An Urban Island as Affordable Housing

As California’s housing crisis has worsened, officials here have been working to make more underutilized land parcels available to affordable housing developers in the form of inexpensive leases. But these sites hadn’t been developed for a reason— many were lying on sites with difficult terrain, split into separate pieces, or sitting along heavy traffic corridors or even next to freeways.   

Perhaps none have exemplified such challenges quite as dramatically as what was a barren, 19,000 square-foot triangular median in South L.A., lying right next to the junction of the 105 and 110 Freeways, a crossing known as the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange. Featuring five levels of stacked traffic and cloverleafs the size of football stadiums, Pregerson is one of the busiest pieces of infrastructure in America, made famous in the opening scene of the film La La Land.   

“The land was just kind of sad,” says Lorcan O’Herlihy, whose firm, LOHA, led the design. “Nobody ever considered it to be something valuable.”  

Adds Christian Ahumada, executive director of Holos Communities, the project’s nonprofit developer: “These are what I call the nooks and crannies. The leftover pieces of the city.” Adumanda notes that the site’s proximity to public transit made it more feasible than others, since Holos didn’t have to provide what would have been a (largely unused) parking podium—which could have added 15 to 20 percent more cost.    

The 35,000-square-foot, 54-unit permanent supportive housing development for the formerly homeless, called Isla Intersections (both for its busy “island” location and for its intersection of housing, sustainability, and equity), is a potent model of what’s doable in housing if we’re willing to expand our definition of what’s possible.  

 “All of a sudden, it’s much more welcoming, right?” says O’Herlihy, standing in front of the newly completed complex, the sound of traffic steadily humming. Rising behind him, a former afterthought has become a kind of bustling village with dynamic architecture and welcoming public space, changing the dynamic of the surrounding area. 

The key to this kind of placemaking was the team’s ability to convince the city to close an adjacent local road, Athens Way, and replace it with an inviting “paseo” designed by local landscape architecture firm Agency Artifact. The new spot, sponsored by the L.A.-based Annenberg Foundation, is filled with CO2-absorbing trees, shrubs, and other plants and used on weekends for a farmer’s market—bringing healthy food to what is a severe food desert.   

It is part of what Ahumada calls the development’s “green lung,” lowering the project’s carbon footprint and cleaning its air—especially needed on this congested site. A series of plant-filled terraces layered along several levels of the building add to the “lung,” which is entirely irrigated by a grey water recycling system. A few of the patios even contain edible gardens, upkept by local nonprofit Growing Hope Gardens, providing tenants with lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, blueberries, cucumbers, kale, and more.