SHREVEPORT, La.  —  A vacant house in Shreveport that served as the backdrop for four homicides in two years had been reduced to a mound of rubble by city order.

A homeless man was gunned down inside the house. The slaying of a 42-year-old man was preceded by the deaths of two people who were shot in a car outside the house in a robbery. An Iraq war veteran's badly decomposed body was found in an equally dilapidated house that once stood next door.

Authorities have described the structures a "homeless hotel."

The city has razed 582 dilapidated structures over the past three years.