HCM-317 — designated 1987-01-07
Young Apartments
1615-1631 South Grand Avenue and 303-311 West 17th Street
public open-data signals are too weak to classify; designation may be load-bearing via procedural friction, may be recognition only — rubric cannot tell without a demolition-pressure proxy
cannot classify — public open-data signals are too weak. would need a demolition-pressure proxy to resolve.
street view ↗ satellite ↗ (orchestrator-captured imagery is not building-aimed — use these for HITL verification)
Six-axis scores
- A. would-survive 5 probability the structure would survive market forces without HCM designation. low = needs protection.
- B. tourist currency 0 tourist and cultural currency — Wikipedia pageviews, walking-tour inclusion, public visitation evidence.
- C. subsidy efficiency 0 subsidy efficiency — Mills Act and federal HTC value vs preservation outcome. zero means no active subsidy.
- D. externality load 0 externality load — code complaints, CSR cases, 311 encampment/dumping/graffiti, vacancy duration.
- E. neighborhood health 4 neighborhood health — median household income, distress indicators, displacement risk.
- F. alternative-use value 3 alternative-use value — parcel acres, TOC tier, TPA eligibility, zoning capacity for higher use.
overall confidence: unknown
Site
- lat / lon
- 34.03529, -118.26703
- parcel acres
- 0.37786530049749395 (inferred)
- typology
- multifamily
- TPA / TOC
- yes — tier 3
- zoning capacity
- —
- nrhp listed
- no
- architect prominence
- —
Condition + subsidy
all "condition" fields below are proxies derived from LADBS permit history, 311 CSR cases, and code complaints. none of these directly measures occupancy. the vacancy line shows the proxy value and the specific rule that produced it; readers should treat "active" as "construction permits filed recently," not "people live or work here."
- vacancy proxy
- active
- vacancy proxy basis
- recent investment over 250k in 60mo
- last permit
- 2023
- permits last 24mo
- 0
- code complaints 24mo
- 0
- CSR open cases
- 0
- Mills Act contract
- no — not in la OHR appendix a (2019 list of Mills Act properties)
- federal HTC
- no
- Wikipedia pageviews 12mo
- —
- walking-tour inclusion
- no
- median hhi (tract)
- $37,647
- assessed value
- —
Street view vision classification
claude vision analyzed 4 Google street view captures (n/e/s/w from the parcel coordinates) for visible distress indicators. this is an automated screening — false positives and negatives both happen, and "well_maintained" only means the visible facade is intact; internal structural condition is not assessable from street view.
- building visible
- partial
- building type
- multifamily
- overall condition
- distressed
- type-1 indicators (industrial obsolescence)
- chain link perimeter
- type-2 indicators (residential distress)
- boarded windows
- other indicators
- graffiti
- notes
- Partial views of the Young Apartments show a large black-and-white mural on the exterior wall, a rusted roll-down door, boarded/barred windows, debris dumped in the alley, and a perimeter security fence indicating distressed conditions.
Contextual signals (GIS)
these are contextual proxies — signals derived from spatial context, not direct measurements of the property. they help infer hidden variables (contamination probability, structural risk) that public open-data does not measure directly. source: cal OEHHA CalEnviroScreen 4.0 (cumulative pollution burden by census tract).
- census tract
- 6037224010
- CalEnviroScreen overall percentile
- 97.0 (decile 10)
- cleanups percentile
- 47.6
- groundwater threats percentile
- 71.7
- hazardous waste percentile
- 87.5
- toxic release percentile
- 81.4
- lead exposure percentile
- 75.1
- EnviroStor cleanup sites nearby
- —
- in CGS liquefaction zone
- no
- type-1 contamination probability (fused)
- 0.79 — high (CalEnviroScreen tract burden + parcel-level EnviroStor proximity both signal contamination context)
- type-2 structural-risk probability
- 0.20 — low
Narrative
history
the young apartments (hcm-317) is a multifamily residential building in los angeles whose precise construction date, architect of record, and original ownership chain have not been recovered in available city or county records at the time of this analysis. the building's hcm designation indicates that the cultural heritage commission found sufficient architectural or historical merit to warrant listing, but the basis for that determination is not legible from current data feeds. no national register of historic places listing exists for this property, and architect prominence is unconfirmed. major events in the building's history — ownership transfers, significant renovations, displacement episodes, or fire/structural incidents — are similarly undocumented in the fetched dataset. this analytical gap is consequential: the narrative justification for hcm status cannot be independently verified or stress-tested without primary-source investigation (permit histories, herald-examiner morgue files, assessor chain-of-title records). all historical claims about this building should be treated as provisional until a field researcher closes the archival gap.
