WeHo Pastor Scott Imler’s RV Home and Dogs Destroyed in Fire

Scott Imler, for eight years the pastor at WeHo’s Crescent Heights United Methodist Church, has lost his home and most of his belongings in a fire.

The United Methodist Church decided to close the church in 2012, citing a decline in attendance. In 2013 it evicted Imler, who had contested the church’s closing. For much of the time since then Imler has been living in a small RV with his four dogs and with his husband, George Leddy. The RV also carried most of Imler’s belongings and the cremated remains of eight church congregants. The dogs, Kai Li, Spike, Rusty and PuppyWho, perished in the fire.

For a while Imler  lived in the RV in Compton. Leddy, who teaches at Los Angeles Valley College in Valley Glen, took an apartment there so he could be near work. Imler drove to Valley Glen on Valentine’s Day morning, Feb. 14, to see Leddy. Later that morning the camper erupted in flames. Imler said he suspects the fire was caused by a spark from a battery in the RV.

“I am lost and brokenhearted and trying to deal with the fallout including cremation, clean-up and the neighbor’s car which got burned up as well,” Imler said in an email message to WEHOville. A lot of WeHo folks knew the little ones (his dogs) from their time at the church, and I was hoping maybe you could print something in your paper letting folks know what happened.”

A neighbor of Imler and Leddy helped him set up a page on GoFundMe, the online fundraising site, to help him raise money to cover expenses related to the fire.

In an interview, Imler said it had been “weird to take your dogs and the camper and be on the road. It’s not easy.” For the time being Imler will live with Leddy in his one-bedroom apartment. Imler said he hopes one day to return to West Hollywood.

Crescent Heights United Methodist Church was founded in 1914, It eventually became known for its support of the LGBT community, as the initial home for groups such as Project Angel Food, which provides meals for people with AIDS, and the EAGLES Program, the L.A. Unified School District’s alternative LGBT high school, and for hosting various addiction recovery support groups.

“They were not attracting people, they were not retaining people, not paying bills and the building was falling down around them,” Cedrick Bridgeforth of the church’s California Pacific Conference said of the decision to close the church. ”It was not a sustainable congregation.”

The church had been in discussions with People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) about turning the Crescent Heights property, which sits on the southeast corner of Fountain Avenue and Fairfax Avenue, into low-income housing. No progress has been made on those discussions.

In a letter to City Councilmember John Duran, which Imler shared with WEHOville, he said:

“In just a little while, when I can see clearly and the rain is gone, I’ll be bringing my friends back to West Hollywood, where they belong – at the corner of Fountain and Fairfax – along with the cremains of eight dearly departed congregants who were previously interred at the church and have travelled with us since the summer of 2013 on our rainbow road of renewal.  It’s the only rightful place for the dozen of them all to rest in the circle of life.”