I couldn’t tell you why an elegant three-story building on New Hampshire Avenue is vacant. It’s not an Ellis Act property, and there aren’t any recent permit applications on file with ZIMAS.

I do know that New Hampshire Avenue has a reputation for homelessness. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell my readers that empty buildings tend to catch on fire (especially when they’re not secured well enough). Sure enough, this one has.

As of this writing, the top floor is, according to Citizen, “engulfed in flames”. If you live nearby, you may have trouble getting home tonight due to streets being blocked off.

Code complaints for the property began to pile up last April. And still - one more fire.

No one deserves this.

114 South New Hampshire Avenue, Rampart Village.

You may not have heard of the Phillips Hotel - unless you’re a Charles Bukowski fan. The hotel was the final residence of Bukowski’s first love and muse Jane Cooney Baker.

Anyway, it’s been on the abate list since 2017. When I started documenting empty buildings a few years ago, it was already missing its roof.

Guess what happened in the wee hours of Sunday morning? That’s right - it caught on fire again. Happy freaking Easter, East Hollywood.

It took about 10 seconds to find the demolition permit issued on March 24.

Plans to demolish the 1925 brick building and redevelop the property date back to at least 2022, so this is far from surprising. The delay in doing so may possibly have something to do with the building changing hands in January 2025; perhaps the previous owner may not have been up to the task for one reason or another.

I couldn’t tell you whether the Phillips could have been saved and restored; that’s a question for a structural engineer.

While I do not approve of leaving old buildings to rot, and while I firmly believe there needs to be accountability when an empty building catches on fire, at least the land won’t become overpriced “luxury” apartments.

The land is NOT subject to RSO, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that the replacement building will be a 60-unit affordable housing complex with a ground-floor restaurant space, plus two levels of parking.

That is certainly in the spirit of older SRO hotels like the Phillips, but did the building have to become a magnet for trash, graffiti, and fire in the meantime? Am I alone in thinking that it still could have been secured more thoroughly for safety’s sake?

This fire didn’t spread to neighboring buildings, but the next one might. And I sincerely hope there won’t be another one. Hollywood catches on fire enough already.

315 North Vermont Avenue, East Hollywood.

LADBS’ agenda for next week’s Public Nuisance Hearings is out, and it doesn’t surprise me.

2618 West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was abated 12/14/23. It’s a neglected commercial property with complaints about trash, open excavation, unpermitted construction and weeds, and the chain-link fence hasn’t kept out taggers and other trespassers. In fact, the abandoned-property complaints date back a full decade.

750-752 East Lanzit Avenue, consisting of two houses and a garage on one lot, looks like it survived the apocalypse. Abandoned-building complaints date to August 2024. The house has been heavily vandalized with signs of probable fire damage, repeat break-ins, portions of the fence missing, dumped trash, and overgrown foliage.

900 South Santa Fe Avenue, formerly the Dorin Realty Company office, is poorly fenced off and has faced repeat vandalism. Down the street, 912 South Santa Fe Avenue, which is fire damaged, isn’t even fenced.

I fully expect there will be little to no accountability for the owners of these derelict properties, and it begs the question of how much money the city leaves on the table by not assessing fines for neglect.

I am so damn fed up with writing about empty homes burning, but what am I supposed to do - stop? In Los Angeles? Honey, please.

A long-empty, boarded-up house caught on fire yesterday afternoon. LAFD mistakenly reported the address as 506 N. St. Andrews Place, but 506 looks pretty well-maintained to me.

I received a report that the correct address was 509 N. St. Andrews Place, across the street and next to an empty lot. That tracks with the picture on this CBS News story about the fire, showing a burned Craftsman house next to an overgrown vacant lot. (Also, 506 is a single-story Colonial-ish house with a completely different roof line.)

I didn’t have to dig too deep to find out that just a few years ago, 509 WAS a lovely 1911 Craftsman house with recent improvements. It sold off market in April 2020, but a listing of sorts can be seen here.

Look at the picture in the listing. The house, fence, and front yard are neat as a pin and look like they’ve been exceptionally well cared for.

Now look at Street View. In December 2020, the yard is getting overgrown. July 2022 shows what could be junk piling up behind the fence. By September 2025 - the most recent picture - the property looks like crap. The house is barely visible through the overgrown foliage, there is junk piled up high enough to peek over the top of the fence, and the formerly well-maintained fence is fading unevenly, tagged, and appears to have possible damage by the gate.

