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Authorities search Sun Valley hoarder property after years of neighbor complaints

Aerial view of Sunland property owned by Mary Ferrera.
Aerial view of Sunland property owned by Mary Ferrera, of La Crescenta, and occupied by her son, David, which has been the subject of years of complaints by neighbors.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
By Harriet RyanStaff Writer 
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Los Angeles police and officials from several other government agencies Wednesday entered a Sun Valley property that a hoarder has turned into an unlicensed junkyard clogged with rusted vehicles and hazardous waste.

The hoarder, 50-year-old David Ferrera, was arrested Tuesday night by Los Angeles police on an outstanding warrant on suspicion of misdemeanor theft, according to police and booking records. His bail was set at $155,000.

The six-acre parcel on a fire road off La Tuna Canyon Road has been the subject of years of fruitless complaints from neighbors. But after The Times wrote about it earlier this month, authorities sprang into action.

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Elena Malone, who lives next door and had contacted nearly a dozen agencies in search of help in recent years, said personnel from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department, the city Department of Building and Safety, the state Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies arrived Wednesday morning and searched the property.

Sunland, CA - June 15: Elena Malone and her husband, Josh Ryan and kids Ruby Malone, 11, and Amos Malone, 9, and their dog Zara, at their home in Sunland Saturday, June 15, 2024. The school teachers, bought their dream house in a horsey/moutainous area of Sunland. Their neighbor is a hoarder/mentally ill/drug addict who has made life very difficult for a street in Sunland and particularly one family. Next door was a 9 acre property owned by a retired school teacher and occupied by her troubled son, David Ferrera. At first he seemed friendly, but pretty soon his life fell apart and he and his equally troubled girlfriend were living in a car outside Malone's front gate. The property has no electricity or running water. There were stolen cars blocking the street, used condoms, trash bags of marijuana, anal plugs, human waste. The property itself is strewn with stolen cars (LAPD estimates 100 stolen vehicles on property) and unpassable to authorities. At one point Malone needed to pick her husband up from chemotherapy and couldn't get out of her gate. Her children cannot play outside. A judge earlier this year sentenced the elderly mother to jail - she was out in 11 hours - but said he couldn't do anything else and suggested Malone confront Karen Bass.The fire department had cleaned up the street somewhat, but the property itself is still a mess and a fire harzard (There have been several wildfires in this area.) Their neighbor's 9-acre Sunland property is owned by Mary Ferrera, 80, of La Crescenta, and occupied by her son David, 50, and It's been the subject of years of complaints by neighbors and the owner was sentenced to jail time earlier this year for failure to clean it up. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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It was their dream home until the hoarder next door turned it into a pricey prison

Married schoolteachers bought their dream home in Sun Valley. Then a mentally ill neighbor’s hoarding turned it into a prison.

Ferrera’s mother, Mary, owns the property and has said her son fell into mental illness and hoarding after a 2017 wildfire destroyed many of his belongings. She told The Times she paid to remove 21 dump-truck loads of trash, only to have her son fill the property back up with scavenged items.

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said at a Wednesday news conference that the Fire Department had gotten a search warrant to inspect the property this week, with an eye toward declaring it a public nuisance. That, she said, would allow the city to take additional action.

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A Superior Court commissioner criticized the city’s failure to help neighbors earlier this year, calling the lack of response “mind-boggling.”

Rodriguez acknowledged Wednesday that her office has been aware of the problem since 2019. But she said progress was frustrated by COVID, court delays, difficulty accessing the property and other bureaucratic problems.

“There were a lot of issues with this particular property, and we were aware of these issues as we were pursuing the resolution with the Department of Building and Safety,” Rodriguez said.

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She also pointed to the jailing of Mary Ferrera earlier this year, which she suggested was too short to be effective. The 80-year-old retired school teacher was sentenced to 180 days in jail for not cleaning up the land but was released after less than 24 hours.

Rodriguez described the multi-agency presence at the property Wednesday as an “all hands on deck” approach to “better assess what the circumstances are at that property.”

Malone said she was pleased by the government response this week.

“Fifteen LAPD guys just walked up the driveway,” she said.

After years of seeking help though, she remained cautious. “The outcome may be very little in the end.”

Mary Ferrera did not respond to a message seeking comment.

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Harriet Ryan

Harriet Ryan is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2008, she has written about high-profile people, including Phil Spector, Michael Jackson and Tom Girardi, and institutions, including USC, the State Bar of California, the Catholic Church, the Kabbalah Centre and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with colleagues Matt Hamilton and Paul Pringle in 2019. She and Hamilton won the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability in 2023. She previously worked at Court TV and the Asbury Park Press. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

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