December 7, 2022 • 19 mins
One of the biggest components of inflation is starting to ease. Housing costs are coming down, but it could take some time before it shows up in official inflation numbers. Economists say that increases in rents and home prices will remain low as the economy has slowed and mortgage rates remain elevated. Shelter inflation is one of those things that tend to be sticky, which means that once it starts moving in any direction it is slow to change back. Gwynn Guilford, economics reporter at the WSJ, joins us for what to know.
Next, what do you do with an iconic Los Angeles landmark that became too old to operate normally and too much of a treasure to tear down? LA County would like to turn the old General Hospital building into affordable and homeless housing, but to do that, there is a ton of work to be done. The county has already committed $250 million to removing hazardous materials, upgrading electrical and water systems, installing air conditioning, fire sprinklers and so much more. The eventual goal will be to have “Healthy Village” with as many as 1,400 units with beds for housing, and medical and mental health care. Doug Smith, senior writer at the LA Times, joins us for the future of LA’s General Hospital.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, December seven. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. One of the biggest
components of inflation is starting to ease. Housing costs are
coming down, but it could take some time before it
shows up in official inflation numbers. The economys say that
(00:20):
increases in rents and home prices will remain low as
the economy has slowed, and mortgage rates remain elevated. Shelter
inflation is one of those things that tend to be sticky,
which means that once it starts moving in any direction,
it is slow to change back. Gwen Guildford, economics reporter
at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for what to
know next? What do you do with an iconic Los
(00:41):
Angeles landmark that became too old to operating normally and
too much of a treasure to tear down? Elle County
would like to turn the old General Hospital building into
affordable and homeless housing, but to do that, there's a
ton of work to be done. The county has already
committed two d and fifty million dollars to removing hazardous
material reals, upgrading electrical and water systems, installing air conditioning,
(01:04):
fire sprinklers, and so much more. The eventual goal will
be to have a healthy village with as many as
four units with bets for housing and medical and mental
health care. Doug Smith, senior writer at The l A Times,
joined us for the future of l A's General Hospital.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in housing services.
(01:26):
Inflation will probably keep rising well into next year, but
if inflation on new leases continues to fall, we will
likely see housing services inflation begin to fall later next year.
Joining us now is Gwynn Guilford, economics reporter at The
Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Quinn, thanks for
having me. Let's talk inflation. Obviously, we're still seeing some
(01:47):
high numbers with inflation. We're starting to get a lot
of indicators that it could be easing up a little bit,
but still there's fears of a recession going on. But
one of the biggest components of inflation has always been
housing costs, and we're seeing that in particular starting to
soften right now. We're starting to see new rents go
down just a little bit. One of the problems with
(02:07):
this is that a lot of the key indicators, a
lot of the way that we measure this stuff is
always kind of delayed, so it takes a little bit
of time to really see if things are dropping. But
we're starting to feel like the housing costs are going
down and it could be easing up on inflation. So Gwen,
tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, and
that's right. You captured it well after vaccines came out
(02:30):
and you had that huge economic boom that was buoyed
by governments stimulus and people getting hired like crazy, and
you know, we just started really taking off. And then
people moved out of there, you know, family homes or
situations with roommates to get their own place or to
you know, they upgraded, and so there was a lot
of rental demand and rents just really took off. And um,
(02:53):
the measure of new rents, which is what you know,
if you look at Zillo or Apartment List, what those
are all tracking, Those were, you know, rising at a
three month annualized rate of like in the in the
summer of which is just in the insane pace. And
and then you know that's snapped back and now the
(03:15):
Zillo index it's barely increasing on a month to month level,
and it might even start to decline soon. But you know,
right now we're in the sea. In the CPI, the
consumer Price Index, we're seeing inflation being still really pretty
dangerously hot. And a big reason why is housing costs,
and those are growing at a really fast clip. And
(03:36):
the reason why is exactly what you you mentioned is
there's that year long delay. There's that lag, and so
what you know, what you saw on the market for
new rents, the last summer has been feeding in to um.
