Lawsuit Accuses L.A. Landlord Of Engaging In Campaign To Circumvent Local Rent Control Laws By Driving Out Long Time Tenants & Renting Out Apartments On Short-Stay, Revolving-Door Basis Using Airbnb, Craigslist

In Los Angeles, California, Los Cerritos News reports:

• A new lawsuit filed in Los Angeles superior court [last week] alleges how one Hollywood landlord resorted to alleged fraud and negligence to make an end-run around city and state housing laws. [...] A new complaint filed by four former tenants of a Hollywood apartment building alleges how Landlord “devised a scheme to circumvent the Los Angeles rent control laws by turning the apartment building into an unlicensed hotel,” driving out tenants who were protected by rent-control ordinances.
  
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  “The building was more than a place to live – it was a bona fide community,” says the complaint. “Residents regularly had communal meals in the complex’s well-tended garden and dined together several times per week.”
  
  But in his alleged effort to drive tenants out, Landlord stopped performing routine maintenance on the building, the complaint states. “After the resulting sewage leaks, rats, and maggots drove the long-term tenants out,” the complaint says, landlord moved to “rent their apartments to tourists on a short-term, revolving-door basis by using websites such as AirBNB and Craigslist.”
  
  Landlord also allegedly violated the Ellis Act, the state law that allows landlords to evict tenants if a family member is going to move in to the unit. Landlord notified a number of other tenants that he was going to move a relative or an on-site property manager into their apartments but “this did not happen,” according to the lawsuit. “Instead, once the long-term tenants of one or more of those apartment moved out … Landlord converted their apartments into AirBNB rentals,” the lawsuit states.

For more, see New Housing Complaint Filed Against Hollywood Landlord.

For the lawsuit, see McWhorter, et al. v. Bronson Avenue Properties LLC, et al.