After dumping $36.5 million into a homeless housing development, LA may have to abandon the structures
Félicien Rops: The Abandoned House, 1800s. Image in Public Domain.
Six old supportive housing buildings can’t seem to find a home after both Los Angeles and the buyer walked away from a deal last month. The nonprofit set to take on the properties didn’t have a plan for addressing social services and code violations, said the city. The nonprofit for its part balked at millions of dollars in repairs, and major operating losses. Liam Dillon writes via California Political Review.
An agreement for the world’s largest AIDS charity to buy a half-dozen troubled homeless housing developments in Skid Row collapsed Thursday, throwing into disarray the future of the properties and the city’s rescue efforts for one of its largest supportive housing portfolios.
The unraveling of the sale adds another obstacle to efforts to salvage the trust properties, and potentially puts the city on the hook to increase the funding it has already authorized to rehabilitate and operate the buildings over the last year.
“The alternative is the properties having no owners, being abandoned and all of the residents being displaced,” Wyche wrote in an April 17 email obtained by The Times. Wyche was corresponding with Annette Harings, an attorney who has represented foundation tenants in more than half a dozen lawsuits against the nonprofit since 2019.
Receivership Specialists said in court filings last week that if the sale to the foundation was not approved by May 10, the receivership’s bank accounts would be empty by the end of the month.
After Skid Row Housing Trust financially collapsed in February 2023 and largely abandoned its 29 buildings and 1,500 formerly homeless tenants, the city pushed its portfolio into a receivership in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Since then, 11 of the trust’s newer and better maintained properties have been transferred to established nonprofit homeless housing providers.
That’s left 18 buildings without new owners. Receivership Specialists has put the properties, many of which are older single-room occupancy hotels without private bathroom facilities, up for sale on the condition that they remain housing for formerly homeless residents.
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