Police evict squatters in shuttered Channel 13 studios on La Brea

Los Angeles police have discovered that the shuttered Channel 13 studios on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood has become a haven for homeless squatters.

Officers found squalid conditions inside the landmark building, including discarded hypodermic needles, piles of trash, makeshift bedding in office cubicles and human filth on the floors and walls.

"I was disgusted. There was literally a hill of trash, 3 feet high and 20 feet wide in the middle of the main office," said Arthur Gallegos, the LAPD's senior lead officer for the area. "They had water and electricity. The offices were like hotel rooms, including a television and a clothing dresser. They put pornography up on the wall."

Police moved in and evicted more than a dozen squatters. But Peter Nichols, Founder of the Melrose Action Neighborhood Watch, said that it represents a larger problem for the area, especially in the deteriorating economy.

"Police have discovered encampments on roofs of businesses, in crawl spaces under homes, in the yards of foreclosed or unoccupied homes or apartments and behind garages on homeowners' properties," Nichols said. "It should be noted that in almost all these cases, it hasn't been people seeking shelter, it's people doing drugs, illegal sex acts or hiding stolen contraband."

The problem is exacerbated by the very nature of the Melrose Avenue-La Brea Avenue area, which like Venice or Hollywood Boulevard, attracts tens of thousands visitors and tourists annually, making it easy to blend into the environment and less likely to be spotted if you don't belong.

"Unless you're carrying a Playstation down the street," Nichols said, "People probably aren't going to ask questions."

Gallegos said that in many of his contacts with area homeless a high percentage have warrants or previous arrests. Several of the transients who had occupied the old KCOP building had previous arrest and prison records.

Gallegos said that police believe they have evicted all the squatters, and property managers have since pruned back trees, installed barbed wire on top of perimeter fencing, stepped up patrols by private security and painted over graffiti.

LAPD crime statistics through April show that violent crime in the Wilshire area, which includes Melrose Avenue, is down 7% and property crime is up by about the same percentage compared with the same period last year.

Police and residents say vacancies of residential and commercial properties as a result of the economic downturn is proving to be an increasingly tempting target for transients.

Transients already are drawn to the area by services that include free food, medical care and a needle exchange.

"There is no reason for them to leave," Gallegos said.

Don Winet, the owner of the Village Idiot Tavern on Melrose said he had a man homesteading on the roof of his business who had tapped into the electrical grid to power his toaster. But he also thinks that claims about transients and crime are overstated and that most of the homeless are simply down on their luck.

"I've been here 30 years and I haven't seen a change," Winet said, adding that fears have more to do with appearance than reality.

-- Andrew Blankstein

Comments

[Heinrich]

A partial solution to this problem is to cut off the utilities to an unused building. What with a/c, heating and TV I can see why it's a magnet for the homeless.

[Lee]

"I've been hear over thirty years"? Time to proofread instead of relying on your spell checker.

[Nick]

Interesting story; but make sure you fix the hear at the end to here.
----
Ed's note: Done. And thanks.

[Antoinette]

I don't get it. If they had water and electricity is sounds to me like the toilets should have worked. So why was there poop on the floor? I translated "filth" to "poop". That's what that meant right?

[Beamin1]

Maybe instead of using a bunch of cops to clean these places out constantly they could use 1 cop at the door and while the owners aren't using it homeless people could.

For the city the benefits are obvious, less crime elsewhere if homeless people know they have a safe place to stay, less police manpower chasing people down and clearing them out of other places etc etc the list is quite long potentially.

Also, before you start saying it won't work, consider that they were using it already,hence this story, they probably still are, and they almost certainly will again.

For the property owner, the city can let them not pay any taxes on the property until such a time as they take possession of the building again and if they are smart, they(building owners) put 1-2 people there as staff to organize the maintenance and care of the property by the people that stay there(homeless).

Shame I don't live there I'd work it out myself.

Barry

[CB]

Sounds like the property managers were asleep at the wheel. This situation did not happen overnight. A vacant property actually needs more frequent attention than an occupied one. And it definitely needs to be alarmed, monitored, and inspected on a weekly basis.

[Da Maverick]

So the inside of the KCOP building has finally lived up to the quality of their programming.

