16 Years of Complaints and a House Fire

4867 Melrose Avenue was a 1913 Craftsman that did not deserve negligent owners.

The 4800 block of Melrose is in eastern, but not quite East, Hollywood, near the Templo Santa Muerte.

I wonder what Santa Muerte thinks of LA’s plague of empty-building fires spewing pollution into (mostly) lower-income neighborhoods when tens of thousands of Angelenos are priced out of even the cheapest, crappiest apartments.

Anyway, 4867 Melrose burned down on the 11th, and it was knockdown-level bad.

Nobody was hurt, and it was out quickly, but these fires should not be happening at all.

The Board of Building and Safety Commissioners may soon declare the property a public nuisance, which would ultimately result in completing its demolition.

So how did it come to this?

Code enforcement complaints on 4867 Melrose date back to 2008. That’s SIXTEEN YEARS of complaints.

The usual suspects are all here, plus a few unusual ones: illegal conversion to another use, construction without a permit, “miscellaneous”, trash/debris, danger of collapse, and TWENTY separate complaints (all but one of which is closed) about 4867 Melrose being abandoned and left open to the public. There are a whopping 33 complaints total. That’s a lot, especially for a property that was being used as recently as 2018.

4867 Melrose was the subject of a home-share ordinance violation bad enough to result in a citation (many complaints have no consequences). Yet, a 2018 complaint for “ANY ISSUES WITH HOTELS AND MOTELS” was blown off as “NO VIOLATION”. How does LADBS care to explain the citation if there was, in fact, no violation? I don’t believe this for a second.

The city could have taken firmer corrective action against the holding company that owns the house. But they didn’t. And even if the city does put a lien on the parcel, I doubt the owner of the holding company will ever pay a dime of what fighting the fire and cleaning up the property is costing taxpayers.

4867 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood.