Riverside's Housing and Homelessness Committee on Monday considered a plan to convert two long-troubled motels — a Motel 6 on La Sierra Avenue and a Days Inn on Magnolia Avenue — into 148 units of affordable housing for seniors.
The developer, Allied Argenta, has signed letters of intent to gut-renovate and convert the 122-room Motel 6 at 3663 La Sierra Ave. and the 66-room Days Inn at 10545 Magnolia Ave. into apartments for Riverside’s senior citizens.
Ward 6 Council member and Committee Chair Luis Hernandez, who was recently appointed to several boards, said he was “really excited” to see this project in his ward.
”Senior affordable housing is obviously a much better use of these properties and the fact that it'll be affordable senior housing is even better,” he said.
Ward 5 Council member and Committee Vice Chair Sean Mill also expressed his support, saying that he’s excited to see the two motels that the city has repeatedly had “some issues” with repurposed into something positive for Riversiders.
“We need to be focused on making sure that this housing goes to Riverside residents and not just building it and letting all the other cities bring their folks to Riverside and expecting us to carry the burden for the entire region,” Mill said. “This is a project that's going to allow Riverside seniors to age in place.”
At La Sierra Avenue, the motel's 122 rooms on roughly 2.1 acres would become 82 units — 41 studios, 40 one-bedrooms and a two-bedroom manager's unit.
Twenty of the La Sierra units would be reserved for households earning 30% of the area median income (AMI) and paired with Section 8 project-based vouchers, with the rest serving households at 50-60% of AMI. At Magnolia Avenue, the Days Inn's 66 rooms on about 0.77 acres would become 66 units, mostly studios. Fifty units — three-quarters of the project — would go to households at 30% of AMI, backed by Section 8 vouchers, with the remaining 15 at 50% of AMI.
The La Sierra project is estimated at $39.6 million, and Allied is seeking $9 million in state Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) funding. If the timeline holds, construction wouldn't wrap until October 2029, with full lease-up by December 2029. The Magnolia project is estimated at $24.7 million. Combined, the two projects carry an estimated $64.4 million price tag.
Mill pressed staff on how the city would prioritize Riverside residents for the units and what funding sources the city might tap if it's ultimately asked to fill part of the funding gap.
Davis said regulatory agreements can include a local-preference policy — Riverside residents first, then people who work in the city — and that potential city funding sources include federal HOME dollars, the state's Permanent Local Housing Allocation, the city's roughly $600,000 local housing trust fund, and its homeless prevention program for at-risk seniors.
Mill also asked about the scale of unmet need. Davis said the city doesn't yet have a consolidated waiting list — each apartment complex keeps its own — but that more than 80 seniors earning 30% of AMI are already on the city's community queue. She said the city is working toward a shared software system that would let property managers pool waitlist data.
Ward 2 Council member and committee member Clarissa Cervantes supported the project and drew comparison to Ward 2's University Terrace project, a stalled Homekey+ supportive-housing proposal that the council rejected in January on a 4-3 vote.
"We don't want to get where we were in Ward 2, where we were on the finish line, received grant funding and then we lost the funding," Cervantes said, calling it "a wound in ... the community.”
She urged staff to coordinate closely with the Ward 6 council office and neighbors before momentum builds against the projects.
During public comment, Ward 3 resident Dan Hoxworth cited city data showing permanent supportive housing as Riverside's largest unmet housing need, with 242 units currently sought and only 47 built since 2021 toward the city's regional housing needs allocation.
Hoxworth welcomed the Motel 6 and Days Inn proposal, but noted the earliest units wouldn't open until late 2029. He urged the council to reconsider its earlier vote on the University Terrace project, which had a sooner timeline and addressed some permanent supportive housing needs that the senior projects don't directly target.
The senior-focused model of the proposed projects would include resident services from LifeSteps, a Southern California affordable-housing service provider, in coordination with the Riverside County Office on Aging and the city's Housing Authority.
Planned in-unit features include grab bars, shower chairs, slip-resistant flooring, 120-degree maximum water temperatures, raised outlets and lever-style door handles.
Each property would also include a community room intended for resident programming — including, developer consultant Sydney Stone said, classes aimed at helping seniors avoid financial scams.
"That is something oftentimes that is missed in affordable housing, especially with lower income residents," Stone told the committee. "[It's about] making sure that you work with them so that they can stay in the unit, age in place in the unit and not have a risk of actually losing the unit."
The committee took no official action, but per staff's recommendation received and filed the proposal and directed staff to keep coordinating with Allied as the projects move through the process. No vote to formally approve the projects has been scheduled.
