From hotels to home: Lewis Fellows explore labor and housing challenges

This year, the Lewis Center supported 15 student fellows as they tackled pressing issues on the quality of life for residents in the Los Angeles region, with a focus on housing affordability and transportation access and equity.

This group of Master of Public Policy students focused their project on the intersection of labor and housing. They aimed to understand the current trends in the job and housing markets in order to improve the lives of lower-income and marginalized workers. Five student fellows partnered with UNITE HERE Local 11 (UH11), a hospitality workers’ union to explore solutions for the housing needs of its unionized hospitality workers in Los Angeles.

Converting Hotels and Motels Into Worker Housing

Los Angeles is in the midst of an affordable housing shortage. The student team, which included Jack Kearns MPP ‘24, Gloria Magallanes MPP ‘24, Andrew Rock MPP ‘24, Ana Rodriguez MPP ‘24 and Sydney Smanpongse MPP ‘24, worked with UH11 to examine one aspect of affordable housing — whether converting hotels and motels into housing could create affordable housing faster than ground-up construction.

The state’s most prominent hotel/motel conversion initiative, Project Homekey, mainly targets people who are defined as at risk of homelessness. Since most hospitality workers don’t meet that threshold, they do not have access to Homekey units. The students found that expanding these types of programs could help provide relief to a wider range of rent-burdened workers. They also identified key considerations when selecting hotels/motels for conversion. For example, if hotels that primarily serve tourists are chosen, this could create a market incentive for developers to create more hotels — exacerbating the housing shortage.

The team mapped the location of hotels in Los Angeles County that would be good candidates for conversion into affordable housing for UH11 workers.

These students worked closely with union leaders to help investigate one of the biggest challenges facing Los Angeles at this time. Providing affordable housing and alleviating rent burden remain top concerns for policymakers in the region. 

For a full list of projects undertaken by this year’s fellows, visit lewis.ucla.edu/programs/studentresearch/.