Six Million Dollar Hollywood Home Has Become a Squatter and Graffiti Magnet

The property listing depicts a dream home: 

Secure and gorgeous compound offering maximum security. Located in one of the most celebrity-packed areas of the Hollywood Hills, this gorgeous estate is a short drive from both the SFR and the Westside. Large glass doors offering incredible natural lighting open up to a massive backyard space featuring an enormous pool overlooking east and south views of the Hollywood Hills. Elegant spiral staircase connects all 4 stories allowing easy flow from room to room. All bedrooms ensuite with private entrances. Expansive media room perfect for entertaining with 20ft ceilings includes a billiards area and full kitchen.  

Its “suggested price” to buy is over six million dollars – but right now, it’s worthless. Months ago, squatters descended on 7571 Mulholland in the Hollywood Hills and took over the abandoned mansion. The property had been abandoned and unoccupied for a few years. The owner is John Powers Middleton. Middleton is a film producer. One of his films is called “The Disaster Artist”. It’s a film about “The Room” – considered “The Citizen Kane of bad movies.” It seems if you produce something truly awful, it attracts cultists, miscreants and vagrants. Maybe Middleton is writing a script now about his vacant home becoming a beacon for the unwashed masses. His property has become home to swatters and is now an eyesore of epic proportions.   

The “dream home” is a nightmare. The almost 10,000 square foot, six-bedroom, ten-bathroom mansion has attracted violent squatters who have threatened neighbors with weapons. A few days ago, the word went out to “taggers” who descended on the property like a horde of locusts. The graffiti covers every wall. Graffiti goons turned the glass railings around the empty pool into their canvases.   

Middleton has made no effort to clean up the property. Although he is well known, no one seems to be able to track him down. If the structure is razed, the lot is likely worth a couple million, but right now it is a giant eyesore and a tagger’s delight.  

It seems only in “Hollywood” would one see a news report about this mansion with the reporter interviewing:

1. A former renter.
2. A neighbor (who said, “I love graffiti, I love art,just not on a house”).
3. A Hollywood composer named Magnus Fiennes who said: “It’s become a little bit larger than it should be.”
4. And one of the graffiti vandals who said: “it was dope.”

Hollywood tour buses were passing by as the reporter was interviewing people. The property might be marked on tour maps now as the “Graffiti Mansion.” 

The Los Angeles Building and Safety Department has something called the “Abandoned Building Unit.” It has removed squatters, but they come back within hours. The city has “taken over” the property, but taggers and squatters just hop over the fences and either take up residence, deface the property, or do both.  

I admit, I lost a bit of sympathy after watching the interviews of neighbors. Fiennes said that it was “a little bit larger than it should be” and the other guy saying he “loves graffiti.” Millionaires love the “commoners” and vandals as long as they stay “in their lane.” Just don’t get too large; “I love your art, but can you tag somewhere else?”