Sunset Sound Recorders may be one of pop music’s most famous studios, but even prestige and decades of hits aren’t enough to spare it from the homelessness crisis that’s plagued Southern California in recent years.
Paul Camarata, president of Sunset Sound, is sounding off about the issues he and his clients, some of the biggest names in music, have experienced outside the historic recording space.
There’s long been an encampment near the business, but issues in and around that area of Hollywood have worsened recently, he said.
“The last four months, it’s just grown in huge dimensions. We’ve always had the problem, but it’s just extremely bad right now,” he said.
Most recently, a break-in on Sunday night resulted in the theft of blank checks, forcing Camarata to close all the studios’ checking accounts, he said.
“The police came, took a report and took some fingerprints, but we both came to the conclusion that it was the homeless, because one, they defecated on a drum set right in the lower level,” Camarata said. “We store a lot of instruments, amplifiers and guitars and basses. A lot of them are clients’. They didn’t steal any of that.”