Elizabeth Hirschhorn, the Brentwood tenant who did not pay rent for her luxury Airbnb rental for 570 days, moved out of the unit on Friday.
I know it’s sexier to paint this as a nightmare tenant story, but there’s way more to the story. She didn’t just move in after an AirBnB stay decide to live there rent free. She had a lease, and there were repairs required in the unit that the landlord refused to do. So she sued him and stopped paying rent to cover the cost of repairs.
Then it turned out the landlord didn’t have a license to rent the unit, so the lease was void.
I don’t know either of the parties personally, so maybe the tenant was being unreasonable. But if you want to be a landlord, you absolutely need to have all of your paperwork in order, and you need to keep the unit in good working order. We should not have any sympathy for an owner who illegally leases a property with mold and unpermitted improvements when his tenant takes advantage of the situation.
In sure it’ll all come out in the court room. It looks like they’re both sueing each other
Yes, he should have made sure to obtain an occupancy license, but it sounds like this tenant was preventing access to the property for repairs.
More details in this story: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-04/airbnb-guest-refuse-pay-leave-luxury-rental
During the original 6 month lease, the owner saw mold and water damage around a sink and wanted to repair it. He offered to pay for a hotel for a few days to allow for the repair. Tenant refused to allow the repair, and apparently the issue kept getting worse. Tenant didn’t want to allow for the repair until their lease was up. When the lease ended tenant let them stay for a few additional weeks, which was probably their big mistake here. Then when they still wouldn’t leave he called the housing inspector to start eviction proceedings. The housing inspector noted the lack of occupancy license, and an out of code shower. At that point the owner ended up in a catch 22. He could not file for eviction until place was up to code, but the tenant prevented any attempts to access the shower to bring it up to code.
Maybe there’s more to this too, that’s all just from the article above, but it sounds like there’s multiple sides to the story.
Honestly, I don’t have any skin in this, so I don’t really care which side is the truth because it doesn’t matter. The landlord fucked up either way, making a series of rookie mistakes.
The story I had heard was that the unit wasn’t legal but she was also preventing him or repairmen from accessing the unit to fix it.
From what I’ve read of this story, I have no sympathy for either of them.
I have even less for someone who buys a property with the intent to rent it out.
NYC recently banned short term rentals, but prior to that, our immediate neighboring apartment was an AirBnB for about two years and let me tell you it was absolute hell to live next to. The other five apartments in the building all suffered. It literally brought us together.
The host was never there, and the guests very frequently trashed the place, loitered in the hallway, and held parties on work nights. There was SO MUCH indoor smoking. They would constantly keep us up all night since their party room was next to our bedroom. On various occasions drunk guests would try to force their way into our apartment. We once had to call the cops on a bunch of minors who rented it out to throw a rager (I hate doing this because ACAB, but we had work the next day and warned them multiple times, plus they were underage drinking). We also had to call the cops a few times over domestic disputes that got violent. One time, the guest went into the basement and flipped the breakers for the whole building because his power wasn’t working (likely the host wasn’t paying his bills). We CONSTANTLY had strangers follow us into the building, pester us to let them in, or buzz us shitfaced drunk at 3am. This all just scratches the surface of what happened, believe me when I say it was a literal nightmare.
We reported it to the city a million times and they neglected to do anything because they really couldn’t. The Airbnb was bringing in $500/day, enough to pay the $3000/month rent easily, so they had more rights than any actual tenant in the building. This one host also “ran” five other airbnbs in the area.
I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for land leeches. I actively spite Airbnb hosts. And fuck Airbnb for worsening the housing crisis for profit (for a time, there were more airbnbs than apartments for rent).
