A doctor in the south-central region of Los Angeles County is calling it quits after years of battling denizens of a rooftop homeless encampment that have continuously terrorized her and her employees, costing the general practitioner tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
Dr. Tahani Soliman owns the building she runs her practice out of on the corner of Rugby and Zoe avenues in Huntington Park.
A multi-level parking garage next door to her practice has reportedly been a hub for unhoused people, who are easily able to access her roof, camp out, steal electricity and scrap metal from her air-conditioning units and start fires.
The doctor told KTLA that she estimates she’s spent more than $100,000 on repairs and deterrents such as barbed wire and a fence that the homeless simply tear down.
“We are living in hell,” Soliman said. “They ruined my roof. I have to put in a new roof and electricity from the air conditioning. I have to replace all of them.”
On Tuesday, crews with the Los Angeles Fire Department extinguished a blaze on the rooftop of the parking structure and it’s not the first time. Gaby Rodriguez, who works for Dr. Soliman, said there was another fire in the same spot in 2023.
It was firefighters who told the doctor and her staff that homeless people were living on top of the parking garage.
“We ended up putting up a fence with barbed wire. They took that down,” Rodriguez said. “We put cages around our AC units, and they took those down.”
According to Rodriguez, Huntington Park police have told the doctor and her staff that there is not much they can do about the problem and that the office’s calls to the city for help have gone unreturned.
Dr. Soliman, frustrated and angry about the lack of support for her business, staff and patients, said she has had enough.
“No protection for my employees, for my patients or my tenants,” she told KTLA. “That’s why I’m going to retire, because of this I lost everything.”
KTLA reached out to Huntington Park city officials who said they would investigate the situation.
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