ZIMAS backs up 509’s downward spiral. The first complaint - auto repair on the premises - is from October 2020, just six months after the house sold. Complaints from October 2025 suggest the house was vacant and unsecured, and complaints from January echo the house’s empty state and reference the junk piled high in the yard.

A demolition permit was issued in 2022. Obviously, the house wasn’t demolished at the time. The permit for the required sewer cap expired in January.

Huh.

I decided to look into the vacant lot next door, formerly 505 N. St. Andrews. Sources disagree on whether 505 last changed hands in 2016 or 2020, but someone was already planning to demolish the house at least as early as 2015.

505 had a much longer and messier list of code complaints dating back to 2016 - and as of February 20, still has an open complaint for “VACANT LOT WITH TRASH AND DEBRIS”.

A permit was issued for a new 4-story building over a year ago. But, we’ll see how that goes. This city is rife with empty lots and unfinished buildings.

I do have to wonder if whoever owns 509 might look to flip it to whoever owns 505 - or if both owners might want to flip to a third party together. A smart developer could combine the two lots and build a bigger apartment complex than the one planned for 505.

Still, 509 could have - really, should have - been loaded onto trucks and moved to Altadena. The previous owners clearly loved that house. Someone who lost their home to the Eaton fire would have loved it, too.

Updated 3/11: Unfortunately, it was worse than the original reports indicated. The fire spread to, and destroyed, the house next door, displacing Pastor Juan Galicia and nine family members who all lived the house (the whole family was at church when the fire began.) Two of the family’s six dogs died; a third dog is reportedly at the vet. (Updated 3/22: the third dog did not survive.)

The family had been warning city officials about the squatters next door for OVER A YEAR. Their pleas fell on apathetic ears.

Keith Johnson, longtime CD13 resident and former journalist, spoke with Pastor Galicia. View the reel here. Two different community members have started GoFundMe campaigns to help the family; find them here and here.

509 North St. Andrews Place, Larchmont.

(Image courtesy of Father Dylan Littlefield.)

Last month, I received an email from a reader who had noticed a pattern of historic-structure fires in Hollywood and did a little digging.

I have his permission to post this (thanks, John). I’ve added some links; please be advised that older articles in the Times may be paywalled.

The fire(s) at the Hollywood Center Motel are appalling and beyond suspicious. Years ago, the LA Times poked around at allegations that a spate of fires damaging/destroying Hollywood landmarks was so rampant, there had to be something corrupt going on. Garcetti, a councilman then, even said the coincidence warranted investigation. But they wound up merely taking city officials' word that there was nothing to see there.

Very Chinatown.

If you have any contacts at the Times, I'd urge them to do an actual investigation with the fire dept., neighbors, etc. You likely may have already flagged an editor there, but if they pooh-poohed it, give them this - I did some research! :)

Historical structures in Hollywood damaged or destroyed by fire over the 40 years or so:

Hollywood Brown Derby

Repeated fires during vacancy and deterioration (late 1980s–early 1990s); later demolished (1994). Widely cited by preservationists and repeatedly referenced in later Los Angeles Times fire/redevelopment reporting.

[Ed. note: After the Brown Derby lost its lease in 1985, another restaurant briefly occupied the building before a kitchen fire in 1987. Squatters and gang members repeatedly broke into the empty building, causing additional fires in 1990 and 1992. LADBS red-tagged it after the 1994 earthquake, calling it an imminent hazard. Couuncilwoman Jackie Goldberg was criticized for not being able to save the building. She noted at the time that she had tried, and that her office was also trying to save other historic buildings.]

Ontra Cafeteria Streamline Moderne building; fire-damaged in early 1990; demolished later that year.

[Ed. note: Ontra Cafeteria was a former post office designed by one of LA’s most important architectural firms: Morgan, Walls, and Clements. Ontra closed in 1988, was often broken into by transients, and caught on fire on March 11, 1990. The building had been declared a Historic-Cultural Monument, which does provide some protection but does not actually prevent demolition in Los Angeles. The site became a parking lot and is now a five-star hotel.]

Late Night Studios (1200 block of Vine Street): Fire gutted a two-story studio in July 1990; the Los Angeles Times notes it was a 70-year-old building and identifies prior historic use tied to entertainment production (including that the structure had once been home to the Filmarte Theatre Movie House and later a TV audience theater where the “Steve Allen Show” was made).

