky watched over a city that couldn’t quite figure out how to house itself.
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Then in April, Pinky was gone, stripped from its pillar-top nest. A sign perhaps? Was Pillarhenge coming down too?
Residents wondered what would rise in its place on 1332 Colorado Blvd., a long, narrow property that has never been developed.
Before the pillars, the property was known among locals as the place where an LAPD officer shot 18-year-old Mark Moser to death in 1978 after Moser’s pickup truck collided with an undercover police car at the end of a stakeout and subsequent car chase.
Resident Kevin Grace, Moser’s classmate at Eagle Rock High School, said the property has carried a bizarre mystique since the killing.
In March 2015, Grace co-founded “Friends of Pillarhenge Park,” a Facebook group tracking the property’s development and advocating for its potential use as a park. To date, the group has 824 members.
Developers have attempted to build something on the property over the last two decades, but never a park. Jay Vanos of Vanos Architects has been involved with the site since 2003, when he worked with a developer envisioning a 17-unit live-work space there.
It didn’t come to fruition and sold to another developer, who erected the now-famous pillars before going bankrupt. The lender took control for a few years before the property was sold to Imad Boukai for $1.9 million in 2016.
Boukai, chairman of Anaheim-based company General Procurement Inc., envisioned a four-story mixed-use development with 31 apartments above two levels of parking and commercial space.
He tapped Vanos, who planned a structure that would take up the vast majority of the relatively small lot, which covers just over half an acre. The plans became public in 2017, and due to its ship-like look, residents started calling it the Love Boat, a nod to the 1970s sitcom set on a cruise.
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“Let their imaginations take them where they will,” Vanos said.
As with most small towns subsumed by a big city, Eagle Rock residents felt protective of the community and wary of potential developers. They voiced strong opinions. Months of discourse and meetings with council members ensued, with some locals jeering at the nautical design and others expressing relief that the site would finally be developed.
“I’d rather suck it up and see it developed into a functional property,” said Grace, who was born in Eagle Rock. “Right now, it looks like something from a forgotten town. That’s worst-case scenario.”
The Eagle Rock Assn., a volunteer group founded in the 1980s aiming to guide the community’s growth in a sustainable way, published a letter in 2017 pointing out the significance of the site’s location. The property parallels a freeway offramp leading into Eagle Rock, so the Love Boat would be the first thing people see when entering the neighborhood.
The letter said the board was split on the design, but members support the development because the property had been “blighted and abandoned for so many years.”
Progress stalled again, and Boukai sold the unfinished property in 2022. He declined a request for comment. A source familiar with the deal suggested that building costs became too expensive since the lot is on a steep hill that requires significant grading and maintenance.
Next up was Ara Tchaghlassian, founder of American Tire Depot, a Vernon-based retailer with more than 100 locations. Tchaghlassian sold the tire company in 2021 and bought the Pillarhenge lot from Boukai months later for $2.765 million, real estate records show.
It appears the Love Boat will set sail after all,as Tchaghlassian is picking up where Boukai left off. He declined a request for comment, but a construction permit posted at the site shows the same plans mapped out by Boukai: a four-story development with 31 apartments, including three extremely low-income units, above two levels of parking and commercial space.
Grading began late last year, and Pinky was removed in the spring. The source said the complex will probably be completed in roughly two years.
“I’m sick of looking at it,” said Diane Lopez, who walks past Pillarhenge on her daily stroll. “Just build something. Anything.”
The pillars will remain, though they won’t be visible once the structure is completed, Vanos said.
As for why a developer would take on the headache of Pillarhenge, the answer is simple: the Transit-Oriented Communities Incentive Program.
L.A. has a housing shortage, and it needs a multifaceted approach to address it. As part of its housing element plan, the city is required to zone for a quarter-million homes by 2024.
To reach that goal, the city has introduced various incentives to encourage multifamily development as part of its Housing Element Rezoning Program, and the Transit-Oriented Communities incentive has been one its most successful tools.
The program encourages the development of affordable housing near bus and train stations by offering developers more density and less parking requirements for their projects if they build near transit centers.
According to the city’s planning department, over the last six years, 36% of new multifamily developments have taken advantage of the incentives, and the Pillarhenge project is one of them. It qualifies for the second tier of incentives, meaning it gets a 60% increase in the maximum number of units, an increase in floor-area ratio and a reduction in the number of required parking spaces.
“We need responsible, robust development that’s affordable and successful for Angelenos. Right now, we don’t have enough,” said Greg Good, a senior advisor on policy and external affairs for the Los Angeles Housing Department. “The Housing Department and the rest of the city are working relentlessly to facilitate and expedite that process, and we do that by creating programs that work.”
There are myriad reasons why developers abandon a project: running out of money, permitting problems, pandemics. During a housing crisis, it’s the city’s job to make multifamily housing a viable option for developers.
For Pillarhenge’s latest developer, the incentives may be enough to bring housing to the long-abandoned lot. For now, residents wait to see whether a Love Boat will be better than a Pillarhenge.