L.A. hotel workers endure hours-long commutes, car sleeping to afford homes elsewhere

Gladis Ávila still finds time to sweep her front porch after commuting five days a week from her home in Victorville to her job as a housekeeper at the W Hollywood Hotel. “At the end of the day, when I’m heading home,” Ávila said, “I wonder if it’s worth it.” The women, both hotel workers, grapple with all the difficulties of the housing market in California today, the high prices that push first-time buyers increasingly far from work, the scarcity of anything they can actually afford. “That has happened for many years, and that was in some ways a manifestation of the American dream.” Leticia Ortega de Ceballos starts one job at 11 p.m. and gets off at 7 a.m. Then she goes to her next job at 8 a.m. and gets off around 4 p.m. Ortega de Ceballos, who emigrated from Mexico in the 1980s, started working two jobs, in part so she could help her sister back home study at a university. “For their future.” Ortega de Ceballos has thought about finding work closer to home, but it’d be much less pay. “Our position is that those who work in the region’s most important and prosperous industry — tourism — need to have the ability to live in Los Angeles.” On the Fourth of July, around 30 people, including housekeepers and cooks, picketed outside of the W Hollywood Hotel, where rooms go for more than $300 a night.