[Ed. note: Rik Sciacca, who co-owned Late Night Studios, was living onsite and lost nearly everything he owned in the fire. Two other production companies were based in the facility. The fire was attributed to faulty wiring.]

Hollywood Recreation Center: Originally a bowling alley and recreation hall dating to Hollywood’s early entertainment-era growth. Fire damaged the long-vacant structure in the early 1990s; subsequently demolished. This address is specifically named in preservation and redevelopment-era reporting as part of Vine Street’s loss of early commercial fabric.

[Ed. note: the Streamline Moderne facade largely survived and was incorporated into the replacement building.]

The Little Country Church of Hollywood at 1750 N. Argyle Ave. Built in 1934 as a reproduction of a rural-style church and later declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM #567) in 1992. On Christmas Eve (December 24), 2007, the church burned to the ground in a major fire. Reports describe the cause as arson or malicious fire (investigators treated it as such), though some sources also noted that previous fires and vandalism had affected the property.

[Ed. note: in what could have been a very interesting example of adaptive reuse, a developer wanted to keep the church (Sunday services and all) but add two freestanding bars and a restaurant. The developer paused plans when finding enough parking proved to be an issue, and unsurprisingly, there was opposition to turning the little church into a bar. Read more about the church, and see a video, here.]

Basque Nightclub Fire on April 30, 2008 gutted the building.

Laemmle Building: Same structure as Basque Nightclub; historically tied to early Hollywood cinema exhibition interests. Demolished later in 2008 following fire damage.

Note: Eric Garcetti (context) Then–councilman Eric Garcetti told the LA Times that the number of fires that year was suspicious, while officials said there was no proof of coordination.

{Ed. Note: the Basque Nightclub building at Hollywood and Vine had previously been a short-lived location of the Brown Derby. After the Brown Derby lost its lease, operator Walter P. Scharfe - who also ran the Pasadena location - spent around $500,000 to convert the building. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.]

Sunset & Vine Tower: Fire occurred beneath the tower, in older underground or subgrade spaces tied to earlier commercial uses. While the tower itself was not destroyed, reporting emphasized the presence of aging, legacy structures and utilities beneath the modern development—often cited as part of Hollywood’s layered and fragile historic fabric.

Hollywood Center Motel Historic 1905-era core (“El Nido” structures). Destroyed by fire, Jan. 4–5, 2026.

Read about the motel fire here.

Read about the Hollywood Playhouse fire, which was not on John’s list, here.

And do note that these are JUST the historically/culturally/architecturally significant buildings. This 1911 bungalow, for example, barely attracted any notice when LAHD let it burn down. Not far away, these squatter-damaged (one demolished) houses only seem to be a concern to the neighbors who are forced to live with the noise, disruption, and fires.

Change and reinvention are inevitable in Hollywood, but must it catch on fire as often as it does?

(Image courtesy of Citizen)

Regular readers know about 1816 North Wilton Place, which was held empty for 17 years by LAHD before burning down in 2024.

Regular readers may also recall that the 1700 block of North Wilton Place saw two abandoned houses invaded by destructive and disruptive squatters. One of those houses had to be demolished due to damage from multiple fires.

But let’s venture outside of Hollywood and address another block of Wilton Place.

1504 South Wilton Place, which is in Arlington Heights and formerly housed the California Hope Presbyterian Church, burned down very late last night/very early this morning. The LAFD Alert mistakenly says it’s 1510, but Citizen videos match 1504, which is (or was) a multifamily Craftsman house on a corner lot, and ZIMAS lists an updated code enforcement issue of “BUILDING OR WALL THAT COULD FALL DOWN”, which seems to be standard practice after fire damage.

ZIMAS complaints from just last week also state “BUILDING OR WALL THAT COULD FALL DOWN” and ‘CONSTRUCTION DONE WITHOUT PERMITS OR INSPECTIONS”.

Dear reader, would any of you like to guess what I saw when I opened the tab for permit information?

You probably already know, don’t you?

The house was already marked with an X last summer. While I don’t inherently take issue with the affordable housing complex planned for the lot, I DO take issue with neglecting existing buildings, holding needed housing empty, and the prevalence of fires in those buildings.

This house could have been moved. Somebody in Altadena would probably have been thrilled and grateful to be its next steward.

Instead, it caught on fire, waking up the neighbors, putting other homes at risk, and releasing even more smoke into LA’s already dirty air.

