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A six-bedroom, 9,707-square-foot mansion worth an estimated $6.53 million in a ritzy Hollywood Hills neighborhood has been turned into one of the biggest messes you ever saw, thanks to a mob of squatters who have plastered the once-beautiful home with graffiti and are even getting violent with the neighbors.
From the New York Post: Squatters have taken over an abandoned Los Angeles mansion belonging to the son of the Philadelphia Phillies owner while neighbors view the high-end property as an eyesore and are scared for their safety.
The home located at 7571 Mulholland Drive in the posh Hollywood Hills has been left vacant for over a decade, a few years after John Powers Middleton — the only son of businessman John S. Middleton — purchased the property, according to ABC 6.
Squatters and taggers began breaking onto the empty premises over two years as taggers began leaving blasting their artwork all over the house.
The vibrant colored graffiti features a deviously grinning heart character “standing” the entire height of the home surrounded by “tags” — or artists’ names and initials— all sprayed on in different fonts and colors.
The owner, who purchased the property in 2012, has reportedly failed to pay property taxes on the mansion for years, and ignored the city’s request to build a fence around the property, so the city built the fence. But the fence doesn’t appear to have stopped the squatters anyway.
In addition to plastering graffiti over the entire mansion, the squatters have broken most of the windows.
A local resident, Mateo Herrerros, told NBC Los Angeles that the squatters have also started spraying graffiti on other nearby properties, and said, “I could care less about this house. It’s an abandoned house. The owner doesn’t care about it. I don’t really care about it. It’s just the element it brings.”
One neighbor who spoke with ABC 6 said, “Every time we call, the police will come and they’ll clear it out, and then within an hour or two, five more people are there and staying the night.”
The neighbor said one squatter had even attacked another neighbor with a “steel rebar and beer bottle.”
According to a Zillow listing, the mansion was built in 2003. The property taxes on the place are estimated to be about $65,000 per year. The listing includes stunning photos of the mansion, revealing what it once looked like before it was abandoned and trashed by squatters.
Now, it looks like this:
Squatters have taken over a nearly 10,000 square foot, $6.5 million mansion in Hollywood Hills in CA.
According to locals, the squatters are attacking locals and are spreading their “artwork” to other properties now that the mansion is completely covered.
The home belongs to… pic.twitter.com/IT6J5fYyrD
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 21, 2024
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