> Hirschhorn’s attorney told the Times that "she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit."
This type of smarmy legal thinking drove me nuts as an attorney and was one of the factors that led to me becoming a software dev.
Do these attorney's demand a substantial retainer up front? It is quite the risk, requiring high levels of both dissonance and intestinal fortitude to contort the law to vigorously represent an admitted deadbeat.
But I am one to cast stones. I was successful in my criminal defense practice and enjoyed the client work. It's working with other attorneys that was the problem.
Yep, this is one of those arguments that might make sense only in a very literal reading of the law. Because if the unit isn't approved for occupancy, she shouldn't be living there at all, rent or no rent.
The facts of this case are not legally distinct from any other slumlord, they just have a better marketing team who is fighting the battle in the media and public opinion.
The landlord signed a long-term rental contract on a unit that did not meet rental code. Yes, the tenant probably knew it was out-of-code when it was rented. Just like any other person renting from a slumlord.
Other than it being Airbnb, and other than the person trying to claim the value of the rental is zero because of the livability issue, it’s a big-standard slumlord situation.
The proper move is to escrow the payments etc but generally you have a lot of rights as a long-term tenant (and many hotels/etc will take specific steps to avoid you being considered a long-term tenant as a result) and you don’t lose them just because the owner is a slumlord or allows the unit to fall below code.
Rentals are really a high-risk market with a lot of legal protections for the tenant, but everyone hopped into the market over the last 10 years thinking they’d just double their money overnight, and this is what happens when a tenant who knows the rules meets a landlord who doesn’t. The number the landlord recovers won’t be zero most likely but they also won’t get it in a timely fashion, or possibly at all.
I don't see it as "smarmy". Of course, HN commenters are largely putting themselves into the property-owner's shoes. Look at it from the other side: A wannabe landlord tried to rent out an illegal unit without knowing tenant/landlord law, and made a huge, costly mistake. The smart tenant is exercising her legal rights and acting out of incentives that are [edit: LIKELY (since the matter has not been resolved)] supported by law. The landlord is acting mad because he didn't understand or follow the law.
Where there is money to be made, you're always going to find people who carefully read and understand the rules, and follow them to the letter to gain an advantage. Especially in the fierce housing market. The landlord was foolish and did not follow the rules, and it's costing him.
Is it "smarmy" to do a backdoor Roth IRA[1] contribution? You're getting favored tax treatment but doing it in a "weird" roundabout way, seemingly counter to the intent of the Roth's income limits, but supported by law. Is it a "loophole"?
Yes, it’s wrong to exploit people and cause them financial harm. Duh?
With a back door Roth IRA there is no clear, obvious victim. You could consider all taxpayers the victim, and some would. Criticizing tax loopholes, especially for the rich, is extremely common sentiment. But to most people “the state” can’t be a victim as it is too big and powerful.
In this case it’s very obvious that a real human person just trying to make a living is being systemically fucked over. They’re not really fighting the human scum who took over their property, they’re symbolically fighting the idiotic, bumbling bureaucracy of the state of California and their unjust laws.
Like, I don’t know if the incredulity expressed in your comment is genuine, or if you’re just trying to play devils advocate… it’s very natural and easy for (seemingly) everyone else to understand the power dynamics here
My incredulity is genuine: I don't have a dog in this particular race, but it's remarkable how the commentary here on HN is so strongly siding with one party! (For comparison, check out the Reddit threads, where most of that site's demographic are supporting the tenant).
Your "exploit" description is a little emotionally charged. Business transactions happen all the time where one party gets screwed because they failed to read the contract, or failed to know the law, or failed to do due diligence. As a business person, you kind of have to sweat the details if you're going to hang your shingle out there and try to make money. This landlord got screwed, no doubt, but it was due to their own incompetence + having a smart counterparty to the transaction who apparently did her homework.
Yes, it is one sided because it’s so plainly obvious who the victim is here, who was acting in bad faith and who wasn’t. This is unethical and harmful behavior by the tenant and it should be illegal. Not hard to understand!
>a little emotionally charged
No, it isn’t. This is the correct usage of the word.
>Reddit
Not surprised the place with a cult-like hatred for landlords is speaking out against this landlord… I don’t much care for the opinions of 13 year old “communists” and r/antiwork losers so I don’t browse that site.