You know, the summer has been feeding into the inflation
that we're seeing in the numbers now. But the good
(03:57):
news is that's going to start feeding, that's going to
continue to feed through, and it's going to help bring
down measured inflation over the next year. Yeah. I mean,
to the point of those crazy high home prices and
rents and all that, I was looking for a home
throughout the pandemic, and man, we were getting shot down
with crazy bidding wars and all that stuff. It was
(04:18):
just you really felt like you couldn't compete in a
lot of areas. UM. So yeah, it was a tough time.
And so now that things are starting to cool that,
I mean, we have all sorts of other things going
on right, we have higher interest rates. The supply of
homes is kind of still in the same boat. But
how do we calculate this as far as white lags
so long? What are the measurements that we're looking at
(04:39):
that makes this lag so long? When the BLS the
Leeward Department surveys, they do a survey of rents from
all over the country and um, kind of alternating different
groups of cities and um, you know, but most people
aren't getting you know, negotiating a new rent every year there. Um,
(05:01):
you know you do that when you move to a
new place. But you know most people have, um, most
renters are you know, staying in a place more than
one year and you know kind of work things out
with their landlord and aren't seeing like, you know, colossally
huge rent increases the way you might have experienced if
you move to a new place, if you had to
move to a new place during the pandemic. And so
(05:24):
it takes longer for that market pressure to filter through,
where you know, the landlord starts to realize, oh, hey,
I could be getting a lot more for this place,
and you know, really started jacking up the rates. You know,
well that only happens when you renegotiate your lease, which
is usually once a year, you know, sometimes maybe every
six months UM. So that's one of the reasons it
(05:44):
takes a while for it to for the market rate
to filter through UM. It's just that, you know, there's
the delay that comes from when people negotiate. And then
the other thing is just how the labor department average.
They do a six month trailing average, and so that
creates an additional methodological lack, so we might be seeing
(06:06):
they are feeling the effects a little bit sooner than
the actual numbers are actually going to let us know.
There and when we're looking at overall inflation, how big
of a portion is that is housing in shelter costs,
it's like close to a third of UM the consumer
price index. And then when you're talking about the core index,
which strips out you know, kind of volatile food and
(06:27):
energy prices and is what you know, economists and the
FED are concerned with UM, it's it's close to UM
two fifths of CORE. So it's a really big deal.
And so when it's like it doesn't take a very
big movement to have a big impact. And so when
we're talking about the FED, and you know they've been
raising rates. Obviously this is part of it, right to
(06:48):
raise those interest rates enough to cool things down. When
we're talking about you know, them continuing to raise the rates,
and what's their goal, like what's their target for inflation?
Like obviously they want to bring it down as much
as possible, but what percentage are we looking at that
they really want to hit where they're feeling comfortable. So
they target two percent was a little bit of a
band around that UM. But and they also are targeting
(07:11):
this was getting into some pretty arcane inflation stuff, but
they target a different indicator which is from the Commerce
Department and it comes up two weeks generally after the
consumer price index comes out UM. It's called the PC
the personal consumption expenditure price index UM. And that's interesting
since you know, we're getting into the wonkery UM because
(07:35):
the rent component, the shelter component is much smaller UM
and in the PC price index, but medical care is
much bigger UM. So that like that that creates it
means that there there was less it increased less UM
because the rent impact was was less and but it's
(07:56):
also going to come down less UM than a lot
of economists expect CPI to come down in the next
year year and a half. All right, well, we'll keep
an eye out on what's going on with this. Hopefully,
as these housing costs you go down, we get to
see that reflection in the overall inflation numbers, and then
obviously people start feeling the rest of that go down.
I know, all of this that we talked about sticky
(08:17):
prices a lot of times to these housing costs, that
shelter costs tend to be sticky, right once they start
moving a little bit, it gets really slow to change back. Yeah,
and that's a couple of a couple of reasons for that.
One is just that methodological stuff that we're talking about,
but the other is also just the nature of It's
sort of like wages, like you don't um, you know,
food prices that can go You're gonna buy milk for
(08:39):
you know, four dollars a gallon one month, and then
a couple of months later it's five dollars, and then
it goes down the leg two fifty, you know, like
they go up and they go down. But that does
not really happen with rent, Like, you know, no landlord's
gonna be like, oh, well, I'm just gonna reduce my
rent a whole bunch Like they there's generally a floor
(09:00):
of past experience, so you know, it's really hard for
once prices go up, they don't tend to come down.
