The 33-year-old residential complex at 1121 N. La Cienega Blvd. in West Hollywood recently unveiled a few new studio apartments.
Technically, they’re ADUs — accessory dwelling units, like the room you’d rent in someone’s guest house.
These units — 695 square feet each, cozy to say the least — were repurposed from parking spaces, laundry facilities and storage rooms in the complex. They’re listed at a not-so-cozy price of $3,100 per month.
How does an apartment complex get away with squeezing more units out of parking and amenity space to create more (un)affordable housing? California Assembly Bill 68.
AB68, passed in 2020, was meant to alleviate the housing crisis by promoting accessory dwelling units (ADUs) within both single-family and multifamily properties.
But real-estate firms like LaTerra Development are beginning to take advantage of the bill as well.
Several other American cities and states, such as Seattle, Chicago, and Minneapolis, have implemented comparable regulations to accommodate ADUs, aiming to counteract escalating housing expenses. Although single-family homeowners in California are the most recognized beneficiaries of this legislation, building backyard ADUs and renting them out, apartment owners are also exploring ways to leverage this opportunity. Chris Tourtellotte, LaTerra’s managing director, told Costar News this could lead to a surge of new multifamily units throughout the larger Los Angeles area.
The new units, which took 15 months to complete from planning to construction, are equipped with modern amenities and fixtures. California’s legislation expedited this process by allowing property owners to bypass certain bureaucratic procedures.
Constructing new apartments from scratch in West Hollywood would have been a more prolonged and expensive endeavor. LaTerra’s ADU project on La Cienega Boulevard cost approximately $300,000 per unit, significantly less than the estimated $800,000 per unit for traditional construction.
In late 2021, LaTerra acquired the property for $29.2 million.
California is at the forefront of ADU construction, with homeowners applying for over 30,000 permits in 2022 alone. This means that one out of every six homes built in California that year was an ADU.
LaTerra is contemplating adding more ADU units to its La Cienega Boulevard property and other multifamily properties in California. Tourtellotte’s perspective on property evaluation has been influenced by this ADU project. Now, he assesses potential sites with an eye for ADU integration opportunities.
Tourtellotte believes that the ideal apartment properties for ADU conversions are those with lower densities, abundant parking, and amenities like storage or laundry facilities.
The comments here are CRAZY. The landlord took space that was essentially useless, and created MORE housing for people, and they are being framed as some sort of greedy nefarious entity that should be shamed. What’s more important, a space for a car/storage for mops, or a house for a human being? They did EXACTLY what the law was intended for. What the article doesn’t say is that the building is OVERPARKED and no one has to go park on the street as a result of this extra housing being provided. If you ask me, every single landlord should be… Read more »
The problem is that the word is exorbitant, not absorbent.
The building behind mine did the same thing. Carved a few more units out of the parking area. Took longer than 15 months. I have no idea what the square footage of the new units are, but I understand they are quite nice. That building fronts Fountain Ave.
The building next to mine took the parking completely away from the existing tenants and is building two new units. It is taking forever. It has been stalled for months. We are going on 3 yrs for that project. 6 parking spaces taken away for 2 2-bedroom units that are tiny.
OK. So, what do they do for parking? Force the tenants to park on the street, causing more public street congestion at the Publix expense also degree landlords can make more rent for more units, and to hell with a Public Hu hasta deal with all the residents who don’t have parking on their own property? Thanks a lot.
This is the apartment building just north of the Chevron station and future car wash and new businesses. A friend who lives at this apartment building there spoke at the council meeting for my appeal and she told the council of how it’s very difficult for tenants there to enter into the parking garage or to exit out of it because of the traffic and gridlock.
The West Hollywood City Council and City Hall have long been in the pockets of the developers. Come on, a developer even was part of the new city planner selection committee. During Covid, city hall operated under cover of darkness/silence and redrew the cannabis commercial lines, moving them closer to schools and parks and areas children frequent. That closest size apartments were added to an existing complex (planned, permitted, constructed, sold and now lived in) without a paper trail and rented for an absorbent amounts is unfortunately not surprising. This city could give lessons to Boss Hogg.
If they are charging an absorbent amount for rent, but they aren’t holding a gun to the head of prospective renters, and those renters are signing rental agreements knowingly and voluntarily, can you advise me what the problem is? You are aware we live in a capitalist society, right?
America may still be a capitalist society, but WeHo is most definitely a den of Neo-Marxism. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine. The lazy and clueless will always vote for “free stuff” while berating capitalists who actually create wealth as “greedy”.
Your societal concern, empathy and sense of fair play is overwhelming. The air must be thin up on your mountain, perhaps it’s suffocating your brain or did your throne fall on you?
695 sq/ft is a decent size for an apartment unit, not a house.
WeHo offers studios with 450 sq/ft.
But $3100 is a bit much for that size, although rentals have gone up considerably anyway.
Not exactly sure what the gripe is – as long as it has windows.
There’s nothing “affordable” about SB 68. This was always obvious and another predictable nitwit idea from the geniuses elected by clueless CA voters.
This article reveals a prime consequence. Just wait till the big promise of ADUs in SFHs start renting for $4,000/month or $400/day on AirBnB.
I look forward to that day, when the investors who took risks, finally get returns for their risk and investment. Do you think rent should be free, like in North Korea?
No I don’t……..I guess my point went over your head. I’ll try to be clearer next time.
Risks? What risks would you be speaking of? When the lobbyists have primed the planners and in many cases the commissioners? You don’t think they haven’t penciled in the litigation speed bumps as well? The developers are offering expensive public storage/human storage units in many configurations. Where are the buildings that actually compliment the neighborhoods many choose to evicerate?
Here, let me show you to a lovely broom closet just off the elevator.
ADUBNB has flat rate pricing with no middleman to prevent price gouging.
LOL……..I like that “ADUBNB” Funny, not funny.
I’m all for leveraging what you’ve got; that’s capitalism. But as I read this they took existing parking spaces and built more units for tenants who are going to need parking ….. so, where are the people in this building going to park?
Don’t recall this ever appeared before Planning Commission. Could this have received an internal approval by Director or Planning Counter?
Did they break any laws? No. The article is written as if it’s some evil developer. But I thought wehoans complain all day long about not having enough housing in the City. Some a developer builds some housing, doesn’t break any laws, and you’re not happy. I get it. You’re not happy because they aren’t giving the apartments away for free, but rather renting them at fair market rent. And that makes many wehoans unhappy that we can’t all be millionaires.
Only a foul toxic Capitalist Greedy Greedy Landlord (or “lady who lunches” smug bitch in Chanel Landlady) who is too lazy to get off their butt and actually work for a living with like the rest of us instead of sitting back and collecting rent on their lazy exploitive fat ass would say that. Get a job, Zsa Zsa.