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Valley Glen burned home declared a nuisance
Neighbors in Valley Glen pushed the city to declare a burned-out, abandoned home on Bassett Avenue a public nuisance after spending two years living next to fires, squatters, and scrap metal scavengers.
LOS ANGELES - When an abandoned Studio City home made headlines during Mayor Karen Bass’ re-election campaign, the city stepped in with high-profile speed to secure and clean up the site. But for everyday Angelenos living next to blighted, dangerous properties, getting the city to act usually requires navigating a far slower, bureaucratic process.
In Valley Glen, neighbors along Basset Avenue spent two years living next to a vacant home that was ultimately destroyed by fire a year after it was abandoned.
"It brought every single homeless person around the area to get the metal," said neighbor Debbie Stopeck, describing the impact the neglected home had on the surrounding block. "It brought people in our neighborhood we don’t want."
Stopeck said her frustration peaked when she saw Mayor Bass use a similar Studio City nuisance property in August as a political backdrop to critique City Councilmember Nithya Raman.
Following the mayor's direct involvement, that Studio City property was cleaned up rapidly. Without executive intervention, standard cleanup efforts require local council members to guide properties through a structured enforcement protocol with the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS).
How the LADBS nuisance process works
To force action on a chronic nuisance property, the city follows a set administrative pipeline rather than an immediate cleanup order:
Local Escalation: Neighbors report the site to their local council office. In Valley Glen, Stopeck walked newly elected District 2 Councilmember Adrin Nazarian directly to the burned-out home on Basset Avenue to show him the hazard firsthand.
Nuisance Declaration: The councilmember presents the case to the Board of Building and Safety Commissioners. In October, LADBS officially declared the Basset Avenue home a public nuisance.
Owner Order & Timeline: Once declared a nuisance, the city issues a formal order to the property owner. The owner is given a strict deadline—typically 90 days—to complete the required demolition or remediation.
City Abatement & Property Liens: If the property owner fails to meet the deadline, the city intervenes to complete the work directly, passing the elevated costs onto the owner.
What they're saying:
"If the owner isn’t going to do it, then the city is going to do it—and it’s going to cost three or four times more than if the owner had done it," Nazarian explained. "Then we give them the bill after the work is completed. If they don’t pay the bill, then it goes as a lien on their property."
A growing watch list
Nazarian, who previously targeted the long-blighted Valley Plaza to signal to landowners that neglected sites would no longer be tolerated, acknowledges that the standard process moves slowly without mayoral intervention.
"We’re never going to have enough money to do all this," Nazarian said. "That’s why we need to be aggressive in first working with the owner so they can do it quickly themselves, and if not, take the next steps."
Councilmember Nazarian’s office has compiled a watch list of roughly 50 problem properties across District 2 currently undergoing or awaiting city action.
"When you’re working on an inventory list that’s ongoing," Nazarian added, "you don’t even know where the bottom is going to be of that list."
The Source: Information for this story came from interviews with neighbors and Councilmember Adrin Nazarian.