Hollywood Recording Studio Impacted by Nearby Homeless Encampment

A man stands in front of a homeless encampment, with the Hollywood sign in the background, in Los Angeles on Sept. 23, 2019. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Sunset Sound is one of Los Angeles’s premier recording studios. Perched along Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, the company has worked with some of the biggest names in entertainment, from Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin to The Rolling Stones and Prince. Singer Miley Cyrus even recorded her 2023 hit “Flowers” there—a song that recently garnered her the first two Grammy Awards of her career. However, despite the studio’s success, the recent uptick in homelessness may soon force the iconic recording studio to close its doors for good.

“We’ve been here 64 years. We’ve made some of the most iconic records that have been done in the industry here,” Paul Camarata, the studio’s president and second-generation owner, told ABC7. “And now we’ve got to deal with this homeless problem that is potentially putting us out of business.”

The studio has been contending with ever-expanding encampments located in the nearby area. Tents and trash can be found readily scattered across the sidewalk right outside the studio. Drug use is also prevalent, per NBCLA, and the studio has been set on fire two times in the past year.

Mr. Camarata said the fires resulted from homeless tents being allowed to lean up against the building. People inside the enclosures started the fires, which spread to the studio’s structure, with flames reaching as high as the roof.

More recently, the establishment was burglarized. Thieves managed to kick in a storage room door on Sunday, Feb. 11, breaking in and stealing the studio’s blank checks. Mr. Camarata told KTLA he had to close the studio’s checking accounts as a result.

“The police came, took a report, and took some fingerprints, but we both came to the conclusion that it was the homeless, because one, they defecated on a drum set right in the lower level,” he explained.

Homeless Encampments Run Rampant

Although homeless encampments have long been a fixture in Hollywood, Mr. Camarata said the issues he’s faced as a result have “grown in huge dimensions” in the last four months. “We’ve always had the problem, but it’s just extremely bad right now,” he told KTLA.

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The studio exec said he fears the encroaching encampments will cause his famous clientele to turn away, telling NBCLA that he’s “sure” the studio has lost business as a result of the nearby homeless populations.

He recalled a situation with Taylor Swift—who was recording at the studio sometime before the start of the pandemic. The pop star had walked across the street to 7-Eleven and “got accosted” by homeless people outside the building.

“[She] came back to my tenant and told him ‘I will never come back to Sunset Sound again,’” Mr. Camarata told ABC7. “This is really bad for business.” The studio owner also said he has previously received complaints about the situation from singer Elton John.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez represents the Los Angeles City Council’s 13th District, which includes Hollywood and East Hollywood, among other neighborhoods. A spokesman for the councilmember told NBCLA that there are about 3,000 homeless people currently residing in the district alone. However, there are only 400 shelter beds available to house them.

Sunset Sound is now taking additional measures to prevent future break-ins, including sealing a door shut and installing razor wire around the premises.

California Homelessness on the Rise

With the number of homeless people living in California ballooning upwards of 172,000, the state has the largest homeless population of any other in the nation, according to a 2023 study from the University of California San Francisco.

Much like San Francisco and Oakland, Los Angeles has seen a steady increase of homeless people trickling into the streets. Neighborhoods like Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row have increased by an average of 18 percent, per findings released in January 2023 by the RAND Corp, with Skid Row having one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in all of Los Angeles County.

According to a 2023 homeless count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, over 75,500 people were experiencing homelessness in the county, with more than 46,200 of them residing in the city of Los Angeles alone—a ten percent increase from the previous year.

In Hollywood, locals continue to speak out about the issues being faced. “There’s needles on the ground, also there’s a lot of broken glass. You’re getting catcalled,” one resident, Jeannie Vasquez, told ABC7 in July 2023.

“[S]ometimes you see people naked running around,” she continued. “It looks like a junkyard on our block, and it’s just not safe.”

According to CNN, from 2018 to 2022, California spent $17.5 billion in its attempts to combat homelessness, with a total of $20.6 billion being allocated through this year. In a 2023 statement, California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state’s homelessness crisis “has been decades in the making” and that the state was “challenging the status quo with new, innovative solutions to get Californians off the streets and into housing.”

According to nonpartisan news organization CalMatters, his efforts have proven to be largely unsuccessful, as California’s homeless population increased by nearly a third during the same period.