The Brief

After languishing for decades due to a contentious freeway project that never got built, empty homes in El Sereno that were once slated for demolition are now being prepared for new owners.

Leaders of San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity announced plans Friday to purchase and rehab some of the vacant properties currently owned by Caltrans. The state’s transportation department originally bought the homes to clear a path for a connection between the 710 and 210 freeways.

With those construction plans now officially dead, Caltrans has started putting the homes up for sale in batches. SGV Habitat officials say they’re closing on deals to buy 16 of the vacant properties. They plan to fix them up and sell them to low-income, first-time homebuyers.

“The oldest house that we're looking to purchase was actually acquired by Caltrans in 1961,” Bryan Wong, CEO of SGV Habitat, told LAist. “We're excited to jump in and get these things ready to go.”

The history behind El Sereno’s many vacant homes 

Aerial view over time of the neighborhoods where the 710 extension was planned. Other properties were bought by the state along the route, but not demolished.

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Courtesy City of Pasadena/UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

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Caltrans bought hundreds of homes in the 1950s and 1960s in preparation for the 710 connection project. Originally a surface-level freeway that would have run through El Sereno and South Pasadena, the plans later morphed into an eight-lane underground tunnel.

After much resistance from surrounding communities, the $6 billion plan was officially killed when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law ending the project in 2019. That decision left these El Sereno properties with an uncertain fate.

A no-trespassing sign reading “state property” is taped to a boarded-up window in a home owned by Caltrans in El Sereno.

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David Wagner

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LAist

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Caltrans has rented out some of the properties to tenants. But many of the homes have remained empty and boarded up, becoming dilapidated eyesores. In 2021, state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo ushered a bill through the legislature to put the properties up for sale at their original acquisition price, as long as housing organizations agreed to use them as affordable rentals or sell them as affordable single-family homes.

Caltrans spokesperson Lauren Wonder said the department recently awarded 37 of the properties to housing organizations through a formal bidding process.

“No homeowners have lived in these homes since the ‘60s, ‘70s, or ‘80s, depending on when they were acquired,” Wonder told LAist via email.

Who will be eligible to buy the homes?

This map, which is oriented North to South from left to right, shows the location of many of the properties bought to make way for the 710 expansion. SGV Habitat is working to acquire 36 of them. Credit: Courtesy City of L.A.

Wong said Habitat plans to remodel some of the homes, but others with extensive damage will need to be torn down. Some of the properties are completely vacant, requiring brand new construction. Wong said SGV Habitat plans to split some of the lots and build a total of 24 homes of varying sizes, some for individuals and some for larger families.

Once that work is finished, these homes will be occupied by actual homeowners for the first time in decades. The sales will be limited to first-time homeowner households earning up to 80% of the area median income. That’s $110,950 for a family of four in L.A. County, or $77,700 for a single-person household.

Wong said giving working families a chance to own a home in a neighborhood like El Sereno is crucial at a time when young adults — including his own two sons, now in their 20s — are fleeing California in search of affordable housing.

“The prospect of owning a house is just almost impossible, unless you have help from a relative,” Wong said. “When you lose that stability, you lose the fabric of communities.”

Families selected to own the homes will pay no more than 30% of their income on monthly mortgage payments, substantially bringing down the cost of ownership compared with L.A. County’s current median home price of $805,100.

The homes will also come with affordability agreements barring sales at market rates for the next 45 years, a move to prevent these new homeowners from making a windfall on a quick sale.

What about the Reclaimers? 

Wong said all of the homes Habitat is buying are currently vacant. But during the pandemic, other Caltrans-owned homes have been occupied by formerly unhoused Angelenos who say the region’s crushing rents and home prices have led them to “reclaim” the homes.

Sandra Saucedo moved into a vacant Caltrans-owned home early in the COVID-19 pandemic after living in her car for years. The single mom said she became unhoused after losing her job as a nurse. Moving here helped her reunite with her children, she said, after they had been living with in-laws.

Sandra Saucedo with Reclaiming Our Homes stands outside the El Sereno home where she has lived with her children since 2020.

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David Wagner

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LAist

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The Housing Authority of the City of L.A. gave Saucedo and other members of Reclaiming Our Homes two years to stay and look for permanent housing, but Saucedo said they were never able to help her find an affordable alternative in the area. She and other “reclaimers” are now fighting eviction cases in court.

When asked what she thinks about Caltrans selling some of its homes to various nonprofits, Saucedo said it feels like the Reclaimers are being cut out of the conversation.

“Habitat for Humanity is not really looking to house any of the Reclaimers,” Saucedo said. “Their affordable housing is not affordable for all of us.”

The Reclaimers had hoped to see Caltrans sell more of the homes to the El Sereno Community Land Trust with the goal of keeping them not just “affordable,” but “deeply affordable.” Caltrans sold one property to the land trust.

Stay tuned for home sales timeline

Wong said the Reclaimers are welcome to apply for the homes once they’re put up for sale, just like everyone else who meets the eligibility requirements. He said Habitat aims to sell at least half the properties to households already living or working in El Sereno.

Caltrans officials confirmed that two of the homes going to SGV Habitat have already closed escrow. Wong said there’s still work to do on transferring the titles of the properties. The timeline for when the properties will be put up for sale is still being worked out.

LACMA’s first Van Gogh isn’t a painting of blue flowers, golden wheat fields or aged faces. It’s of a parked stagecoach, and it’s considered a good example of what made the Dutch painter, and the Impressionist movement he was a part of, so revolutionary.