Even after reading two articles about this, I don't understand the legal context.
The guest seems to not have a contract for a long term stay. So how can they have any protections that cater to real renters? Does this mean everybody who breaks into a house has those protections?
What would happen if the owner evicted the guest via some private security firm? Would police help the guest to get back into the house? On which legal grounds?
> The guest seems to not have a contract for a long term stay.
According to [1] the tenant and landlord had agreed to a 187 night rental, with the tenant paying $20,793 - which has been paid.
The landlord then agreed to an extension outside of AirBnB (which to be fair just sounds like him being a nice guy when she said she couldn't find a place to move to) and there were minor maintenance problems (which the landlord wanted to fix but the tenant wouldn't give him access). Also the rental property wasn't built or operated with the right permits. The tenant is also disabled (or at least claims to be). Apparently these factors have made it difficult to get an eviction order.
I don't know what the law in California is, but such provisions are not very rare. The reason for them is to deal with e.g. landlords that rent without a written contact, or various complicated fraudulent situations (subletting when that's not allowed, pretending to be a landlord, etc.). The premise behind them is that (a) depriving someone of a place to live should require a very high bar (b) property owners are expected to keep track of what's going on with their property.
There's obviously abuse enabled by this, but the correct amount of renter-initiated abuse is not zero.
Seriously. I'd say this doesn't make sense, but see LA and California.
>> Because she stayed in the unit for six months, Hirschhorn qualified for L.A.'s recently adopted Just Cause Ordinance, which requires a landlord to have a legal reason to evict her
But...
>> Hirschhorn’s attorney told the Times that "she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit."
So she's staying in an unlicensed rental unit, not paying, and yet entitled to renter protections?
It'd be nice if anywhere would link to the actual legal fillings ...
The previous article was saying that she had to pay the market rate and she considered the market rate for an unoccupaniable unit as 0$. That should fail in court imo; plenty of people rent storage spaces that are unoccupiable and those have costs > 0.
I guess the 0$ is pretty critical to her side as you generally can't legal _not pay rent_. You can put the money into escrow (i.e. LA's REAP [1]) if the property is in violation of a housing ordinance.
I'm still going with this was probably a slam dunk for him to evict her if he actually went to a lawyer in the first place instead of trying to placate her when he first started having problems.
In many (all?) US states, after a customer stays a certain number of nights in a hotel, they become a “permanent resident” and the hotel has to go to court to evict them to have the police force them to leave.
Hence, many hotel managers do not allow people to stay beyond the number of nights they qualifies the customer to become a permanent resident (30 nights in many US states).
In L.A. county, if you receive mail at the residential address or are staying there for more than three consecutive days, you're legally a tenant. So if the person breaks into a house when the owner is on vacation, stays there for a week and gets mail there, yes, the once-trespasser is a legal tenant. Seattle area is the same; makes it super easy to squat.
It's yet another example of the weird issues Airbnb has...
I've only rented via Airbnb a couple of times and this was a while ago. I gave up on it because of the (infamous) arbitrary host specific "check-in" process, ability for hosts to make all sorts of specific demands for the check-out process, application of random fees all over the place... Leave a towel in the wrong spot? Yeah that will be $100. Don't load the dishwasher properly? $100. Forget something in the fridge? $100. It never ends and obviously the "host" is incentivized to apply as many random fees and convoluted requirements as possible to trip people up and ensure they can basically shake their guests down for another substantial amount of fees which in some cases can be the equivalent of staying another day or even two. Then you get to end up in the also arbitrary Airbnb dispute process...
Additionally, hosts are able to apply completely random and arbitrary demands for the entire guest stay. Oh, a pissed off neighbor that hates the fact someone put a property on Airbnb calls the police every time you walk through the hallway above a whisper? Sorry, not our problem even though the host is well aware of this because it's happened 10 times.
It's not really price competitive and in the end you're essentially required to do a bunch of random chores to the individual host's specifications upon "check out" and then you get to worry about finding a bunch of random fees tacked on to your stay later. You're also often subject to a variety of host-specific requirements for what they deem acceptable/proper use of the property. There are plenty of horror stories around like hosts that don't drink alcohol attempting to impose their viewpoint on guests and say things like "no alcohol allowed". Makes for a nice, relaxing vacation!
