More than 40,000 people are experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles right now.

And yet right next to Skid Row, the city's historical epicenter for homelessness, hundreds of rooms, sit empty.

Literally, there'll be people like sleeping outside on the street while you've got a completely vacant brand new building.

The building's name in the Cecil Hotel, but even though the Cecil was redeveloped specifically

as a place to house, low-income, and houseless folks, is still struggling to fill rooms,

even as LA's homeless population grows.

I'm Gustavo Oriano. You're listening to The Times. I'm Gustavo You're listening to the Times, essential news from the LA Times.

It's Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

Today, what the Cecil Hotel struggles to fill empty rooms

tells us about the crucial roles SRO's play in getting unhoused

people off the street.

Jamie Ding is a business reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

Jamie, welcome the Times.

Thanks for having me.

So if people know about the CISA Hotel in Los Angeles at all, it's probably because

of its more sorted history.

And that's mostly because of a Netflix documentary about the disappearance of a young

woman there last decade.

But what's the building's full history outside of just true crime?

So the original Cecil Hotel actually opened in the 1920s as a rather fancy place for business travelers and tourists.

But that quickly changed when the Great Depression hit only a couple years later.

Over the next few decades, we saw the hotel decline,

...