Boarded Up in Los Feliz...But Not Empty Yet
If you don’t want to live next to urban blight and have a generous housing budget, the neighborhoods closest to Griffith Park are a good bet. Hollywoodland, Hollywood Dell, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Franklin Hills, and Atwater Village have relatively few abated or abandoned buildings.
However, some exist. This one is across the street from the Philosophical Research Society, if you can believe it.
A neighbor reached out about this 1960 dingbat apartment building, telling me the following:
I’ve watched this building slowly fall apart over the last few years. I think there’s structural issues that the city flagged and it seems to be fated for a demo by neglect situation. There’s been demo notices on the breeze blocks for at least a year. I wondered why there wasn’t any chainlink around it so I snooped around and it seems there’s still one tenant there. All the other units boarded up but very clearly people have come and gone— broken glass etc.
Well, not fencing off the building makes sense if there is still a tenant in place, but if glass is getting broken, that’s still a security concern and a potential squatter/fire risk. I hope the remaining tenant is safe.
The neighbor is correct: demolition permits have been pending since 2024 (none have been issued yet).
There are code complaints, too:
10/25/21 HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS
1/6/22 BUILDINGS IN GENERAL NEED OF REPAIR
9/11/25 ABANDONED OR VACANT BUILDING LEFT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
And as you might expect, all of them were referred to LAHD and closed. (Does LAHD even do anything around here?)
I couldn’t tell you what the owner’s long-term plan is (besides “tear it down”), since there doesn’t seem to be a replacement project planned for the site. I do know that this is a good location in a nice neighborhood, and it would not be difficult to flip the lot to a builder or investor.
Having said that…my friends at Esotouric discovered that LADBS’ building-permit feed stopped updating on the 18th, meaning permits might be issued with no public record until and unless the feed is fixed.
Transparency is the law. Being able to find out what’s going on is your right.
Still…who is going to compel LADBS to fix the feed? Who even has the authority to do that? Must Angelenos file a massive class-action suit to get any satisfaction when city departments don’t do their jobs?