There doesn't increase might slow, but yeah, they're sticky. All right, Well,
we'll keep an eye out for all of these inflation
news as it comes up. Gwen Guildford, economics reporter at
the Wall Street Journal, Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
(09:20):
great to join you. Old l A County hospital has
been vacant now for well over a decade. You have
one point one million. You can't make this at one
point one bigan. They can square feet. The opportunity to
(09:41):
get over eight hund units thousands of people in the
housing off the streets presents itself. Joining us now is
Doug Smith, senior writer at The l A Times. Thanks
for joining us, Dad, You're welcome, glad to be here. Well,
let's talk about what's going on with a Los Angeles landmark,
the General Hospital. It closed down fourteen years ago and
(10:03):
really nothing has been done with it over all that time.
The idea now is as homelessness is such a huge
issue in l A and all parts of the country really,
but it's very pronounced. In Los Angeles. They're planning on
changing the General hospital there into a homeless and affordable housing,
a healthy village. They want to college. It's gonna have
bets for housing, it's gonna have spaces where social services,
(10:26):
community activities, all sorts of stuff. It seems like a
huge undertaking, So Doug tell us a little bit about
what's going on here. Sure, it is a huge undertaking.
And since a general hospital closed in two thousand and
eight for various reasons. It was almost it was by
then eighty something years old, ninety almost ninety years old,
(10:46):
and it didn't have the systems at modern hospitals made.
It didn't have air conditioning, it didn't have the electrical system,
couldn't support the modern medical technology. And then after the
north Ridge earthquake, the side mixed standards for hospitals were
upgraded and it didn't meet those standards. So a new
hospital was built right next to it, and general hospital
(11:07):
just kind of closed. Some of the ground floors were
still used for wellness, community and research training, but most
of its nineteen floors were just left empty. And they've deteriorated.
The ceiling pot tiles are falling, and there's dust everywhere.
The electrical outlets are open and nobody can go there.
So it's been very hard to find out what to
(11:29):
do with it because it's a gigantic building. You know,
when you walk inside, you feel like you're entering an
Egyptian pyramid, it's that big, and so it couldn't be
reused as a hospital. There was had been replaced, and
what to do with it, well, the idea of housing
became more tenable as a homeless crisis and what's really
(11:49):
an affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles became more severe,
and so first Supervisor Gloria Molina and then Supervisor Heeless
Release started to pursue the idea of using it for
housing in a health and community related context. So the
plans are finally now taking shape. There will be a RFP,
a request for Proposals, will be developed and offered in
(12:13):
January for a developer to come and figure out how
to convert basically operating rooms, wards and laboratories into housing
and um we don't know exactly how that will play out,
but it could be anywhere from three fifty to seven
hundred units of housing, depending on whether how many of
them are single units or how many of them are
(12:35):
multi bedroom units for families. Yeah, and that's part of it,
the huge undertaking of how to convert what was once
a hospital into a space for housing, a space for
all these other services and whatnot. And so you mentioned
the article to the prep work, just just the prep
work is expected to start next year, after the county
committed two fifty million dollars to take the first step.
(12:56):
But it was to some of that stuff you had mentioned,
removing us as those other hasnudous materials, installing air conditioning.
I mean, you can't have anything built now without air
conditioning and fire sprinklers. So all of that stuff is
barely going to get started. And then, as you mentioned,
then there's the proposals and all that to really figure
out exactly what's going to be going on there. Yeah,
the county's approach on this is that it is kind
(13:17):
of unusual. They decided to first prepare the building just
sort of quite empty it out and create an empty
structure that a developer, an imaginative developer could look at
and say, we could do this with it, We could
use the operating rooms for this purpose and come up
with the individual plans. But even just that prep work
(13:38):
and which also includes a significant seismic upgrade, it's going
to cost two hundred million. You mentioned it as well too.
Some of the you know, when you walk in it
seems like an Egyptian pyramid or something that it is
one of the best city's best examples of Art deco architecture.