And the police take it out on the squatters? Where were the journo-police when Rick Garcia (now with KCAL) and Lauren Sanchez (now with KTTV) spewed nothing but rubbish over the public airways?

Let the squatters stay. They either do drugs around your corner, or away from your view in some abandoned building.

[THOMAS46]

A: who owns the old channel 13 bldg? Why aren't the owners doing something about it?

B: "I've been hear 30 years and I haven't seen a change," Winet said, adding that fears have more to do with appearance than reality.

hear? Your 6th grade teacher would be ashamed.

Love the new school "journalism"!

[pupupipi]

Sorry Heinrich, the weather in LA is very temperate. I could live year round in a tent with very little discomfort. Junkies, mentally ill and societal discards have to end up somewhere. Our solution is to pretend they don't exist; the "head in the sand" doctrine.

[Zack]

Wow, that last comment is pretty harsh. Instead of judging the homeless for being homeless, how about if the LAPD tries to convert some of these abandon buildings into legit halfway houses where the homeless can receive treatment via legal medicine. Wouldn't that create more city jobs?

I disagree that they do not need shelter. What good is pushing them further east going to do? If the LAPD really want to help they need to face the problem directly and ask themselves what causes the homeless cycle in LA? What can we really do to fix it?

[Rick]

Turning the utilities off will help but not end the problem. The homeless problem is very complex and not only the police will ever solve it. There were homeless in Hollywood even before the economy went sour. Like Venice, the Hollywood area attracts homeless and people down and out. We see them but, unless they are doing something crazy, the general public ignores them. It is sad that people are forced to break in closed buildings to have a roof over there head. The way the job market is and how high rent is, homelessness will only get worse.

[Jim P.]

If the place had been kept neat and reasonably cleran, I'd be tempted to say this sort of thing might work out as a shelter, provided the true owners were compensated for the loss of use.

But reading the conditions just solidifies my opinion that most squatters are just human trash with no sense of responsibility but one heck of a sense of entitlement, fueled by well-intentioned people who think that merely by breathing you are somehow entitled to use other people's possessions and property as you wish without having to do or pay anything in return.

When the well-intentioned have four or five people per room living in their house I might take them seriously but I note that almost all proposals to "help the homeless" involve taking things from other people often without compensation and all the celebrities who want society to "do something" also tend to live in gated properties with guards in huge houses that could easly shelter hundreds of homeless and spend enough on clothing and parties in one evening to feed a large family for many years.

When you wear a $30,000 dress for one evening to the Oscar's don't come and tell me how *I* should spend more ont he homeless. There are parts of the country where $30,000 will buy a basic but decent house.

When you have maxed out your living space by opening it up for the homeless *then* you can come tell me that I need to spend my money on them.

[Daniel]

The homeless outreach teams who work in this area have told us that of the transients they talk to, 85% refuse services, including shelter. The transients say that they would rather stay on the streets, where they can keep on taking drugs, drinking, prostituting, and/or stealing to get what they want. To say that this problem is just about getting more housing is missing the point - and is an obvious sign that the commenter does not live in this area, or a similar urban neighborhood. The people who live in this neighborhood just want our families to be safe. We are tired of people who live in gated communities lecturing us about how "we have to help the homeless." When you open a homeless shelter in your neighborhood, then I will believe you actually care about helping the homeless.

[Hipnick]

Zack, I'm right with you there-pupupipi is egregiously harsh. Perhaps that writer will enjoy it when a mentally ill loved one is banished to the concrete riverbed in LA, or merely to exile of another sort.

[Cat]

I know we have so many homeless people here in LA that the police are probably sick of dealing with them, but I was still surprised by the disdain everyone in this article seems to have for the way these people live. What about pity? If it's so shocking and horrible, then try to tap into a little human empathy and work on providing an alternative. There's no way putting people back on the streets can be construed as a permanent solution to this problem.

[JewelD]

You can't convince me that junkies and alcoholics want to stay that way their whole lives.

Where are the programs to help these people kick?

With all the money and creativity in this city, this should not be happening.

[JewelD]

PS - I am speaking from the experience of watching friends kick heroin, etc., and having a homeless, alcoholic uncle.

Helping the least of us helps ALL of us.