Daviel McKinley and his neighbors say their South Los Angeles building has been without hot water for months.
There’s mold in the bathroom and bedroom, rats roam free in the shared kitchen, droppings are strewn everywhere, and cockroaches have taken up residence in holes in the kitchen table.
Most residents of the 30-plus units at 5700 S. Hoover St. use shared facilities. There are only two shared bathrooms for residents, one of which doesn’t have a working light, and only two shared showers.
A few months ago, as the situation worsened, McKinley began searching the internet. She contacted city officials to file a complaint and ask for advice.
She looked up the building’s address and was surprised to learn that this was not the first time its residents had faced slum-like conditions.
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1. Peeling drywall in the bathroom. 2. Holes in the kitchen cabinets. 3. A clogged sink in the shared bathroom. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Ten years ago, the city evicted tenants after receiving similar complaints that the building had become filthy and dangerous, and residents said at the time that officials should have acted sooner to remove them.
Now residents say it’s happening again.
“I don’t know who to turn to for help,” McKinley said. “I’ve called the health department, I’ve called the mayor’s office. … Surely there must be someone out there who knows this building should never have been reopened. Why was it reopened and people allowed to live here?”
City officials said they are aware of the situation and are working to find a solution with property owner 5700 Hoover Partners, an affiliate of Soul Housing, which provides temporary housing to homeless residents in Los Angeles County.
Eric Shames, chief operating officer for Soul Housing, said his company bought the property from the previous owner during bankruptcy proceedings and is working to relocate the residents, not knowing that dozens of people were living there. He said he knows the building is in poor condition. Hot water has been coming intermittently for the past few months and has only been coming since plumbers made repairs last week.
“We had a few breakdowns, so we called the plumber back,” he said. (Residents said Monday they still didn’t have hot water.)
City Council Member Karen Price said in a statement that the council has reported numerous violations to the Los Angeles Housing Department and the Department of Building Safety.
“My office has urged the property owner to immediately remedy this situation and pay the relocation costs imposed by the Housing Authority, and has made it abundantly clear that if the owner fails to meet these obligations, the City will have no choice but to take appropriate action, which may result in foreclosure on the property,” Price said in a statement.
After initially responding to The Times’ questions about the property and its condition, Price’s office released a statement Friday saying it had reached a settlement with the property owner to pay about $500,000 in relocation costs so tenants could leave the building permanently.
Housing authority spokeswoman Sharon Sandow said the authority has no record of consultations or complaints about a lack of hot water at the property.
Daviel McKinley and Charlotte Arnold, left, are among the residents using buckets and pots to boil and store water on their kitchen stoves.
(Myung J. Chung/Los Angeles Times)
Sandor said the Department of Construction and Safety could answer The Times’ questions about other issues, but the agency did not respond.
“LAHD last communicated with the owner in February 2024 and advised the owner of basic information regarding relocation assistance that may be available to tenants,” Sandow said in a statement.
The dark brown building, resembling an old office block with a small central courtyard, was once a hospital, then converted into offices and finally housing.
In October 2013, city officials declared the building “substandard” and said it was being illegally occupied. They ordered the owners to stop using it for residential purposes, according to the Times. But it wasn’t until March of the following year that the fire marshal ordered the building evicted. City officials at the time said the delay was due to due process, the Times reported.
According to online building and safety records, the building was issued with an occupancy permit in 2015, changing the use from offices to “charity” and allowing for up to 17 bedrooms.
In July 2018, city inspectors again declared the building noncompliant “because it was being used illegally as a residential building,” according to records. Soon after, it was found to be in compliance. In 2021 and 2022, the city received six complaints that the building had again been converted to an unauthorised use.
Then in March, inspectors again found the building “substandard,” this time for unsafe plumbing and “no hot or cold running water,” records state. Inspectors also found missing or non-working carbon monoxide alarms, unauthorized construction, and “unauthorized occupancy” because the building had 33 bedrooms instead of 17.
Daviel McKinley, who has lived at 5700 S. Hoover St. for three years, points to a climate control unit he says isn’t working.
(Myung J. Chung/Los Angeles Times)
Residents say the building has been deteriorating for some time and has gotten worse in recent months. Online property records show the building was purchased by Meghna Real Estate Investments in 2019 and sold to 5700 Hoover Partners in November.
Shames said the company bought the building believing there were nine squatters living in it.
“When we got there there were over 50 people there,” he said. “As a housing provider, the last thing we want is to evict them.”
Once the building is renovated, it will be used to house patients who have been discharged from the hospital but have nowhere else to go.
“From the beginning, it was our intention to do a major renovation,” he said.
He said the company learned last week that the Housing Authority had decided it should pay relocation costs for 41 people — about $13,000 for individuals and $25,000 for families — and that the company agreed within hours.
“To this day, we don’t have any paperwork that says we have a right to live there, but we take the Housing Authority at their word,” he said. “Our goal and mission has always been to provide housing for people who need it.”
Some of the residents told The Times they’ve lived in the building for years, and some shared photos of the building from years ago, as well as documents such as 2019 leases and pandemic rent relief applications.
On a recent afternoon, Tarzia Easterly, 54, who shares a room with her daughter and 4-year-old grandson, was heating water for her son’s bath. A former school lunch worker who can no longer work because of epilepsy, Easterly said the shared kitchen was so unsanitary that she set up a makeshift kitchen outside her room with a portable electric stove on a plastic table.
She said the building is not a place for anyone to live, let alone children, but several other children live there, in addition to her grandchildren.
McKinley, who works as a security guard, said she moved into the building in 2021 in search of a roof over her head. She had been fleeing domestic violence and had become homeless. She was paying $650 a month for a room. Since then, she has watched in despair as her situation has worsened.
McKinley said residents haven’t paid rent since the new owners arrived, and haven’t been asked to. Previously, they paid anywhere from a few hundred dollars to nearly $1,000 a month, depending on amenities, including a handful of rooms with bathrooms and some with showers.
McKinley said Monday he hasn’t heard anything from city officials about the $500,000 settlement with the owner, and he questioned whether the amount was enough.
“How can I leave my house and start over to rent an apartment here at the cost of living in Los Angeles?” she said. “And I’m not going to be able to live in a nice place.”