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DTLA landlords promote their apartments to wildfire refugees

Owners of 500 available units in Historic Core “extend a hand” with short-term leases

A photo illustration of Fifteen Group co-founder Mark Sanders, Historic Core Business Improvement District executive director Blair Besten and ICO Group's Laurie Miskuski along with screenshots from the Historic Core Business Improvement District's Instagram (Getty, HCBID, Fifteen Group, LinkedIn, Instagram)
A photo illustration of Fifteen Group co-founder Mark Sanders, Historic Core Business Improvement District executive director Blair Besten and ICO Group's Laurie Miskuski along with screenshots from the Historic Core Business Improvement District's Instagram (Getty, HCBID, Fifteen Group, LinkedIn, Instagram)

Landlords in Downtown Los Angeles are reaching out to embattled refugees of this month’s firestorms.

The Historic Core Business Improvement District has launched a social media campaign to draw victims from the thousands of homes burned from Altadena to Pacific Palisades to the century-old apartment buildings in Downtown, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Downtown may lie outside the comfort zone of most of the displaced residents, according to Blair Besten, executive director of the district. But it has available housing and tempting prices.

The Historic Core program has about 500 units available at an average of $2,046 per month, Besten said.

To increase the appeal to fire refugees, landlords are offering leases as short as three months, and will arrange to rent furniture for the new tenants.

Apartments are available at ICO Group’s Mercantile Lofts, which opened as a department store in 1907 and was converted into apartments more than a decade ago. ICO also owns the Broadway Lofts, a 1907 Renaissance Revival-style building.

The fires that turned people out of their homes have been “an incredibly traumatic event,” Laurie Miskuski of ICO told the Times.

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“We’re trying to extend a hand and say, ‘Hey, we may not be the neighborhood you’re used to, but we are a vibrant neighborhood with many things to offer where more people are welcome.’”

Most of the units included in the business improvement district’s outreach program are in five historic buildings that have had problems as a new owner took on deferred maintenance and booted tenants who weren’t paying their rent.

Mark Sanders, co-founder of landlord Fifteen Group, hopes ample vacancy at his buildings that include the Marley Lofts and the Thurman Lofts could be a selling point to people displaced by the fire who might want to live close to family members, friends or members of their church or synagogue.

“Now they have a chance to kind of stay together by renting in the same building,” Sanders told the Times.

The business improvement district is looking to add other landlords to the appeal program, which Besten hopes will also improve the public image of the Historic Core. 

The district’s advertising campaign on Instagram focuses on the availability of short-term leases and the chance to live in historic buildings in a Downtown neighborhood with shops, restaurants, offices and entertainment just down the street.

Dana Bartholomew

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