Almost 100 firefighters worked for at least two hours from 11 a.m. to control the fire at the downtown Los Angeles hotel best known for being on the cover of the legendary rock album.
Investigators are still looking into whether the squatters may have caused the blaze, according to Fox 11
But the homeless people squatting there have been a constant problem for its current owners, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit that bought the building in 2022 for almost $12 million to transform it into affordable housing.
The building was previously used as low-income housing until it was vacated in 2008, and had not had any official residents for almost 10 years. A previous plan to turn it into a luxury hotel was nixed when a developer defaulted on a loan, the LA Times said.
The blaze destroyed the roof of the building now red-tagged as being unlivable.