architectural significance
the architectural style of the young apartments cannot be characterized with confidence from available data. no architect of record is on file, no style classification appears in the fetched dataset, and no comparable extant examples in los angeles have been identified through automated sources. multifamily buildings designated as hcms in los angeles most commonly represent craftsman court apartments, spanish colonial revival courtyard complexes, or mid-century modern stacked flats — but assigning any of these typologies to hcm-317 without field documentation or permit-plan review would be speculative. distinctive features, if any, that motivated designation are unknown. architectural scoring and peer-building comparisons require a site visit and cross-reference against the original chc staff report.
neighborhood context
the tract surrounding the young apartments records a median household income of $37,647, placing it in the bottom quartile of los angeles tracts and well below the citywide median. a five-year population increase of 302 persons suggests the submarket is not in outright depopulation, but growth at this income level more frequently reflects household crowding or affordable-unit absorption than organic neighborhood investment. the 311 externality signal is effectively zero — no encampment, dumping, or graffiti calls are logged within 500 feet in the observation window — which is consistent with either a genuinely stable immediate block environment or a data-collection gap. transit proximity and toc/tpa tier are unconfirmed, limiting land-use redevelopment analysis. overall, the tract registers as a low-income, modestly growing district with material economic stress but no acute crisis markers in the available data. | metric | value | |---|---| | census tract | 06037224010 | | median hhi | 37647 | | 5yr δ population | 302 | | 311 within 500ft (24mo) | 0 | | encampment 311 calls | 0 | | ladbs code complaints (24mo) | — | | last permit year | — |
subsidy and condition
| field | value | |---|---| | mills act | — | | federal htc | — | | vacancy status | — |
classification reasoning
axis a (survival without protection) scores 5 at medium confidence. with no nrhp listing, no identified prominent architect, no evidence of owner investment, and no confirmed adaptive-reuse demand signal, the building does not present strong intrinsic market survival characteristics. a score of 5 reflects genuine ambiguity: the building is not demonstrably threatened by immediate redevelopment pressure (parcel size and zoning capacity are unknown), but it also lacks the self-sustaining cultural or economic attributes that would protect it absent designation. medium confidence is appropriate given the missing parcel and market-demand data. axis b (tourist/cultural currency) scores 0; no google reviews, wikipedia pageviews, walking tour inclusion, nps designation, or tripadvisor presence is recorded. this is the weakest-confidence axis (unknown), because absence of data is not the same as confirmed absence of visitors — but the null result across all five signals makes a materially nonzero score implausible without contradicting evidence. axis c (subsidy efficiency) scores 0 at unknown confidence: no mills act contract, no federal historic tax credit, and no vacancy or complaint data exist against which to measure subsidy performance. this axis cannot be meaningfully scored and should not be weighted in the final determination. axis d (externality load) scores 0 at medium confidence; the three 311 subcategories (encampments, dumping, graffiti) all return zero within the observation radius, and no code complaints or fire calls are on record. the medium-confidence rating reflects that zero counts may be accurate or may reflect incomplete 311 geocoding, but the preponderance of evidence does not support a high externality designation. axis e (neighborhood health) scores 4 at high confidence, driven by a median hhi of $37,647 and a population trajectory that is positive but not indicative of investment-grade gentrification. axis f (alternative use value) scores 0 at unknown confidence because parcel acreage, zoning capacity, and toc/tpa tier are all null — the redevelopment upside case cannot be constructed from available data. the candidate flag conditions require a ≤ 4, b ≤ 3, c ≥ 6 or d ≥ 6, e ≤ 5, and f ≥ 6, at minimum medium confidence across gating axes. this building fails the f ≥ 6 threshold and fails the c/d gate (both score 0), and overall confidence is rated unknown due to pervasive data gaps. the flag therefore resolves to reassess rather than candidate.
sources
- la311: https://data.lacity.org/resource/h65r-yf5i.json?$where=within_circle(location%2c%2034.035285664504315%2c%20-118.26702819035334%2c%20152)%20and%20createddate%20%3e%20'2024-05-11'&$limit=1000 --- _generated by hcm-1200 orchestrator on 2026-05-11t00:25:21.900z._