Costco’s ambitious new plan to help fix California’s housing crisis

Costco is building dozens of affordable housing units above its newest store to avoid Los Angeles building restrictions.

The discount grocer is planning a 185,000-square-foot store in South LA at 5035 Coliseum Street on a 12-acre vacant lot that was once a hospital.

But to build a big store in LA you had to go through a lot of regulatory hurdles, getting stuck in bureaucracy for years.

Costco could spend millions on design and development of the store and millions more on consultants to comply with regulations, and it would still fail.

Instead, a rule was applied whereby mixed housing projects with certain characteristics were exempted from a number of rules.

To do this, the development had to be two-thirds residential, and Costco went even further with 471,000 square feet of residential.

The housing will include 800 apartments, 183 of which are reserved for low-income affordable housing. The project is developed by Thrive Living.

In addition, there was another 56,000 square feet of amenities, including a gym, multi-purpose common area, courtyards, a rooftop pool and gardens.

Costco also had to use union labor for on-site construction, and to minimize labor costs, it used prefabricated units.

Those units were built off-site by cheaper labor and shipped by truck, meaning most had to be small, one-bedroom apartments.

The result is a design that resembles a prison or a student house with many corridors full of small units.

Most units range from 350 square foot studios to 605 square foot two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments.

California is facing a housing crisis: 181,000 people are homeless and the average rent is $2,800 per month.