For years, she raised alarms about her apartment. When the city finally acted, she ended up homeless.

Published Oct. 23, 2024 Updated Oct. 30, 2024 2:10 PM PT

As she stuffed her clothes and papers into a suitcase and prepared to walk out the door of 5700 S. Hoover St. for the last time, Daviell McKinley had no idea where she would live.

She’d been complaining about living conditions at the residential complex for years, writing increasingly desperate messages to city officials to try to get them to do something about the lack of hot water, the broken fire alarms, the electrical wires that hung from the ceiling, the pervasive mold and the overall neglect that made it feel as if the building was falling apart in front of her eyes.

For several years inspectors had been visiting the complex and ordering fixes. But those fixes didn’t get done, and there were few consequences for the owners. Instead, the building got worse while continuing to house dozens of vulnerable residents, including babies and children.

For McKinley, the situation had gotten so bad that she sent her children to live with her sister to keep them safe.

Then, in the summer, the city abruptly ordered the building vacated. The owner told residents they needed to leave by Aug. 19.

Now, that day had come and, like many of her neighbors, she didn’t have a home lined up. She got into an Uber and headed to a motel a couple of miles down the road. She was stunned that this was the final result of her efforts to get help. She was homeless — again.

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July 2024 photo of Daviell McKinley, left, and Charlotte Arnold, former tenants at 5700 S. Hoover Street.

McKinley, or “Angel” as her neighbors called her, had moved into 5700 S. Hoover in the summer of 2021, during a time when she was alternating between living in her car and staying in motel rooms with her three young children. A friend told her there were rooms renting for cheap in the complex and she rushed to get in.

Within days, it became glaringly clear why it was affordable. The roaches were the first clue. Then she noticed the walls speckled with mold. One day, she went to use the shower and found worms crawling out of the drain. Another time, she came across human feces in the hallway and no one would come to clean it, so she put on gloves, found disinfectant and did it herself.

After several months, McKinley called her sister and asked her to take the kids to live with her in Lancaster, afraid that if social workers found them in those conditions they would be taken away.

McKinley stayed behind, hoping to save enough money doing in-home supportive services for disabled people to eventually afford a place where they could live together again.

Inside the complex, she had dozens of neighbors — elderly men and women with disabilities and little income, a mother who shared a mattress on the floor with her two tween daughters, a grandmother squeezed into a room with her daughter and 4-year old grandson.

For each of them, as for McKinley, it was a Los Angeles home of last resort, where rent was in the hundreds rather than the thousands of dollars. They had no choice but to endure the conditions.

A person in an apartment hallway reaches up to a thermostat on a wall.

The squat concrete building with a small courtyard in front wasn’t built to house people. It opened its doors in the 1930s as South Hoover Hospital, a community hospital with a bustling maternity ward.

The hospital stopped operating at the end of the 20th century, and for a short time the building housed a hardware store, according to the local research site The South LA Recap. Over the years, the complex fell into disrepair until it was declared a nuisance in 2007.

About a decade ago, as the city’s housing crisis became more acute, rooms were rented out illegally to dozens of people who paid up to $600 a month until the city forced everyone to leave. Advocates condemned the city for not acting sooner to protect residents from unsafe conditions.

In 2015, the owner, 5700 Hoover LLC, was issued a certificate of occupancy that changed its use from offices to a “philanthropic institution,” allowing up to 17 bedrooms. The complex began filling with residents again.

That designation put the property under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, rather than the city’s Housing Department, which typically investigates complaints of code violations and unsafe conditions at multifamily rental properties in L.A., said Sharon Sandow, spokeswoman for the Housing Department.

Residents said they struggled to know whom to go to for help.

A wrought-iron gate stands open, with trash and disused objects lying around it.

Three years after the certificate of occupancy was issued, in June of 2018, one resident called the health department and raised alarms. When a city investigator arrived they found a property that looked “like a warehouse” with bedrooms that had no windows for ventilation and “one shared restroom for the whole facility.”

The complex was declared substandard. The owner was ordered to fix the violations, which included unpermitted electrical and plumbing work, within 90 days, according to city records. But one month later, the department determined the order had been “issued in error” because of the building’s designation as a philanthropic institution, which allowed for housing. The case was closed.

Gail Gaddi, spokeswoman for the Department of Building and Safety, said a new order was issued that still required the owner to fix the electrical and plumbing violations.

But problems persisted. Gaddi did not respond to follow-up questions about the department’s enforcement efforts.

The following year, the building was purchased by Megna Real Estate Investments Inc. for $1.9 million. That summer, a resident again tried to alert the city to dire and dangerous conditions.

“I have been here 3 months and the plumbing is in very poor condition,” the tenant said, according to Building and Safety records. “There has been feces backed up into the showers and hallways. Most recently the mold in the shower room and in my room was so bad I could not breathe. The handy man says the shower room is not an actual shower room and there is really not much they can do.”

There was only one shower for 60 people, the resident reported. The ceiling leaked whenever it rained and there had been an electrical fire due to faulty wiring, they stated.

“The carpet cleaning company came and they plugged in there shampooer and the machine caught fire,” the resident wrote. “The patio area walls are crumbling.”

A dirty toilet with a shallow wall to screen it on which a large proportion of the drywall is missing, revealing bare wood.

Inspectors arrived to find conditions similar to what they saw before. They ordered fixes — and the problems continued.

When McKinley moved in, in 2021, there was one communal shower room with two showers that frequently broke down, and some rooms still had no windows, she said. She was paying $650 a month.

