Caltrans purchased L.A.-area homes to make way for now-defunct freeway project. Decades later, some could be for sale

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct the availability of the homes and how they were acquired.

In attempt to clear space for a planned expansion of the 710 Freeway, the California Department of Transportation took control of homes along a five-mile stretch in the 1960s, displacing hundreds of families along the way.

Now, six decades later, after the project never materialized, several of those homes could hit the public market for the first time.

As reported by KTLA’s Omar Lewis, Caltrans purchased 400 homes with the intention of demolishing them to make room for a 710 Freeway extension. That project never got off the ground and was formally canceled in 2018.

The homes, located in El Sereno, Pasadena and South Pasadena, remain standing today. Many of the purchased houses were in Black and low-income neighborhoods.

“These five historic homes have essentially been locked in time since the 1960s, sitting unoccupied,” Lewis said.

The homes include four single-family houses and one multi-family lot with bungalow.

All five of the properties are currently in escrow as of Friday, pending approval by the California Transportation Commission. The California Department of Transportation estimates that escrow could close by late summer.

The decision to sell comes as Caltrans was mandated by law to dispose of the homes.

Activists have pushed for the homes to be occupied by families for years. In 2020, several of the El Sereno homes were taken over by homeless families , before they were evicted by the California Highway Patrol.

There was no listing price for any of the homes as of Friday morning, though the market rate for similar housing in the area is upward of $2 million.

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