Kanye West halts his housing project after failing government inspection
The entrepreneurial rapper faces major obstacles in his plans to build affordable homes in Calabasas, California
Kanye West embarked on a new venture earlier this year when he announced his plan to revolutionize the housing market by building affordable dome-like homes in Los Angeles. While the rapper and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were eager to get started and seemed to have the ball rolling quite fast, the California government put a stop to their ambitions plan.
It has been reported that the dome-like wooden structures built by West and his team in July as prototypes have been demolished by the L.A. County Department of Public Works. According to reports, West had not acquired the necessary city permits to start construction and the homes did not seem to be “temporary” prototypes as West’s team had once claimed.
The houses were an attempt by West to gentrify the Los Angeles area by offering more affordable housing but since the moment the homes went up on the 300-acre lot owned by the Gold Digger rapper, neighbors expressed their concerns. They disagreed with the idea of opening the doors of the exclusive Calabasas neighborhood to people of lower income and complained to the city government about the construction’s noise and the working hours of the team; they reportedly worked overnight and on Sundays, which is against L.A. law.
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Complaints from neighbors prompted officials to have their eye out on the properties and inspect them frequently. The inspector visits concluded that to build permanent structures West needed county permits. The Kardashian hubby claimed that if the structures were just prototypes - that would later be removed, as Kanye claimed at the time - then no permits were needed. Upon further inspections of the property, city officials discovered the structures were made on a concrete foundation and the idea of their upcoming demolishing became harder to believe.
The Yeezy owner was given a deadline of September 15 to acquire the proper building documents before facing demolition, but by Monday, September 9 all but one of the structures had been torn down.
