By Ben Ikenson, Photo: Gabor Ekecs Photography, FastCompany, November 27, 2023
From a car windshield flying across an overpass, the new housing development in South Los Angeles may look like a freight-load of cargo: shipping containers, stacked four- and five-high like giant Legos, appear randomly arrayed near one of California’s largest and busiest freeway interchanges. In fact, the complex is meticulously designed to make the most of its challenging site on a triangular median and old railroad right-of-way in the city’s Broadway-Manchester district. The corrugated modules are oriented to minimize ambient traffic noise and to surround an open space landscaped with vegetation and irrigated by greywater that will help offset air pollution.
When certified for occupancy early next year, “Isla Intersections” will provide 53 single-bedroom apartments, about 375-square-feet each, and onsite services—permanent supportive housing—for formerly unhoused individuals. Ten are allocated for formerly unhoused veterans.
In 2018, the city of Los Angeles, which has the nation’s largest homeless population, awarded leases for some of its more than 1,700 underutilized parcels of properties to affordable housing developers. Nonprofit Holos Communities won the competitive solicitation process to develop the 20,000-square-foot site and was granted a 99-year lease for $1 a year. The price of real estate typically represents about 15% of total development costs.
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