Tell me a little bit about the art there, because
that's also some one of the reasons why they haven't
(13:59):
torn it all down to before hand is they want
to preserve some of that stuff. As you mentioned, it's
such been such a landmark for Los Angeles. There's statutory
on the outside. It's all of medical theme. The Hypocritus
and the Galen and the sort of the big figures
in the history of medicine are represented in statues. And
then there's a in the entry. There is a mural
(14:22):
on the ceiling that you know, it makes you feel
like you're looking at the Sistine Chapel. It's obviously not
by Michelangelo, but it but it just has that feeling
of awe that you're looking up at this vast ceiling
eural as you walk into the hospital what used to
be the main floor of the hospital. It's it's so
huge that there's a color stripe in the middle of band.
(14:43):
It's about five feet wide. It has different colored stripes
as you walk through. Some of them go right, some
of them go left, and you're told at the beginning,
when they know where you need to go, you're told
to follow a certain color to get you there. It's
sort of how big and complex the building is. Tell
me a little bit more. Were about the history of
General Hospital. You made mention in the article about you know,
(15:04):
some of the pretty nasty stuff there that was done
under an old eugenics law. A lot of things for
that happened to the Latino community as well. You know,
even when the new hospital was built, you know a
lot of people were displaced because construction had to be done.
Tell me a little bit about some of that. Sure,
the hospital has been a huge presence in Boil Heights
since it was built in nineteen in the late nineteen
(15:28):
twenties and open in nineteen three, and it's it's always
been a place where people in that community could go
and if they had they couldn't afford that, they would
get free medical care, but it also had this other
element of its history. Racial attitudes were sort of became
a part of its service. And so sometimes Latino women
(15:48):
came to deliver babies, and there was a doctor there
who thought that they were bringing too many babies into
the world, weren't educated, didn't have a chance, and so
they steralyzed a couple of women there with their consent,
but it wasn't clear if they actually gave their consent knowingly.
They signed forms and there, you know, they were given
a forms had signed this, and it was a consent
(16:09):
to sterilize them, and this became a practice in the
hospital in the seventies and sixties and seventies under California
had a eugenics law under which thousands of women across
the state were sterilized. The state finally provided a fund
to compensate them, but it didn't apply to the women
who were sterilized at County General because the hospital was
(16:30):
locally funded. And all of this you spoke to a
number of people, though you know, this is some of
the worst parts of that history, but you spoke to
a lot of people too who where General Hospital was,
where they were born, where they went and then they
had a broken arm where their family members were saved
from having you know, after recovering and after having heart
attacks and whatnot. And it was just a central place
(16:52):
there where people got their healthcare done. It was and
we spoke to Monica Alcoroz, who has been the president
of the Highland Park Neighborhood Council, and she was born
there and her siblings were born there. Her mother went
there when she had a heart attack, and so the
hospital is it's hard to believe. It's this gigantic structure
that you can see from many parts of Los Angeles.
(17:15):
It's sort of present everywhere, but it's also an intimate
part of people's lives, including my own. My own father
went there when he had a heart attack in and
they saved his life there. And in all of this,
what has been the community reaction to, at least some
of this plan, you know, changing it into a homeless
and affordable housing because that's a touchy subject a lot
(17:38):
of times when you're bringing certain elements into the community
and all that. So what I know, there's a lot
of homeless encampments that have been seen around the area
as well. So how is the community reacted to a
lot of this, So Hilda Solely did a smart thing.
Boil Heights and and Lincoln Heights on the north are
communities that are really guarded their heritage carefully, and you
(18:00):
could take a misstep and get the community against you,
as the owner of the former Series building did by
proposing to make it a home for ten thousand homeless people.
But Homeless Solely built a community organization that has been
looking at this for years and has been involved in
the planning of it. And my colleague Andrew spoke to
(18:20):
all the major people in the community and and there's
generally support for this project. Also because the project will
not be just the hospital, but it will be twelve
acres to the west that will be used for housing
for community spaces, and there's a childcare center that's being
built that will open there in December, and the restorative
(18:41):
Care Village, which is a part of the larger property.
