City planning presents complex challenges, and Los Angeles serves as a prime example of how well-intentioned regulations can produce unexpected results. The city aimed to reduce density in overcrowded neighborhoods while simultaneously curbing the construction of oversized McMansions. However, like most municipalities, Los Angeles has implemented stricter design and inspection standards for multifamily buildings compared to single or two-family homes. The outcome has been the emergence of an unusual architectural specimen: the double duplex.
These unconventional structures have managed to thrive within the city's restrictive land-use regulations, creating buildings that are simultaneously strange, necessary, and profitable. These mega-duplexes, often constructed two per lot, bear no resemblance to the traditional two-family Cape Cod homes of previous generations. One three-story building on West 36th Street near the University of Southern California contains an astounding 28 bedrooms and 28 bathrooms. Across the street, another structure houses 45 bedrooms and 47 bathrooms.
While technically classified as duplexes—consisting of one building divided into two units—these structures function as sprawling dormitories and co-living facilities designed to accommodate students, working adults, and formerly homeless populations. These buildings represent a physical manifestation of California's ongoing housing crisis, serving as monuments to a problem that has left few permanent architectural records.
Researchers from George Mason University's Mercatus Center have documented this phenomenon in detail. Valerie Wilke, Eduardo Mendoza, and Muhammad Alameldin published a comprehensive study tracking the proliferation of this new housing type across Los Angeles. Their research reveals that over 500 such developments had received permits in the city through 2023, with additional construction continuing since then.
The financial appeal of these properties is evident on platforms like Zillow, where listings target both prospective tenants and potential landlords. For investors, the primary attraction lies in high capitalization rates—the ratio of annual rent to purchase price—combined with a seemingly endless supply of tenants. However, these marketing materials typically omit mention of the rapid tenant turnover and accelerated wear and tear that characterize these properties, despite most buildings being only a few years old.
For tenants, the primary draw is affordability. One property advertises beds for as little as $599 per month, though this rate requires residents to share rooms with three other people using bunk beds. These accommodations include weekly cleaning services and on-site management, with month-to-month rental options available. Another property near USC offers individual bedrooms and bathrooms for $845 monthly. While residents must share kitchen facilities with 14 other people, this arrangement costs approximately half the price of securing independent housing in the neighborhood.
In the USC area, many residents are students facing severe housing shortages that have prompted California officials to consider radical solutions, including designated parking lots where students can sleep in their vehicles and massive windowless dormitory complexes. Community members concerned about the displacement of existing tenants due to teardown construction have petitioned to halt these developments, but pro-housing state preemption laws have overridden local opposition efforts.
Albizael Del Valle, capital projects director for the local council district, explains the developer perspective: "Developers are not seeing a house. They're seeing 10 bedrooms, and every bedroom has two students and every student pays $1,200. The profit could be 600 percent." Del Valle acknowledges that while these developments provide more housing than other parts of the city, "this is really a loophole that developers were able to find, and it's quite dangerous. The value of the homes changed so quickly tenants can't keep up, and people are incentivized to do evil things to get tenants out."
While students and young professionals view these arrangements as modern co-living solutions, other tenants may perceive these structures as reminiscent of single-room-occupancy hotels. With their "Rooms for Rent" signage and weekly or monthly rates, SROs once played a crucial role in the housing ecosystems of Los Angeles and other major cities, particularly serving younger residents, older adults, and those experiencing financial difficulties.
However, SROs became associated with urban blight, leading cities to zone new hotels out of existence and demolish existing buildings in the name of urban renewal. This displacement catastrophe has been largely forgotten by history because hotel tenants were not counted as official residents in government records. Los Angeles lost tens of thousands of SRO units during the 1970s and 1980s, and many contemporary observers note that this loss coincided with the beginning of the modern homelessness crisis. A recent report from Pew Research Center details these connections.
Double duplexes house numerous low- and middle-income workers who discover these accommodations independently. Advertisements are frequently posted in Spanish, suggesting a marketing approach that extends beyond USC's student population. These properties have also become valuable resources for Los Angeles nonprofits working to transition people from street homelessness into supportive housing. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority secures master leases, while nonprofit homeless service providers like PATH assist in placing individuals who have been living on the streets.
Jennifer Hark Dietz, CEO of PATH, emphasizes the importance of diverse housing options: "When I think about the landscape of L.A. housing availability, we need every option available. What this type of housing does is it allows for folks to really come together and form a community. They're using a community kitchen and community living space." This approach aligns with recent efforts by both the city and county of Los Angeles to place entire homeless encampments into housing simultaneously, rather than separating neighbors and disrupting established support systems.
These dormitory-style apartments also offer a more affordable alternative to many studio or one-bedroom apartments. Because government agencies lease the units, occupants of individual bedrooms avoid the background and credit checks that often prevent homeless individuals from securing traditional housing.
The Mercatus Center report explains how these structures circumvent various zoning regulations. As duplexes, the buildings receive permits in neighborhoods of low-rise bungalows while remaining exempt from size limits that apply only to single-family homes. They also avoid numerous requirements that Los Angeles typically imposes on multifamily construction, such as creating open space and providing off-street parking spots.
Consequently, the approval process has been streamlined at City Hall. According to Mendoza's research, double duplexes move from permit to occupancy in just 444 days, compared to 801 days for typical multifamily projects. Additionally, duplexes can utilize the state's simpler single-family residential building code instead of the more demanding guidelines that apply to apartment buildings.
This regulatory complexity between two and three units has resulted in numerous two-unit constructions built to lower safety standards, despite some containing dozens of bedrooms. The implications of this approach remain unclear, as other cities have questioned whether single-family standards should extend to small apartment buildings. Dallas recently decided that buildings with up to eight apartments could use single-family construction standards if they remain smaller than 7,500 square feet, though some of Los Angeles' double duplexes exceed this size limit.
This situation also highlights the difficulty of achieving a goal common to many cities: increasing the supply of family-sized apartments to reverse the exodus of children from urban neighborhoods. Pro-housing advocate Oren Hadar recently spoke with a double duplex real estate agent who claims these properties are increasingly being rented to multigenerational families. The Mercatus study indicates that these structures have appeared in neighborhoods far from regional universities.
However, families struggle to compete financially with single working adults or college students supported by parental funding, which has contributed to the depletion of family-sized apartments in major cities. In New York City, for example, 1.9 million one- and two-person households competed for 1.25 million studios and one-bedroom apartments in 2014. This imbalance leads to the adult cohabitation arrangements famously portrayed in television shows like "Friends."
Rather than expecting families to occupy student housing, a more effective approach might involve creating sufficient student housing to reduce pressure on traditional single-family homes. These homes, favored by financial and legal systems, still constitute the majority of the housing stock but are often subdivided among unrelated adults.
Sometimes, the double duplex serves as a density workaround that undermines neighborhood efforts to exclude apartments and their residents. However, as the Mercatus study demonstrates, duplexes are often constructed in neighborhoods where higher-density apartment development is already permitted, yet developers choose to build these alternative structures instead. This phenomenon illustrates the complex interplay between regulation, market forces, and housing innovation in one of America's most challenging real estate markets.
