How Adaptive Reuse Can Ease the Housing Crisis

A new report found that the conversion of commercial buildings to housing could help Los Angeles reduce its critical housing shortage and boost the availability of affordable housing. According to an article by Jessica P. Ogilvie, "Researchers at the RAND Corporation, which published the report, said that such adaptive reuse could provide 9% to 14% of the housing L.A. County needs to build over the next eight years."

Because of their existing infrastructure, "Of the available options, hotels and motels would be the most feasible, said Jason Ward, the study's lead author and an economist at RAND, in a statement. Existing rooms could simply be converted into housing units."

The city experimented with this approach during the pandemic, when Project Roomkey provided emergency temporary housing in hotels and motels that were already experiencing high vacancy rates due to COVID-19 restrictions. 

Even prior to the pandemic, L.A. has a successful history with adaptive reuse, which was streamlined by a 1999 city ordinance. "A paper published last year by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that between 2014 to 2019, L.A. created about 28,000 housing units on commercially zoned land — far more than any other large metro area in California," notes Ogilvie.

"The report issued by RAND identified about 2,300 commercial properties that could be appropriate for reuse," which could yield up to 113,000 units of housing.