They've already completed sixty four units of mental health residential
care and d twenty unit units of recuperative care for
people leaving the hospital who aren't ready to go home,
and and that there's twice as much space in their
recuperative care list. It's going to be developed for more
(19:01):
services like that, including workforce development. So the community at
this point is very much behind the project. Of course,
it's one more big step when the developer makes a proposal,
and that could be a moment when there could be tension.
Doug Smith, Senior writer at The l A Times, thank
you very much for joining us. Thank you appreciate it.
(19:29):
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
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a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Allow us and I heard
radio or subscribe or ever you get your podcast. This
episode of The Daily Dive is produced by Vicker Wright
and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
(19:50):
was your Daily Dive.
It's Wednesday, December seven. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. One of the biggest
components of inflation is starting to ease. Housing costs are
coming down, but it could take some time before it
shows up in official inflation numbers. The economys say that
(00:20):
increases in rents and home prices will remain low as
the economy has slowed, and mortgage rates remain elevated. Shelter
inflation is one of those things that tend to be sticky,
which means that once it starts moving in any direction,
it is slow to change back. Gwen Guildford, economics reporter
at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for what to
know next? What do you do with an iconic Los
(00:41):
Angeles landmark that became too old to operating normally and
too much of a treasure to tear down? Elle County
would like to turn the old General Hospital building into
affordable and homeless housing, but to do that, there's a
ton of work to be done. The county has already
committed two d and fifty million dollars to removing hazardous
material reals, upgrading electrical and water systems, installing air conditioning,
(01:04):
fire sprinklers, and so much more. The eventual goal will
be to have a healthy village with as many as
four units with bets for housing and medical and mental
health care. Doug Smith, senior writer at The l A Times,
joined us for the future of l A's General Hospital.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in housing services.
(01:26):
Inflation will probably keep rising well into next year, but
if inflation on new leases continues to fall, we will
likely see housing services inflation begin to fall later next year.
Joining us now is Gwynn Guilford, economics reporter at The
Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Quinn, thanks for
having me. Let's talk inflation. Obviously, we're still seeing some
(01:47):
high numbers with inflation. We're starting to get a lot
of indicators that it could be easing up a little bit,
but still there's fears of a recession going on. But
one of the biggest components of inflation has always been
housing costs, and we're seeing that in particular starting to
soften right now. We're starting to see new rents go
down just a little bit. One of the problems with
(02:07):
this is that a lot of the key indicators, a
lot of the way that we measure this stuff is
always kind of delayed, so it takes a little bit
of time to really see if things are dropping. But
we're starting to feel like the housing costs are going
down and it could be easing up on inflation. So Gwen,
tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, and
that's right. You captured it well after vaccines came out
(02:30):
and you had that huge economic boom that was buoyed
by governments stimulus and people getting hired like crazy, and
you know, we just started really taking off. And then
people moved out of there, you know, family homes or
situations with roommates to get their own place or to
you know, they upgraded, and so there was a lot
of rental demand and rents just really took off. And um,
(02:53):
the measure of new rents, which is what you know,
if you look at Zillo or Apartment List, what those
are all tracking, Those were, you know, rising at a
three month annualized rate of like in the in the
summer of which is just in the insane pace. And
and then you know that's snapped back and now the
(03:15):
Zillo index it's barely increasing on a month to month level,
and it might even start to decline soon. But you know,
right now we're in the sea. In the CPI, the
consumer Price Index, we're seeing inflation being still really pretty
dangerously hot. And a big reason why is housing costs,
and those are growing at a really fast clip. And
(03:36):
the reason why is exactly what you you mentioned is
there's that year long delay. There's that lag, and so
what you know, what you saw on the market for
new rents, the last summer has been feeding in to um.
You know, the summer has been feeding into the inflation
that we're seeing in the numbers now. But the good
(03:57):
news is that's going to start feeding, that's going to
continue to feed through, and it's going to help bring
down measured inflation over the next year. Yeah. I mean,
to the point of those crazy high home prices and
rents and all that, I was looking for a home
throughout the pandemic, and man, we were getting shot down
with crazy bidding wars and all that stuff. It was
(04:18):
just you really felt like you couldn't compete in a
lot of areas. UM. So yeah, it was a tough time.