While I am not especially religious, there’s something blasphemous about a house of God (former or current) going up in flames. Funny how it’s been exactly one month since I last blogged about a fire at a different former church.

Well, at least the replacement complex will have parking.

1504 South Wilton Place, Arlington Heights.

When I began digging into the February 3 fire reported at 1294 S. Windsor Avenue, I hit a wall - 1294 S. Windsor doesn’t exist. This happens fairly often.

Look, I get it. LAFD has their hands full responding to emergencies 24/7, and the occasional inaccurate address is going to be reported. Similarly, Citizen and other reporting apps don’t always get the address right (in all fairness, if you’re reporting a fire from half a block away, the app might pull up the address where you’re standing instead of the correct one).

From publicly posted videos of the fire, I was able to identify the collision center in the foreground and match the burning building to 4357 Victoria Park Drive, which stands just behind the body shop.

While the address is on Victoria Park Drive, the building is on a corner lot and its longest side fronts Windsor Boulevard, so the address inaccuracy is hardly surprising.

4357 Victoria Park Drive is not unknown to me. The 1923 fourplex went on the abate list in 2021, although I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been boarded up. ZIMAS complaints date back as far as 2012.

This isn’t even the first fire on the property - in 2022, a permit was issued to demolish a fire-damaged detached garage.

Regardless, what a sad waste of four apartments. I’d love to restore a building like this if I had the money.

4357 Victoria Park Drive, Victoria Park.

If you have watched the news at all in the past day or two, you probably saw that Abundant Blessings head honcho Alexander Soofer was arrested.

Soofer, who is facing multiple felony charges, stands accused of misappropriating $23 MILLION meant to house and feed over 600 homeless people. Instead, the indictment states that he was spending it on living like a prince.

Back in October, I had so many infuriating stories come to my attention within days of each other that I ran a roundup post. Scroll to the second story and you’ll see that 1135 South Ardmore, formerly a house, was replaced with two monster-sized “duplexes” (with 23 bedrooms and 22 bathrooms) and that despite the May 2023 issuance of Certificates of Occupancy, the “duplexes” were both still empty when they were listed in October 2025.

As of this writing, the property is still listed on Loopnet and the listing brags “Ideal for Transitional, Non-Profit, Rehab, or Supportive Housing.”

Guess who owns the property?

SOOFER DOES!

Here’s a damning excerpt from the criminal complaint linked above:

18.  By way of example, according to bank documents and
LAHSA records:

          a.   More than $540,000 in checks were issued from the
Abundant Blessings bank accounts to “Ardmore Avenue Rentals,”
and these checks were deposited into another account that SOOFER
controlled (SOOFER listed this name as a DBA on the account).
These payments were submitted to LAHSA for reimbursement for
housing SOOFER was supposedly providing to participants at 1135
S. Ardmore Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90006 (the “Ardmore
Avenue property”).

          b.   But according to LAHSA, SOOFER never disclosed he
owned the Ardmore Avenue property and was paying himself rent.
If he had, it would have triggered additional scrutiny of the
lease agreement to ensure the monthly rent represented a market
rate for the property.

          c.   Instead, SOOFER provided LAHSA with a misleading
lease agreement making it appear that the Ardmore Avenue
property was owned by a third-party company named “Ardmore
Avenue Rentals,” owned and managed by a different person.

Do I even need to point out that people who care more about money than ethics can NEVER, EVER be counted on to do the right thing?

1135 South Ardmore Avenue, Harvard Heights.

I’ve lost track of how many of LA’s empty buildings have - intentionally or unintentionally - been damaged by or lost to fires. This blog is rife with far too many similar stories.

The subject of today’s entry, like most others, had a long-running problem with squatters and other trespassers.

You - yes, YOU - have a right to be concerned about that chronically empty building in your neighborhood, especially if it’s not secured very well. When it catches fire, it could displace your household. When it attracts illegal dumping, it could make your sidewalk impossible to use. When it attracts destructive squatters, your kids might find needles or human waste scattered in front of your house or apartment building.

Just a few days ago, a boarded-up former church in North Hills had a fire. A reliable source with LAFD contacts tells me “it’s definitely arson”, and a body was discovered in the rubble. One neighbor may have seen the fire being set.

The deceased’s identity and cause of death are either not yet known or have not yet been released to the public.

