The five-story building spray-painted with graffiti sits at the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Gault Street, a block south of Sherman Way in Van Nuys. Next door lies a vacant lot which, until a week-and-a-half ago, was the site of a trash-strewn homeless encampment.
For years, residents and nearby businesses have pleaded with Los Angeles city officials and other representatives to address what had become not only a visual blight but a public safety issue as well.
“It’s a complete eyesore and has graffiti all over it,” Kathleen Harden, a 34-year Van Nuys resident said of the abandoned building at 7101 Sepulveda Blvd. “This type of a situation would not be permitted in Encino, Woodland Hills, other parts of the Valley, let alone Los Angeles. Why it’s been permitted to exist in Van Nuys is typical of how we’re (treated like) second-class people here.”
Residents like Harden recently renewed their pleas for help after seeing how swiftly the city of Los Angeles stepped in and took action when an abandoned luxury high-rise development in downtown L.A. was tagged by graffiti artists, generating headlines worldwide.
On May 23, city workers, in coordination with the new property owner, cleared the homeless encampment in the empty lot at 7111 Sepulveda Blvd., adjacent to the heavily defaced vacant building. By the following Wednesday, much of the trash that had piled up had been rounded up in dumpsters or hauled away.
Nearby residents and businesses say they’re grateful for the cleanup. And with news that ownership of the vacant lot – which the L.A. City Council declared a public nuisance in 2020 – recently changed hands, some said they’re cautiously optimistic that things will start to look up.
Others, however, aren’t so sure the issues they’ve had with homelessness, drug use or other illicit activities are behind them. There have been encampment clearances in the past – only to be replaced by new ones, they said.
“I’m very skeptical of them not returning, if the past is any indication,” said Dean Hall, a neighborhood watch block captain who’s lived in the area for 11 years.
“There’s kind of an inside joke,” he said. “The homeless get cleared out. (The unhoused) refer to it as ‘homeless housekeeping.’”
Steve Park, owner of Costa Grande, a restaurant in a small shopping center on the same block as the vacant building and lot, uses a different phrase to describe past reappearances of homeless people after they’ve been told to move on.
“It’s just been a game of cat-and-mouse,” he said. “They get kicked out and come back. The cops kick them out (again). They come back.”
That has happened at least four times in the past three years, he said.
L.A. City Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who represents the area, said addressing this street corner has been a priority of hers since she took office nearly a year ago. Residents have had issues with both the vacant building and the adjacent empty lot for years so “residents have all the reason to be upset,” she said.
The previous owner of the vacant lot was hard to reach, but the new owner, who acquired the property about a month or two ago, has so far shown a willingness to work with the city to clean up the site, said Padilla, who declined to identify the new owner.
The owner also installed surveillance cameras to monitor the property.
“Given that there is a new owner … one thing they can count on is our office to continue to put pressure (so) that they keep it clean,” Padilla said.
She said the new owner hasn’t said what they plan to do with the property. “The first thing is they want to clean it and show (themselves) to be a good neighbor. That has been their communication with us,” she said.
When the homeless encampment was cleared a week-and-a-half ago, Padilla said members of her staff and a CIRCLE team, which is part of the city’s unarmed crisis response program, were out offering housing to people. Two accepted the offer but the rest did not, Padilla said. It’s unknown where those who did not accept housing went.
In the meantime, a chain link fence with a green privacy screen and “no trespassing” signs have been erected around the vacant lot, and surveillance cameras set up. But some residents and business owners question whether the site is truly secure.
And, they said, there’s still the abandoned building next door. They believe a homeless person started a fire that engulfed the building in flames in November 2019. Many say the building attracts squatters.
“For sale” signs — which residents say have been there awhile — are plastered on the building. Padilla said the new owner of the vacant lot has expressed interest in purchasing the property next door with the graffitied building, but that might hinge on if they can reach an agreement with the seller on the sale price.
However things shake out, residents and businesses are just hoping for improvements to the blighted, vandalized properties.
Employees of nearby businesses described incidents in which homeless people started fires, acted erratically or loitered in their parking lot, high on drugs.
“I have seen them out there with (baseball) bats,” said Caley Trujillo, manager at Healthy Herbal Care, located next door to the vacant lot. Customers and co-workers have complained about being harassed by people who used to live in the encampment, she said.
And about a month ago, homeless people destroyed the restroom at nearby WaBa Grill, vandalizing the restroom with graffiti and breaking the sink, said restaurant manager Juana Guillen. She gestured toward a window in the restaurant covered with graffiti that she believed was the work of residents in the encampment.
Guillen said she hopes the vacant lot won’t stay empty for long and that the new property owner will bring a new business to the neighborhood. She, like others interviewed for this story, said they don’t care what type of business or operation moves in, as long as it keeps an encampment from sprouting up again.
Time will tell whether the latest cleanup operation is a permanent fix – and whether the vacant building next to the still-empty lot will continue to attract unwanted activities.
For the time being, Guillen said she’s grateful the encampment was cleared.
“For now, we have peace,” she said.
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