It’s an odd location for the City of Los Angeles to have spent nearly $50 million to purchase a brand new, five story luxury apartment building for the homeless. The neighborhood around 1654 West Florence Ave in South LA consists of empty, dilapidated storefronts and abandoned, crumbling apartments. The few local businesses consist of liquor stores, marijuana dispensaries, fast food franchises and auto body shops. The building itself is located less than half a mile from the liquor store where the Rodney King riots broke out in 1992. The boulevard never recovered. The area median income is 35% below the City as a whole. 

It was by far the highest sale price in the neighborhood’s history. The location and price are the first of many questions about the property.

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) purchased the building in March 2022. More than two years later not a single homeless person has  moved in. It is completely vacant.

The purchase was made possible through Project Homekey, part of the 2020 federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Los Angeles used Homekey funds to accelerate its purchase of existing properties to convert to homeless housing. According to analyses of publicly available documents, over the past four years HACLA spent more than $810 million to acquire approximately 2,750 apartments and motel and hotel rooms in 38 new and existing multifamily residential buildings. Assisted by three rounds of Project Homekey funding, HACLA’s goal was to get as many people housed as possible, in as short a period of time as possible. Funding also included money from Measure HHH and other sources. HACLA purchased the properties, while responsibility for filling them lies with the Los Angeles Housing Department.

An exclusive investigation by the Westside Current has uncovered more than 1,200 vacant City-owned high end apartments and motel and hotel rooms in two dozen Homekey buildings that are supposed to be providing interim or permanent supportive housing to homeless people in LA. At least five buildings have never been occupied. The properties range from low-end motels to luxury apartments HACLA acquired from for-profit developers, in many cases for record-breaking prices.

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