And so now that things are starting to cool that,
I mean, we have all sorts of other things going
on right, we have higher interest rates. The supply of
homes is kind of still in the same boat. But
how do we calculate this as far as white lags
so long? What are the measurements that we're looking at
(04:39):
that makes this lag so long? When the BLS the
Leeward Department surveys, they do a survey of rents from
all over the country and um, kind of alternating different
groups of cities and um, you know, but most people
aren't getting you know, negotiating a new rent every year there. Um,
(05:01):
you know you do that when you move to a
new place. But you know most people have, um, most
renters are you know, staying in a place more than
one year and you know kind of work things out
with their landlord and aren't seeing like, you know, colossally
huge rent increases the way you might have experienced if
you move to a new place, if you had to
move to a new place during the pandemic. And so
(05:24):
it takes longer for that market pressure to filter through,
where you know, the landlord starts to realize, oh, hey,
I could be getting a lot more for this place,
and you know, really started jacking up the rates. You know,
well that only happens when you renegotiate your lease, which
is usually once a year, you know, sometimes maybe every
six months UM. So that's one of the reasons it
(05:44):
takes a while for it to for the market rate
to filter through UM. It's just that, you know, there's
the delay that comes from when people negotiate. And then
the other thing is just how the labor department average.
They do a six month trailing average, and so that
creates an additional methodological lack, so we might be seeing
(06:06):
they are feeling the effects a little bit sooner than
the actual numbers are actually going to let us know.
There and when we're looking at overall inflation, how big
of a portion is that is housing in shelter costs,
it's like close to a third of UM the consumer
price index. And then when you're talking about the core index,
which strips out you know, kind of volatile food and
(06:27):
energy prices and is what you know, economists and the
FED are concerned with UM, it's it's close to UM
two fifths of CORE. So it's a really big deal.
And so when it's like it doesn't take a very
big movement to have a big impact. And so when
we're talking about the FED, and you know they've been
raising rates. Obviously this is part of it, right to
(06:48):
raise those interest rates enough to cool things down. When
we're talking about you know, them continuing to raise the rates,
and what's their goal, like what's their target for inflation?
Like obviously they want to bring it down as much
as possible, but what percentage are we looking at that
they really want to hit where they're feeling comfortable. So
they target two percent was a little bit of a
band around that UM. But and they also are targeting
(07:11):
this was getting into some pretty arcane inflation stuff, but
they target a different indicator which is from the Commerce
Department and it comes up two weeks generally after the
consumer price index comes out UM. It's called the PC
the personal consumption expenditure price index UM. And that's interesting
since you know, we're getting into the wonkery UM because
(07:35):
the rent component, the shelter component is much smaller UM
and in the PC price index, but medical care is
much bigger UM. So that like that that creates it
means that there there was less it increased less UM
because the rent impact was was less and but it's
(07:56):
also going to come down less UM than a lot
of economists expect CPI to come down in the next
year year and a half. All right, well, we'll keep
an eye out on what's going on with this. Hopefully,
as these housing costs you go down, we get to
see that reflection in the overall inflation numbers, and then
obviously people start feeling the rest of that go down.
I know, all of this that we talked about sticky
(08:17):
prices a lot of times to these housing costs, that
shelter costs tend to be sticky, right once they start
moving a little bit, it gets really slow to change back. Yeah,
and that's a couple of a couple of reasons for that.
One is just that methodological stuff that we're talking about,
but the other is also just the nature of It's
sort of like wages, like you don't um, you know,
food prices that can go You're gonna buy milk for
(08:39):
you know, four dollars a gallon one month, and then
a couple of months later it's five dollars, and then
it goes down the leg two fifty, you know, like
they go up and they go down. But that does
not really happen with rent, Like, you know, no landlord's
gonna be like, oh, well, I'm just gonna reduce my
rent a whole bunch Like they there's generally a floor
(09:00):
of past experience, so you know, it's really hard for
once prices go up, they don't tend to come down.