The church sat next to a four-story apartment complex built in 2019. While the fire could have spread to that complex, only three of the 41 units are yellow-tagged (meaning temporarily unsafe). Six adults, 21 children, and six pet turtles were displaced.

While the temporary displacement of 27 neighbors isn’t what I would call a good thing, this fire could very well have permanently displaced everyone in the complex if it had spread. The two buildings are VERY close to each other.

The building formerly housed El Redil Centro Cristiano. I’m pretty sure setting an arson fire is a serious sin.

15226 Parthenia Street, North Hills.

I swear this motel is going to be the death of me.

El Nido, Hollywood Center Motel’s original house from 1905, burned down a week ago.

LAFD knocked down El Nido along with two other bungalows, but a few other bungalows were left standing.

Guess what? A trash fire was reported at the motel earlier.

It’s open season on older, neglected buildings in Hollywood, unfortunately. The motel is still under landmark consideration, but if this continues, there may be nothing left to landmark.

Never mind that fires pose a threat to neighboring buildings, too (coincidentally, the motel is VERY close to the former Hollywood Playhouse, which burned down in 2022). The neighbors don’t deserve this.

6614-6724 W. Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

A stately 1928 bank building (originally Security Trust and Saving Bank) stands at Pacific and 7th in San Pedro, not far from the elegant Warner Grand Theatre.

For some time, it was the Croatian Cultural Center. A 2017 plan to relocate the Croatian Consulate from West LA to San Pedro (home to some 30,000 Croatian Americans) collapsed.

The city-owned building, left empty and vulnerable, was broken into, vandalized, occupied by squatters, and stripped of copper wire and plumbing. Repair estimates have run into the low seven figures.

Tim McOsker, who represents San Pedro, has filed a motion for the city to sell the property. I understand his logic. The cultural center is closed, the consulate never came, and I doubt the city wants to spend money on repairs, let alone a restoration.

San Pedro is supposed to host a Croatia House during the 2028 Olympics. I wonder if organizers have a location lined up yet. Could the bank building be repaired in time? Could the Cultural Center make a comeback after that?

Third spaces, community hubs, and cultural programming are important (trust me on this, the heart of my people’s neighborhood was bulldozed for a freeway). We need more of them, and we need to crack down on the thugs who selfishly render vacant buildings unusable.

643 South Pacific Avenue, San Pedro.

The Hollywood Center Motel - consisting of a 1905-ish house surrounded by bungalows built a few decades later - caught on fire early this morning.

The motel, which was originally housing, was recently nominated for landmark status. Victorian houses are very, very rare in Hollywood.

LAFD reports that it was a knockdown fire. Citizen reports it was a two-story structure, and a few of the posted videos show fire damage to the original house, El Nido.

The following pictures appear courtesy of Father Dylan:

If you’d like to see more of the damage, my friends at Esotouric have been actively posting photos and videos on their Instagram.

PLEASE STAY OFF THE PROPERTY. IT IS NOT SAFE.

And if you’re curious about the property’s 120-year history, Hollywood Heritage is having a FREE virtual program on Wednesday at 7pm (it was scheduled some time ago and is proceeding as planned).

The motel had a known issue with squatters (a vacate order was posted last month). At least two people were trapped inside the burning house, and one of them had to be taken to a hospital in unknown condition.

I was afraid of this. I’ve mentioned previously that we have a demolition-by-neglect problem in Los Angeles, and the motel has had previous fires. Now LAFD’s arson unit is investigating.

I also mentioned in an earlier post that the owner of the motel had previously applied for demolition permits, despite not having a replacement project lined up for the site.

Because of this fire, they may not need one.

6614-6724 W. Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

I received a text from Father Dylan on Thursday night, alerting me to a fire at a boarded-up house in Westlake (edited to add: I’m told it may have been another type of incident, but firefighters were on the scene). Whenever I receive a tip about anything in Westlake, I know it’s going to break my heart.

I checked LAFD’s Alerts page for more information, but curiously, I found nothing. As of this writing, there still isn’t an alert on the page for this particular fire.

Since there are four videos on Citizen, something must have happened. Why wasn’t it listed on the alerts page?

I have yet to find anything in local news outlets regarding Thursday’s incident, but that doesn’t surprise me. Westlake, formerly one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods, tends to get ignored by the media (unless there’s a sensational story) and tends to get ignored by the city (except for when politicians want to pay lip service to the idea of cleaning it up).

1521 W. 8th St., Westlake.