So why exactly is housing so expensive in LA? For one thing, getting land zoned and approved for development has become nearly impossible in the past several decades. Municipalities are making new construction a non-starter. This is the result of environmental pushback and groups who don't want any more homes encroaching in their communities (not in my backyard).
At the same time, our nation is still reeling from the 2008 recession which essentially wiped out over half our supply of construction trade workers. Ergo, work stopped, they pivoted and found work in other industries leading to a chronic shortage of labor.
Now we have sky-high interest rates adding to the malaise!
Can the unions combat this be asking for high wages? Good luck with that. In the meantime, Calif along with NY continue to lose residents to Southern states offering lower costs of living (&taxes)
Striking L.A. Workers Want Hotels to Help Build Affordable Housing
Hotel owners say fixing the region’s longstanding housing crisis isn’t their job
By Christine Mai-Duc, WSJ
Aug. 3, 2023 11:00 am ET
LOS ANGELES—Delmy Cabañas and thousands of other hotel workers in this city have spent the past five weeks demanding higher wages, better health benefits and, in a less conventional ask for striking workers, help solving L.A.’s affordable-housing shortage.
“I want to spend more time with my kids,” said Cabañas, a housekeeper who drives nearly four hours round-trip each day to her job at the Ritz Carlton hotel downtown from her home in Riverside.
Cabañas is a member of Unite Here Local 11, which represents 15,000 cooks, housekeepers, dishwashers, front-desk attendants and other hospitality workers in Southern California. Union leaders say that soaring housing costs have eaten away at wage increases they previously won, and that the hotel industry should bear some of the burden for addressing the problem.
In addition to an $11-an-hour wage increase over three years, union leaders are demanding employers institute a 7% fee, or a similar government tax, to build homes affordable to hotel workers and provide loans and other assistance to workers at risk of losing their housing. The union is also asking hotel owners to endorse a 2024 ballot measure in the city of Los Angeles that would require them to make vacant rooms available to homeless people.
hile some economists are optimistic as hiring booms, employees are actually working fewer hours. Usually, reducing working hours has been a reliable sign of incoming layoffs—and a possible recession. WSJ explains what it may mean moving forward. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
“We are pushing the edge, but look, our members are living paycheck to paycheck more than ever, I would argue, because of the cost of housing,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11.
Labor unions have increasingly demanded that employers take steps to address housing affordability in contract negotiations. Housing costs in and around many urban areas have outpaced wage increases, making it difficult for service workers and other low-income people to live close to where they work.
In the Los Angeles metro area, median monthly rents increased 24% to $2,100 between 2017 and 2022, according to rentals website Apartment List.
A worker in Los Angeles County would need to make $42.73 an hour to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment, according to 2023 data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. The minimum hourly wage for Unite Here hotel workers in Southern California is currently $19.
A group representing 44 L.A. area hotels filed unfair labor practice charges in July with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Unite Here of bargaining in bad faith by making demands that have nothing to do with their members’ labor contracts.
“They’re asking for things that are beyond the hotel’s control,” Pete Hillan, a spokesman for the Hotel Association of Los Angeles, an industry group, said of the union’s demands related to housing policy. “We cannot be held responsible for an issue that has been decades in the making because of failed policies.”
Regarding the L.A. ballot measure, Hillan said forcing hotels to place unhoused people in rooms next to paying guests would decimate business.
Petersen called the charges, which are pending, frivolous.
Keith Grossman, a lawyer representing the hotels, said they offered the union an immediate $2 hourly wage increase, with additional increases amounting to $4.25 per hour through 2027. Unite Here rejected that proposal, Grossman said. Petersen said hotel operators walked out of negotiations before his union could respond.
The two sides haven’t met since July 18.
Contracts covering some 15,000 hotel workers in Southern California expired at the end of June. Since then, union members have been holding rolling work stoppages in which employees in Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Anaheim, home to Disneyland, have walked off the job for several days at a time.
In an open letter last week to Taylor Swift, who will perform the first of six L.A. concerts Thursday, workers asked the pop star to postpone her shows until a deal is reached. A representative for Swift didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Zuñiga lives 13 miles from work, closer than many of her co-workers, but rush hour can still turn her commute into a one-hour drive each way.
Enrique Lopezlira, a labor economist and director of the low-wage work program at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center, said housing prices will likely become more central to unions’ concerns as service workers are forced to live farther away from their place of employment.
During a six-week work stoppage by graduate student workers at the University of California system last year, members unsuccessfully asked that their wages be tied to local housing costs. The university system said such a provision would be financially untenable, since they had no control of housing costs.
Teachers striking in Chicago and Oakland, Calif., in recent years have demanded support for workforce housing assistance and more help for homeless students.
Southern California hotel workers have long been among the most vocal and powerful hotel-worker unions in the nation. Petersen said this summer’s strikes are part of a broader movement by the union to ensure service workers can afford to live in and around L.A. as it prepares for a highly visible role as host of the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Summer Olympics.
“It’s going to be a five-year fight, maybe 10 years, but we’re going to escalate through the Olympics,” Petersen said. “Our members are the tip of the spear of this movement now.”
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