L.A. Landlord Gets Tagged In Lawsuit For Using 'Ellis Act' Eviction To Boot Two Long-Time, Rent Controlled Tenants, Then Peddle Apartments As High-Rate, 'Short-Stay' Rentals; Dispute Also Ropes In Airbnb As Defendant

In Los Angeles, California, the Los Angeles Times reports:

• Carrie Kirshman and Nina Giovannitti were close neighbors at their Spanish villa apartments in Fairfax, sharing keys, collecting each other's mail and tending to a communal garden in the backyard.
  
  Their rent-controlled building allowed them to enjoy below-market rents of less than $2,000 a month for their two-bedroom pads in the upscale neighborhood. That came to an end in late 2013 when the owners evicted them under the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords to get out of the rental business.
  
  Comparable apartments in Fairfax were going for more than twice as much. Kirshman and Giovannitti were forced to relocate to Mid-Wilshire last year.
  
  "I lived there for 21 years and I was thrown out of my home," Kirshman said. "Just because I didn't own it didn't make it less so my home."
  
  Within weeks, their apartments began appearing on Airbnb — a short-term rental site geared at tourists — for nightly rates that could total $15,000 a month, they said.
  
  Attorneys representing former tenants at 500 N. Genesee Avenue are suing Airbnb and the property owners, who they say violated the city's Rent Stabilization Ordinance.
  
  It marks the first time in Los Angeles that tenants have sued a landlord for withdrawing rent-controlled apartments under the Ellis Act and converting them to short-term rentals, according to the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, an advocacy group allied with labor unions.
  
  Tenant advocacy groups say it's part of a growing problem that has removed thousands of affordable housing units from the market in L.A.
  
  A lawsuit filed [] in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeks damages and an injunction to return apartment units to tenants under previous rates.
  
  ***
  Tenants in rent-controlled buildings have strong protections against eviction to ensure landlords can't force them out to charge higher market rents. Housing rights advocates say property owners use the Ellis Act to skirt those safeguards.
  
  To invoke the state law, property owners must either exit the business or demolish their buildings to put up new apartments or condos. In the Fairfax case, the owners would be in violation of the rent control ordinance if they rented them via Airbnb for 30 days or more to the same tenant, a city housing department official said.
  
  A complaint was filed last December that the building was being operated as a hotel and short-term rental, but an inspector was unable to verify the information, the official said.

For more, see Ousted tenants sue after their former rent-controlled L.A. apartments are listed on Airbnb.