There doesn't increase might slow, but yeah, they're sticky. All right, Well,
we'll keep an eye out for all of these inflation
news as it comes up. Gwen Guildford, economics reporter at
the Wall Street Journal, Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
(09:20):
great to join you. Old l A County hospital has
been vacant now for well over a decade. You have
one point one million. You can't make this at one
point one bigan. They can square feet. The opportunity to
(09:41):
get over eight hund units thousands of people in the
housing off the streets presents itself. Joining us now is
Doug Smith, senior writer at The l A Times. Thanks
for joining us, Dad, You're welcome, glad to be here. Well,
let's talk about what's going on with a Los Angeles landmark,
the General Hospital. It closed down fourteen years ago and
(10:03):
really nothing has been done with it over all that time.
The idea now is as homelessness is such a huge
issue in l A and all parts of the country really,
but it's very pronounced. In Los Angeles. They're planning on
changing the General hospital there into a homeless and affordable housing,
a healthy village. They want to college. It's gonna have
bets for housing, it's gonna have spaces where social services,
(10:26):
community activities, all sorts of stuff. It seems like a
huge undertaking, So Doug tell us a little bit about
what's going on here. Sure, it is a huge undertaking.
And since a general hospital closed in two thousand and
eight for various reasons. It was almost it was by
then eighty something years old, ninety almost ninety years old,
(10:46):
and it didn't have the systems at modern hospitals made.
It didn't have air conditioning, it didn't have the electrical system,
couldn't support the modern medical technology. And then after the
north Ridge earthquake, the side mixed standards for hospitals were
upgraded and it didn't meet those standards. So a new
hospital was built right next to it, and general hospital
(11:07):
just kind of closed. Some of the ground floors were
still used for wellness, community and research training, but most
of its nineteen floors were just left empty. And they've deteriorated.
The ceiling pot tiles are falling, and there's dust everywhere.
The electrical outlets are open and nobody can go there.
So it's been very hard to find out what to
(11:29):
do with it because it's a gigantic building. You know,
when you walk inside, you feel like you're entering an
Egyptian pyramid, it's that big, and so it couldn't be
reused as a hospital. There was had been replaced, and
what to do with it, well, the idea of housing
became more tenable as a homeless crisis and what's really
(11:49):
an affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles became more severe,
and so first Supervisor Gloria Molina and then Supervisor Heeless
Release started to pursue the idea of using it for
housing in a health and community related context. So the
plans are finally now taking shape. There will be a RFP,
a request for Proposals, will be developed and offered in
(12:13):
January for a developer to come and figure out how
to convert basically operating rooms, wards and laboratories into housing
and um we don't know exactly how that will play out,
but it could be anywhere from three fifty to seven
hundred units of housing, depending on whether how many of
them are single units or how many of them are
(12:35):
multi bedroom units for families. Yeah, and that's part of it,
the huge undertaking of how to convert what was once
a hospital into a space for housing, a space for
all these other services and whatnot. And so you mentioned
the article to the prep work, just just the prep
work is expected to start next year, after the county
committed two fifty million dollars to take the first step.
(12:56):
But it was to some of that stuff you had mentioned,
removing us as those other hasnudous materials, installing air conditioning.
I mean, you can't have anything built now without air
conditioning and fire sprinklers. So all of that stuff is
barely going to get started. And then, as you mentioned,
then there's the proposals and all that to really figure
out exactly what's going to be going on there. Yeah,
the county's approach on this is that it is kind
(13:17):
of unusual. They decided to first prepare the building just
sort of quite empty it out and create an empty
structure that a developer, an imaginative developer could look at
and say, we could do this with it, We could
use the operating rooms for this purpose and come up
with the individual plans. But even just that prep work
(13:38):
and which also includes a significant seismic upgrade, it's going
to cost two hundred million. You mentioned it as well too.
Some of the you know, when you walk in it
seems like an Egyptian pyramid or something that it is
one of the best city's best examples of Art deco architecture.
Tell me a little bit about the art there, because
that's also some one of the reasons why they haven't
(13:59):
torn it all down to before hand is they want
to preserve some of that stuff. As you mentioned, it's
such been such a landmark for Los Angeles. There's statutory
on the outside. It's all of medical theme. The Hypocritus
and the Galen and the sort of the big figures
in the history of medicine are represented in statues. And
then there's a in the entry. There is a mural
(14:22):
on the ceiling that you know, it makes you feel
like you're looking at the Sistine Chapel. It's obviously not
by Michelangelo, but it but it just has that feeling
of awe that you're looking up at this vast ceiling
eural as you walk into the hospital what used to
be the main floor of the hospital. It's it's so
huge that there's a color stripe in the middle of band.
