Professor Alan Nissel, "Welcome to the Apartment Hotel California" -- Journal of Affordable Housing

Professor Alan Tzvika Nissel's article, "Welcome to the Apartment Hotel California," (SSRN) is published in the Journal of Affordable Housing, 33(1) Journal of Affordable Housing 99 (2024). The article provides a brief history of California Apartment Hotels and how they serve both tangible commercial needs and intangible social purposes within the history of American land use law and urbanism.

Abstract of "Welcome to the Apartment Hotel California"

Apartment Hotels like the Chelsea Hotel in New York or the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles have a magical aura, attracting both travelers and those who never leave. Socially, Apartment Hotels were never quite credited for the social progressiveness that they fostered. In fact, despite having played key roles in standardizing residential habitability as well as furthering women’s and minority rights, they have always been a controversial housing option. Legally, Apartment Hotels have never been defined functionally as a housing type. Municipalities never described them as, for example, multi-family residential structures offering flexible occupancy types including short, medium and long-term stays. Instead, they have been defined physically, according to building type and unit mix—i.e., residential structures with two or more dwelling units as wells as six guest rooms. This article provides a brief history of Apartment Hotels in California. Their hybrid nature contributes to identification problems. What are they—apartments, hotels or some sort of mixture of the two? In this article, I argue that, like The Eagle’s “Hotel California,” Apartment Hotels are, and always have been, an enticing yet illusory idea. They serve both tangible commercial needs and intangible social pur- poses within the history of American land use law and urbanism. This study kicks off what is hoped to be a wider project that describes a historic building usage that merit meaningful preservation efforts if we are to evade its extinction. The loss of Apartment Hotels is also an important source of middle-class housing, especially for creative professionals such as early-stage artists. This article situates the use and regulation of Apartment Hotels within the broader spectrum of affordable and market rate housing. As such, the story of Apartment Hotels is a social commentary that corelates the legal changes to this land use with fluctuations in California’s urbanization over the past couple centuries.