Historic Core Resident Documents Vacancies

If you read the Los Angeles Times, you may have noticed that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation took the city to task in a full-page ad again today (page 5, if you want to see it for yourself). This time, AHF called out LADWP (and City Hall) for keeping the Barclay’s 94 badly needed RSO units empty by failing to provide electricity. Gee, does this sound familiar?

The Barclay is in the Historic Core. When I received an email from a neighborhood resident concerned about chronic vacancies shortly after seeing the ad, it definitely had my attention.

Gabe lives in the Historic Core and sent me the following:

Over the past month, I documented many, if not most, of the vacant properties in the Historic Core of DTLA. Using GIS mapping and field verification, I measured 76 properties covering over 1 million square feet of building footprint—30.7% of the neighborhood. While nearly 4,000 people experience homelessness on Skid Row, nearly one-third of Downtown’s most historic blocks sit with vacant ground floors or are totally empty.

Here’s the map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/vacant-buildings-in-historic-core-of-dtla-oct-2025_1309847#16/34.0463/-118.2516

In response, I’m calling for a highly-targeted Historic Core Vacancy Fee.

The policy is straightforward: property owners with buildings sitting vacant for over a year pay an annual fee based on square footage. Totally abandoned buildings like the Broadway Trade Center would pay $25 per square foot of total building area. Properties with vacant ground floors would pay $12 per square foot—charged on the entire building footprint if any portion remains empty, creating urgency to fill every storefront. The fee escalates for chronic vacancy—doubling after three years, tripling after five.

This would generate approximately $40 million in Year 1, with all revenue dedicated by law to a Supportive Housing Acquisition Fund. That money would finance conversions of vacant buildings into affordable and supportive housing. And critically, property owners who refuse to pay for three consecutive years lose their buildings to forced sale, with affordable housing developers receiving preference at auction. This creates 1,700 to 2,700 units over five years—including direct conversion of chronically abandoned buildings like the Broadway Trade Center into supportive housing.

A vacancy fee is not without precedent, as you probably already know. Vancouver implemented an Empty Homes Tax in 2017 and reduced vacant properties by over a third in five years. Oakland passed a similar measure in 2018 with 70% voter approval. It’s generating millions for affordable housing and bringing vacant properties online. Both cities faced legal challenges. Both prevailed.

In a city like LA with vast urban sprawl, I believe we should ensure that the few dense and walkable areas are not wasted.

Thanks for sharing your work, Gabe - and your idea for a Historic Core Vacancy Fee could be a good test case for a citywide vacancy tax. I’ll be updating the ELA map.

Readers, what would you do to reduce vacancies in the Historic Core?

The Barclay, 103 4th Street, Historic Core.