“Hotels in Crisis (Again)” Exhibition and Performance Project
In the 1970’s – at a time when residential hotels, were being demolished throughout Los Angeles, the city redevelopment agency made the bold choice to save and renovate the 60 single room occupancy hotels in Skid Row. Now, many of those hotels have again fallen into disrepair and one non-profit owner of 29 hotels has gone bankrupt. This project excavates this history, addresses the current situation and assesses what’s now needed to make the Skid Row Hotels into decent, truly affordable housing.
The exhibition with artist Rosten Woo, is developing in a “learning in public’” format, where each new stage of the exhibition will be informed by public conversations about SRO Hotels and Los Angeles Poverty Department is creating a performative response on what’s wanted to create and sustain decent housing.
Come be part of the conversation, and help develop the exhibition (and, we hope, the future of housing in Skid Row) with us!
Wednesday, March 11, 7pm: WHAT TO DO?
Panel conversation moderated by Rosten Woo.
For the third “learning in public” event, we learn from people and organizations who are thinking about what to do next.
Panel conversation moderated by Rosten Woo.
This conversation includes Skid Row Action Plan’s Permanent Housing Resident Council members Barron McCall and Kevin Cedano; CD14 Councilmember Ysabel Jurado; LA Tenants Union; Becky Dennison, Legal Aid Foundation LA, and Jade Arellano and General Dogon, LA Community Action Network.
Wednesday, January 28, 2026: 7PM ~ HOTELS IN CRISIS (AGAIN)
Panel conversation moderated by Rosten Woo, with:
Jerry Jones, Greater LA Coalition on Homelessness; Marc Tousignant, director of supportive housing for Enterprise’s Southern California Market and lead author of “Preserving Affordable Single Room Occupancy Portfolios Across California”; Claire Knowlton, non profit finance expert and lead author of “Redesign Required: Lessons for Permanent Supportive Housing from Skid Row Housing Trust Buildings”and Mike Alvidrez, former CEO of Skid Row Housing Trust
This panel brings together leading experts in housing policy and specifically SRO design and financing to talk about lessons we can learn from the recent and ongoing crisis with downtown’s SROs and the demise of Skid Row Housing Trust. Come join the conversation about what is happening behind the scenes, and how we can think big picture about the future of this crucial housing supply in Skid Row, and California at large.
December 13: 10 AM–2 PM
WHAT IS HOME?
An interactive workshop with Bjorn Krondorfer & Thomas Mann Fellow Susanne Beyer.
Co-presented by Thomas Mann House and Los Angeles Poverty Department.
This workshop explores our need of belonging, especially in times when our sense of “home” has grown fragile—because of uncertain futures, voluntary exile, forced displacements, or natural disasters. What is home or the loss of home for us? And what has it been for generations before us who made their home in a new place/country?
Participants are invited to explore these questions in open conversations and through non-verbal components and movement.
December 10: 7PM
HOTELS IN CRISIS: Then and Now
Join Los Angeles Poverty Department and Los Angeles Tenants Union for an evening of films that excavate the history of SRO hotels in Skid Row.
It’s a history of successive crises, attempts to address them — and the obstacles to creating and sustaining comfortable and affordable residences, that has resulted in the crisis of today. We’ll be viewing footage from the sixties, eighties, and today, listening and reflecting on how to make housing work for people. The presentation will include rarely screened gems from the SRHMA archive & Visual Communications.
This evening is part of LAPD’s new project, HOTELS IN CRISIS and will include a short performance by LA Poverty Department.
November 12, 2025, 7PM
LIVING WITH LANDLORDS – Rights, Struggles and Possibilities
Presented by Critical planning Journal
This event brings together tenant rights lawyers, community organizers, practitioners, and scholars to discuss what can be done to improve landlord practices and strengthen tenant protections in Los Angeles. The panel will run alongside an exhibition by Rosten Woo on the decline of SRO hotels in LA, offering an important spatial and historical backdrop for the discussion.
PANEL CONVERSATION with
JACOB WOOCHER (TENANTS’ RIGHTS LAWYER)
ALEXANDER FERRER (UCLA, SAJE, THE DEBT COLLECTIVE)
CHELSEA KIRK (CO-FOUNDER, RENT BRIGADE)
KENIA ALCOCER (UNION DE VECINOS)
TAKAO SUZUKI (CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LITTLE TOKYO SERVICE CENTER)
CHRIS TYLER (LA TENANTS UNION, SAJE)
About Critical Planning Journal
Critical Planning is the graduate student-run journal of the UCLA Urban Planning Department. CPJ began in 1993 as a forum for the urban studies and planning communities to debate current issues, showcase emerging research, and propose new ideas concerning cities and regions. The core mission of Critical Planning is to promote criticality and social justice. In pursuit of these ends, Critical Planning seeks out new forms of knowledge and modes of representation. The journal is thus not only a space for planning scholars and practitioners, but also activists, artists, organizers, and others who take “the city,” however defined, as their object of inquiry.
