City of LA wants Panorama City apartments for homeless

Housing authority intends to pay $10M for 31 units in San Fernando Valley

City of LA wants Panorama City apartments for homeless
14949 Roscoe Boulevard in Panorama City, and HACLA President/CEO Douglas Guthrie (HACLA, Google Maps)

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles has set its sights on another Project Homekey possibility: an apartment building in Panorama City.

Urbanize reported HACLA has sent out a notice indicating its intent to buy a two-story, 31-unit apartment building at 14949 Roscoe Boulevard. HACLA is set to pay $10 million for the complex, roughly equivalent to $345,000 per unit.

The building dates to the 1970s and has about 21,000 square feet, city records show. According to Urbanize, the sale is anticipated to close by the end of January, though an extension is available through May.

Project Homekey is a program of the State of California which provides local governments funding to purchase housing for the homeless. It was devised as the successor program to Project Roomkey, a program in the pandemic that paid for hotel rooms for homeless people.

The state received $2.75 billion in federal funds for Project Homekey over the next two years. California allocated around $358 million to L.A. County and municipalities in the county that needs to be spent by the end of next month.

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So far, the program has put funds toward the acquisitions of 15 properties in the Los Angeles area–a total of $120 million to go with $60 million from other sources. The purchases account for 744 units. In September, city officials projected Los Angeles could buy between 500 and 1,000 hotel rooms through the program in the next two years.

In November, HACLA agreed to pay developer Haroni Investments $49.5 million for a 128-unit apartment complex under construction at 1654 Florence Avenue. It appeared to mark the first time the city was buying a building other than a hotel through the project.

Public officials have estimated there are about 40,000 homeless people in the City of Los Angeles and about 65,000 across the county.

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[Urbanize] — Holden Walter-Warner