The painting is called “Tarascon Stagecoach.” It was painted in 1888 and was donated to LACMA earlier this year by the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation.

It’s LACMA’s first Van Gogh painting, and the encyclopedic museum will be showing it off starting Sunday in a show called “Collecting Impressionism at LACMA” that focuses on 100 works from LACMA’s collection. The works are arranged chronologically to show the evolving tastes that have shaped the museum's collection of Impressionist art.

The museum’s acquisition isn’t just a win for the museum. The museum-going public and the region’s teenage and college-age students also will benefit.

“I very much remember seeing Van Gogh in a rotunda space in the [Philadelphia Museum of Art] and finding it to be just so striking because of these luscious, bright colors,” said Summer Sloane-Britt, who saw her first Van Goh during a middle school visit to the museum.

Sloane-Britt now is a professor of art and art history at Occidental College.

“Visual analysis and seeing objects in person is always so core to historical learning and for studio artists as well,” Sloane-Britt said.

And seeing a Van Gogh in person, Sloane-Britt said, and saying you don’t like it is also OK because that signals the work has led you to identify and assert your own aesthetic tastes in art.

Van Gogh road trip in LA. Shotgun!

The LACMA exhibit presents a good opportunity to get on the road for a four-stop Van Gogh road trip without leaving L.A. County.

Van Gogh's "Irises"

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Courtesy Getty Museum

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You can start at LACMA and see “Tarascon Stagecoach,” benefiting from the context of seeing other impressionist works by Van Gogh’s contemporaries.

Hop over to the Hammer Museum in Westwood, where you’ll see “Hospital at Saint-Rémy,” one of three paintings by Van Gogh in the collection.

Then head west on Wilshire Boulevard to the Getty to see “Irises,” one of the paintings that’s made Van Gogh an art star.

"The Mulberry Tree," a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, on display at the Norton Simon Museum

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Courtesy Norton Simon Museum

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End your Van Gogh road trip by heading east to Pasadena to the Norton Simon Museum. The museum’s smaller, more intimate setting is a good place to see the museum’s six, yes six, Van Gogh paintings.

The exhibit also will feature the newly acquired work "The Artist’s Garden, Vétheuil" by Claude Monet.

The new year doesn’t just bring new gifts and new resolutions. It also brings new laws.

State and local lawmakers have a lot on tap for 2026 when it comes to housing laws that will affect Southern California renters and landlords.

From refrigerators to fire damage, from development streamlining to rent control caps, LAist has rounded up the legal changes coming next year that you need to know.

AB 628: No more ‘no fridge’ apartment listings

Starting Jan. 1, landlords must provide tenants with a working refrigerator and stove. Many landlords already offer these appliances, but the L.A. area stands out nationwide for having an unusually high proportion of fridge-less apartments.

Next year, L.A. newcomers will no longer be taking to social media to express incredulity at all the city’s bring-your-own-fridge apartments. If landlords fail to provide refrigerators or stoves in good working condition, apartments will be considered uninhabitable under the new law.

SB 610: Landlords must clean smoke damage

In the weeks and months after the January fires, many renters struggled to get their landlords to address toxic ash that blew into apartments and rental homes that remained standing. Some landlords said cleaning up the smoke damage was not their responsibility. Initial communication from local public officials was confusing on what tenants were supposed to do.

This new law, which partially was driven by LAist’s reporting, clarifies that in the wake of a natural disaster, “it shall be the duty of a landlord” to remove “hazards arising from the disaster, including, but not limited to, the presence of mold, smoke, smoke residue, smoke odor, ash, asbestos or water damage.”

SB 79: Upzoning LA neighborhoods near transit

L.A.’s City Council voted to oppose it. Mayor Karen Bass asked the governor to veto it. But California’s big new upzoning law passed anyway. Its changes are set to take effect July 1, 2026.

Under the law, new apartment buildings up to nine stories tall will be allowed next to rail stations, and buildings up to five stories tall will be allowed within a half-mile of rapid bus stops. This upzoning applies to neighborhoods within those transit zones, even if they’re currently zoned only for single-family homes.

Next comes the implementation. The law could give renters more options once new housing is constructed. But L.A. could choose to delay the law’s effects in some areas for years. Ahead of the law’s passage, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto sent legislators a letter opposing the bill, signaling what could turn into a legal showdown over the bill.

AB 246: Protecting Social Security recipients during government shutdowns

Tenants can face eviction three days after missing their rent. During this year’s federal government shutdown — the longest on record — that swift timeline was a cause for anxiety among tenants who count on federal benefits to cover their rent.

Though this year’s shutdown did not affect regular Social Security payments, this law will give Social Security recipients a defense in eviction court if they ever stop receiving benefits because of any future shutdowns. Under the law, renters will be required to repay their missed rent, or enter a repayment plan, within two weeks of their Social Security payments being restored.

Lower rent control caps in the city of LA

After years of debate, the L.A. City Council passed a new cap on annual rent hikes in the roughly three-quarters of city apartments covered by local rent control rules.

The City Council enacted a new 4% limit, replacing a 40-year-old formula that allowed increases as high as 10% in some units during periods of high inflation. Councilmembers also ended a 2% additional increase for landlords who cover tenants’ gas and electricity costs.

The city had a nearly four-year rent freeze in place during the COVID-19 pandemic that ended in February 2024. That means many L.A. tenants are scheduled to receive their next rent hike Feb. 1, 2026. They should be getting a 30-day notice soon. Each year’s limit is determined by recent inflation data. The current cap of 3% is set to last until June 30.