A derelict 1950s motel on Sepulveda Boulevard has been reborn as The Pano, a 90-unit permanent supportive housing complex for people experiencing chronic homelessness. Los Angeles officials gathered Thursday in Panorama City to celebrate the opening, marking the conversion of a decades-old roadside motel into a community built specifically for the formerly unhoused.
The project, developed by LA Family Housing and its real estate arm LAFHBUILDS, combined the adaptive reuse of the old Panorama Motel with a new three-story apartment building constructed alongside it, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. At 8209 N. Sepulveda Boulevard, the site was designed by architecture firm office42 to turn a former 48-room motel into a 91-unit complex, with roughly 40 to 41 units carved out of the renovated motel structure and 50 more added in the new building, as detailed by Urbanize LA. Of those 91 units, 90 are reserved for formerly unhoused residents, with one set aside for an on-site property manager.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Imelda Padilla, whose district includes Panorama City, said in a statement that the development provides quality homes alongside supportive services to help individuals and families transition out of homelessness. She added that she and state and local partners remain committed to delivering housing solutions across Los Angeles. Photographs from the opening were credited to contributing photographer Gene Blevins.
Skipping Tax Credits for a Faster Build
Rather than relying on the traditional Low-Income Housing Tax Credit process, which can stretch financing timelines out for years, LA Family Housing pieced together a different funding model for The Pano. The nonprofit used California Project Homekey funds to acquire the site, layered in $10 million in private philanthropic gifts, and secured more than $49 million in Section 8 housing voucher subsidies from the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, the project's details show.
City Hall helped move things along too. The development was fast-tracked as a beneficiary of Mayor Karen Bass's Executive Directive 1, an administrative policy designed to eliminate city-level discretionary approvals and speed up entitlement and permitting for 100% affordable and supportive housing projects, per Urbanize LA's reporting.
Services Built Into the Building
The Pano was designed with more than just apartments in mind. On-site supportive services include mental and physical health resources, according to LA YIMBY. Residents also have access to a community room with a full kitchen, computer workstations, a rooftop patio, barbecue facilities, and a dog park.
The organization behind the project underwent a structural shift of its own in 2024, when LA Family Housing legally split its operations by launching LAFHBUILDS as a separate entity to handle real estate development, construction, and property management. The move, reported by American Builders Quarterly, allowed LA Family Housing to focus strictly on direct social services and shelter care while its sister company took over the building side of the business.
Part of a Larger Valley-Wide Push
The Pano is one piece of a much larger regional effort. LA Family Housing and LAFHBUILDS have roughly six properties under construction or in different stages of development intended to bring about 700 to 750 new permanent supportive and affordable housing units online across the San Fernando Valley, according to The San Fernando Valley Sun. Just months ago, in Cielo rises in Chatsworth, the same organization opened a 99-unit modular supportive housing complex in Chatsworth built specifically for chronically unhoused residents.
The need behind these projects remains large. The 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count recorded 75,312 unhoused individuals across Los Angeles County, marking a slight overall decline for the first time in six years; the Valley Sun report also described the continuing scale of homelessness and need for housing.
That shortage is colliding with fiscal uncertainty at the federal level. In August, LA Family Housing warned that more than $217 million in federal Department of Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care grant allocations across LA County remained at risk due to federal budget squabbles and funding delays, underscoring the financial pressures facing nonprofit housing operators even as new buildings like The Pano open their doors.