(14:43):
It's about five feet wide. It has different colored stripes
as you walk through. Some of them go right, some
of them go left, and you're told at the beginning,
when they know where you need to go, you're told
to follow a certain color to get you there. It's
sort of how big and complex the building is. Tell
me a little bit more. Were about the history of
General Hospital. You made mention in the article about you know,
(15:04):
some of the pretty nasty stuff there that was done
under an old eugenics law. A lot of things for
that happened to the Latino community as well. You know,
even when the new hospital was built, you know a
lot of people were displaced because construction had to be done.
Tell me a little bit about some of that. Sure,
the hospital has been a huge presence in Boil Heights
since it was built in nineteen in the late nineteen
(15:28):
twenties and open in nineteen three, and it's it's always
been a place where people in that community could go
and if they had they couldn't afford that, they would
get free medical care, but it also had this other
element of its history. Racial attitudes were sort of became
a part of its service. And so sometimes Latino women
(15:48):
came to deliver babies, and there was a doctor there
who thought that they were bringing too many babies into
the world, weren't educated, didn't have a chance, and so
they steralyzed a couple of women there with their consent,
but it wasn't clear if they actually gave their consent knowingly.
They signed forms and there, you know, they were given
a forms had signed this, and it was a consent
(16:09):
to sterilize them, and this became a practice in the
hospital in the seventies and sixties and seventies under California
had a eugenics law under which thousands of women across
the state were sterilized. The state finally provided a fund
to compensate them, but it didn't apply to the women
who were sterilized at County General because the hospital was
(16:30):
locally funded. And all of this you spoke to a
number of people, though you know, this is some of
the worst parts of that history, but you spoke to
a lot of people too who where General Hospital was,
where they were born, where they went and then they
had a broken arm where their family members were saved
from having you know, after recovering and after having heart
attacks and whatnot. And it was just a central place
(16:52):
there where people got their healthcare done. It was and
we spoke to Monica Alcoroz, who has been the president
of the Highland Park Neighborhood Council, and she was born
there and her siblings were born there. Her mother went
there when she had a heart attack, and so the
hospital is it's hard to believe. It's this gigantic structure
that you can see from many parts of Los Angeles.
(17:15):
It's sort of present everywhere, but it's also an intimate
part of people's lives, including my own. My own father
went there when he had a heart attack in and
they saved his life there. And in all of this,
what has been the community reaction to, at least some
of this plan, you know, changing it into a homeless
and affordable housing because that's a touchy subject a lot
(17:38):
of times when you're bringing certain elements into the community
and all that. So what I know, there's a lot
of homeless encampments that have been seen around the area
as well. So how is the community reacted to a
lot of this, So Hilda Solely did a smart thing.
Boil Heights and and Lincoln Heights on the north are
communities that are really guarded their heritage carefully, and you
(18:00):
could take a misstep and get the community against you,
as the owner of the former Series building did by
proposing to make it a home for ten thousand homeless people.
But Homeless Solely built a community organization that has been
looking at this for years and has been involved in
the planning of it. And my colleague Andrew spoke to
(18:20):
all the major people in the community and and there's
generally support for this project. Also because the project will
not be just the hospital, but it will be twelve
acres to the west that will be used for housing
for community spaces, and there's a childcare center that's being
built that will open there in December, and the restorative
(18:41):
Care Village, which is a part of the larger property.
They've already completed sixty four units of mental health residential
care and d twenty unit units of recuperative care for
people leaving the hospital who aren't ready to go home,
and and that there's twice as much space in their
recuperative care list. It's going to be developed for more
(19:01):
services like that, including workforce development. So the community at
this point is very much behind the project. Of course,
it's one more big step when the developer makes a proposal,
and that could be a moment when there could be tension.
Doug Smith, Senior writer at The l A Times, thank
you very much for joining us. Thank you appreciate it.
(19:29):
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us
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radio or subscribe or ever you get your podcast. This
episode of The Daily Dive is produced by Vicker Wright
and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
(19:50):
was your Daily Dive.
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