City Hall, the Mayfair is Not Worth $83 million, says HHR

Cost eats up one-third of the current $250 million Inside Safe budget but offers no long-term solution

As Los Angeles city leaders prepare to meet this morning in a Special Joint Meeting of the Housing and Homelessness Committee and the Government Operations Committee, AHF and its housing advocacy division, Housing Is A Human Right (HHR), are going on record expressing their concern with the steep cost of purchasing the Mayfair Hotel as interim housing for the City of Los Angeles’ Inside Safe program.

The hotel, estimated by the Los Angeles Times to cost approximately $83 million after renovations—an estimated $282,000 per unit—is extremely costly for temporary interim housing. $83 million is approximately one-third of the current Inside Safe budget of $250 million.

By comparison, as part of AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation (HHF), AHF purchased the turnkey 190-room Sinclair L.A. Apartments (formerly the William Penn Hotel) in MacArthur Park in 2021 for just over $30 million, or approximately $158,000 per unit. And the Sinclair is permanent housing.

AHF and Housing Is A Human Right would instead like for the Council to explore other options where $282,000 could be used for permanent housing for our unhoused community, including utilizing adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

Several residential hotels, such as the Cecil, the Morrison and the Clark hotel remain completely or partially vacant and could serve as permanent housing for a fraction of the cost of buying and renovating the Mayfair hotel.

In addition, at a time that the City of Los Angeles is relaying to nonprofits that they will only consider interim housing that have kitchenettes, it is important to note the 290-room Mayfair does not have kitchenettes.

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The Mayfair Hotel will cost approximately $83million after renovations—an estimated $282,000 per unit—which is extremely costly for temporary interim housing. $83 million is approximately one-third of the total current Inside Safe budget of $250 million.