In an email response to questions, Mahmud Ulkarim, president of Megna Real Estate Investments, said the building was old but that he kept it “clean and sanitary.”

“As long as I owned the building, I maintained the basic requirements,” he said.

The current owner, 5700 Hoover Partners LLC, purchased it in a bankruptcy sale in November 2023 with an acknowledgment that it was not up to standards and a promise to fix it. The company is affiliated with Soul Housing, which provides temporary housing for homeless residents in L.A. County.

Eric Schames, managing member of 5700 Hoover Partners, said in a bankruptcy court declaration that they were “prepared to act immediately to remediate the Properties to code.”

Three people in a small room with a TV and refrigerator.

Instead, residents said, things got worse. Earlier this year, the hot water stopped working and residents began heating water on the stove to bathe.

“We still don’t have hot water,” McKinley wrote to City Councilmember Curren Price’s office in March. “We still can’t shower.”

“I don’t understand this process,” she wrote, again, more than a week later. “We Have Babies In Here With No [hot] Water For Three Weeks. I Smell Gas This Morning. No Fire Alarms No Smoke detectors Just Unsafe.”

“I Have Notified Every Person I Can Think Of The Health Department. The City,” she added. “Don’t Know What Else To Do.”

That month, inspectors yet again found the building substandard. There was hazardous plumbing and a lack of “hot/cold running water,” missing or disabled carbon monoxide alarms, unpermitted work and “unapproved occupancy” since the building had 33 bedrooms, 16 more than was was permitted. After that, McKinley said, the living conditions continued to decline.

Schames disputes that the building got worse.

“We took it over in the condition it was in, and nothing changed,” he said, saying that people needed to move out before the building could be rehabilitated.

He added that he regretted buying the property.

“There were clear building and safety violations that came out the second we took over the property,” he said.

In late July, after The Times was alerted to the situation by McKinley and published a story about it, the Housing Department issued an order to vacate and ordered the owner to pay residents relocation fees.

Residents were relieved that they would be getting money to help move but said they needed time to figure out where to go. They lived on the margins with little credit or steady income and even thousands of dollars would not guarantee they could secure a new place in L.A. or at least keep one for long.

In mid-August, the owner told them that in order to get their relocation money, they had to sign an agreement releasing the company from legal claims and leave by Aug. 19. Residents were offered a two-week stay at a local motel but many had no idea what they would do after that.

“I didn’t have time to go look for a home,” said former resident Jasmine Phillips. “I had to hurry up and leave.”

When move-out day arrived, the company sent employees to guard the front of the building and ensure that anyone who left did not return. After residents emptied their rooms, the workers “boarded up the doors in front of our faces and then they gave us the check,” Phillips said.

McKinley packed her things and grabbed a water and food bowl for her dog D’bo.

When she was ready to go, she and a few neighbors walked together to a nearby check-cashing store and cashed their relocation checks. The owner had given McKinley and other tenants a little more than the $13,500 required by the city. Her payout was for $14,000 — minus $900 just to cash the check.

In the late afternoon, a friend called an Uber for McKinley that took her to an Extended Stay America. The motel that had been offered to residents did not allow pets, so she had made her own reservations.

Two women in an apartment. One sits cross-legged as the other stands.

She didn’t have a concrete plan. She knew she wanted to stay in L.A. and was hopeful that she might be able to get an apartment that would allow her to reunite with her kids, who had moved to Las Vegas with her sister.

For the next several weeks, McKinley stayed in motels. But unable to secure an apartment and with her money slipping away, she decided to buy a used car to live in. She found a Nissan Versa for $6,000. Repairs and registration ate up another couple of thousand dollars.

In the months since they were forced to leave, other former residents of 5700 S. Hoover have also become homeless. One former resident in his 50s, who asked not to be identified, has been living in his car a few blocks south of the complex. His son, who also lived in the complex, is living in his own car.

One elderly resident has remained at the property. That woman, who is in her 70s, has said she will not go until she knows she has another place to live. The owners have said they are going to start eviction proceedings against her, said Deborah Hoetger, an attorney with the nonprofit Inner City Law Center, which is representing her and 20 other former tenants.

A woman and small boy wave to each other at a school entrance.

This month, the city filed 11 misdemeanor charges against 5700 Hoover Partners LLC, accusing the owners of many of the things McKinley raised alarms about, including multiple counts of having electrical and wiring systems that did not comply with the fire code. The case is due in court in December. Schames said he did not know anything about the charges.

Hoetger said they come too late.

“The damage has been done,” she said. “Not only are some people homeless, but there were children being raised in this building with all kinds of dangerous habitability conditions.”

“This is a terrible situation. No one should be forced to live in uninhabitable, deplorable conditions,” said Sandow, the Housing Department spokeswoman. “At the same time, becoming homeless is not the answer, either. I feel terrible for the tenants who have endured this situation.”

In September, McKinley drove to Las Vegas to reunite with her kids. Her mother and sister both moved there in search of better housing options.

She’s trying to reconnect with her children — picking them up and dropping them off from school, doing homework with them at her sister’s house. She can’t stay with her sister or mother because their rent is paid with federal housing vouchers and the rules don’t allow additional roommates.

She has not told her kids that she is living in her car.

A woman with a dog. Food and water bowls sit on the pavement of a parking lot next to a car.

On a recent weeknight she parked outside her mom’s apartment. She had been staying a few blocks away, around the corner from a casino, but her mom wanted her nearby, believing it safer. McKinley says nobody will mess with her as long as she has D’bo, the pit bull, by her side.

She grabbed a pillow and blanket from the trunk and settled into the backseat for the night. D’bo curled up in the front.