AHF Welcomes L.A.’s Leland Hotel to Roster of Affordable Housing

AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation purchases a 1904 building on 5^th Street in DTLA, bringing 62 more rooms online utilizing the adaptive reuse of older buildings

The Leland Hotel was completely uninhabitable prior to AHF’s purchase

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AHF, the largest global AIDS organization, under its Healthy Housing Foundation banner, is pleased to announce the purchase of the 62-room Leland Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on the edge of skid row (116 E 5^th St, Los Angeles, CA 90013) to add much-needed housing to AHF’s own roster of affordable housing for the homeless and extremely low income individuals. The sale, which closed Friday (1/6/23), brings the number of affordable rental housing units owned and operated by Healthy Housing Foundation across greater Los Angeles to 1,425 units in 13 properties.

Since 2017, when AHF first kicked off its housing program to address L.A.’s homeless and affordable housing crises, the Healthy Housing Foundation has spent over $183 million purchasing a variety of existing older residential properties throughout Greater Los Angeles—old single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotels, former roadside or chain motels, older apartment buildings—and refurbished and repurposed them as affordable housing and extremely-low-income housing.

The Leland is adjacent to, and across the street from two of AHF’s other key residential hotels: it’s directly across from the 150-room King Edward Hotel (125 E. 5^th St., Los Angeles CA 90013) and next to the 204-room Baltimore Hotel (501 S. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA 90013). The purchase price for the Leland was $6,750,000—or approximately $108,870 per room or housing unit—a fraction of the half-million-dollar and up per housing unit the City of Los Angeles routinely spends on newly constructed affordable housing.

AHF and Healthy Housing Foundation are also well underway with plans and permitting to build a new, 216 unit affordable/homeless housing development on L.A.’s Skid Row using pre-fab elements that will be built on two development lots next to HHF’s Madison Hotel, the first hotel property in Healthy Housing Foundation’s portfolio.

AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation was created to help address the rampant affordable housing crisis sweeping the nation. The group focuses on quicker, much less expensive models of adaptive reuse of existing buildings as it repurposes them as housing for those previously unsheltered, homeless and/or for extremely-low-income individuals with a particular focus on addressing the needs of low-income individuals, struggling families, youth, and those living with chronic illness or homelessness.

“The fight for affordable housing really is fought one door at a time. We are delighted to add the 62-rooms of the Leland Hotel—which was completely uninhabitable prior to AHF’s purchase—to our roster of affordable housing here in Los Angeles,” said Michael Weinstein, president of AHF.