Lack of power stalls low-income housing at historic LA hotel

The Barclay Hotel on 4th and Main was once touted as one of the finest hotels in the city, home to a technology still new to the West Coast at its opening in 1897 — electricity.

Years after renovations began to turn the building into low-income housing to alleviate the city’s homelessness crisis, most of the hotel remains empty. The owners say the L.A. Department of Water and Power is to blame.

The nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) bought the hotel in 2021 for $21.75 million, according to spokesperson Ged Kenslea. He told LAist that 94 rooms have been refurbished and, once sufficiently powered, will be available to “extremely low-income” renters.

Emil Abdelshehid, who directs the New Business and Electrification Division at LADWP, told LAist the Barclay Hotel is receiving enough electricity to power the rooms as they were originally designed, but power requirements have changed a lot in the past 100 years. He said the department is working with the property owners to increase the power “as  quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Abdelshehid said LADWP and the property owners have “built a lot of momentum” toward a solution, where the department will install new equipment in the hotel once approved through the city’s Bureau of Engineering.

Susie Shannon, Policy Director at AHF’s advocacy division Housing Is A Human Right, still is frustrated by what she sees as a lack of urgency from the city to fill the vacant rooms.

“ On average, seven people die on our streets, homeless, every day.” Shannon told LAist in an interview. “The fact that those units are going empty, just because LADWP hasn't brought power to the building, I think is unconscionable.”

When LAist reached out to Mayor Karen Bass for comment, her office said she is working to streamline the permitting process and will take action to get more power to the Barclay Hotel.

“Mayor Bass has been clear — we undoubtedly need more affordable housing in order to continue making lasting change in addressing the homelessness crisis,” a spokesperson for the Mayor told LAist in an emailed statement. “The Mayor’s Office will be convening relevant departments, including LADWP and the Bureau of Engineering, to work with the property owners to work toward a solution.”

A historical landmark

The Van Nuys Hotel, later renamed The Barclay, in an image dated 1896.

(

Security Pacific National Bank Collection

/

L.A. Public Library

)

The Barclay Hotel, first named the Hotel Van Nuys, was considered for years to be one of the city’s best. Newspaper ads from the first two decades after the hotel’s 1897 opening show it was a temporary home to tourists from overseas, prominent businesspeople and senior military officers, but the shine didn’t last.

“As time wore on, the hotel gradually fell by the wayside,” according to a 1935 clip in the L.A. Times.

It was declared a Historic Cultural Monument by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board and dubbed “the oldest continuously operating hotel in the city” by the Times in 1983.

By the 1990s, the hotel had turned into one of the cheaper places to stay in the city. Having gained notoriety as the site of serial murders and deadly fires, the hotel was mostly vacant.

Plans to redevelop the Barclay back into a “luxury boutique” hotel in 2019 fell through before AHF bought the property in 2021. The hotel now is owned by AHF subsidiary Housing4Humanity.

Conversion to low-income housing

Michael Weinstein, president of AHF, said in a press release after the 2021 purchase that existing buildings like the Barclay Hotel would provide a “faster, much less expensive model” for housing people with extremely low incomes than building new units.

A report published by the California state auditor last year found that the average cost to build a new unit of affordable housing in 2019 was between $380,000 and $570,000. Hotel rooms converted to affordable housing as part of the state’s Project Homekey were found to cost taxpayers much less — $129,000 per unit on average.

The cost for the Barclay was even lower at about $115,000 per room, according to Kenslea, who said AHF was prepared to pay to renovate the rooms and get them up to code.

It hasn’t been as straightforward as they expected.

Kenslea said there are about 20 residents in the 158-room building who had been living there before AHF bought the property in 2021. The hotel has enough power to supply those rooms, but the others sit empty as the city is in the midst of a homelessness crisis.

“There are 94 rooms that are ready to go that could house extremely low-income people, that could house homeless people,” Kenslea said. “We can't have people move into those rooms because the power isn't up to code, and it's been like a three-, almost 3 1/2-year battle [with LADWP] on that.”

He said that once enough power is provided to the building, the open rooms would go for between $400 and $750 a month, providing a more affordable option for people at risk of becoming unhoused.

For now, those rooms are still tied up in red tape.

Back and forth

Shannon, the policy director at AHF’s advocacy division, voiced her organization’s concerns about the Barclay Hotel during an LADWP board meeting on Sep. 9.

Commissioners for LADWP initially denied any responsibility for the empty rooms.

“It doesn’t have the right paneling, so [the power] can’t get in because of the private owners,” said Commissioner Wilma Pinder. “This has nothing further to really do with DWP.”

Abdelshehid was called forward to explain the situation to the board in more detail. He said there is some power being provided, but that the department is waiting to install a transformer room that would allow more power to go to the building.

In an interview with LAist, Abdelshehid said that there are a number of challenges with upgrading the power to any building, and especially one as old as the Barclay Hotel. He said it requires a negotiation between the department and property owners to find the best path forward.

“We go back and forth with the customer to come up with a solution that will ultimately meet their needs and that they can build out,” he said. “ At this point, I think we have provided an option to the Barclay Hotel folks that is very viable and we can move forward.”

In this case, moving forward likely means getting a permit from another city office, the Bureau of Engineering (BOE) at the Public Works department because LADWP’s plan would require work on a city sidewalk.

But even that path is uncertain.

AHF spokesperson Kenslea told LAist that engineers from the foundation and the LADWP agreed on a plan, but a BOE engineer raised safety concerns in July that would require a different process. Kenslea said the engineer did not elaborate on what those safety issues were.

A spokesperson for the bureau told LAist they had consulted on the permit, but there is no estimate on how long it might take to be approved once it is submitted. After BOE approval, the plans would also need to go through the Board of Public Works.

For now, the rooms sit empty, and it remains unclear when the Barclay Hotel will have enough power to meet the needs of 21st century tenants.