From what I understand this has gotten better but contrast this with hotels: as long as you don't destroy the room on check out you walk out of the property and never give it another thought. I think most people also have a fairly good idea of what constitutes acceptable/normal use and behavior when it comes to hotel rooms. When you step outside of this the worst that happens is someone from the hotel calls you or comes to the room, explains the situation, and gives you a warning and chance to rectify the situation immediately. Again, with Airbnb the host is incentivized to look for a reason to kick you out and you end up on the street with no (immediate) recourse.
Note I'm not saying I'm some kind of nightmare guest in hotels or short term rentals but again, there are plenty of stories online where there are seemingly valid points from the perspective of the guest that result in all kinds of absurd situations.
Back on topic, this is yet another fundamental problem with the short term rental/Airbnb approach. Anyone should have absolutely seen this coming. Real estate is an extremely complicated and region specific hodgepodge of state laws, municipality laws, sometimes even zoning, random regulations down to HOAs, condo boards, apartment property managers, etc. I'm not saying this is a good thing but it is the way things are and hotels are an established and well-oiled machine by comparison.
It's what happens when a society doesn't respect private property, or even recognize property as private, even though it's paid with incredibly taxed income by individuals. They believe private property is the right of others, so you have legal loopholes to squat on it.
> Because she stayed in the unit for six months, Hirschhorn qualified for L.A.'s recently adopted Just Cause Ordinance, which requires a landlord to have a legal reason to evict her, and if there is no legal reason, the landlord is required to pay for relocation assistance for the tenant
As long as "legal reason" includes a reasonable list of reasons I don't see a problem with such a law.
There is an inherent huge power imbalance between the landlord and the renter, where if the landlord ad-hoc decides to throw you out before you have a new place lined up, you might find yourself homeless. When people have such power over others, they often abuse that power in various ways, like asking for sexual favors, raising the rent cost exploitatively high at inopportune moments, or blackmailing the renter to keep quiet about violations, etc.
We as a society recognize that simply telling people "if you don't like the thing your landlord is asking of you in the middle of the night without warning, you are free to move out and become homeless until you find a new location" is not a humane and viable solution. Hence, we have laws for what can and can't be done.
Having traveled dozens of countries from east to west recently, I had come to an interesting observation: The countries with the most protections have the worst rental market. The countries with the least protections have a much better rental market. When there are no protection, the landlord just throw you the key. There are no papers to sign. No background check. No significant deposits (or absolutely no deposits). And no wait times. Key and go!
The worst markets were the most regulated with the most "protections". The US was exceptionally bad. There are several checks (ie: credit check), wait time, deposit, papers, onboarding process, more wait time, bank balance checks, more papers to sign. etc... for a few months rental. And you'd think all these people will make for a better maintained property. Nope.
You'll have no argument from me that protection and regulation can go too far.
But have you considered that as you were traveling across different countries, you'd be biased towards seeing the problems that affect you (finding a new place to rent) and you'd not be seeing the problems that don't affect you (existing renters being abused)?
But if the market is easy, doesn't this mean that existing renters can always bounce to some new place? It seems to me that abuse can only happen if they can't find another place. Of course, you'll always have some exceptional cases but should you break the whole market just for these?
Someone who has "traveled dozens of countries recently" is probably traveling a bit lighter than someone who's lived somewhere for several years. It seems likely you're not traveling with a couch, a bed, a nice desk, a dining room set, washer/dryer, etc. that you move with you each time. (I'd guess you're not carting a couple of young children from school system to school system, too.)
Can't just construction workers bounce to a new job if their existing job is abusing them, asking them to work under unsafe conditions, etc? It would seem abuse can only happen if they can't find another job. Regulations about how the workplace can't be a deathtrap is strangulating the market. /s
Imagine you are a lone mother taking care of her kid, you are carpooling to work, and barely making ends meet. Then your landlord starts making some demands on you and starts hinting that he might throw you out otherwise. Is it realistic to say "The mother should just move out the next day, and find a new place for herself and her child, and find a new means of transportation to her job. If that new landlord abuses his power she should just move again the next day."
Your viewpoint isn't uncommon, but the last few hundred years of modern society has repeatedly demonstrated that if people have leverage over others in terms of their access to food, medicine and shelter, then that power will be abused. If companies could they'd be paying you in scrip, we had to outlaw it, not simply tell workers to find a non-scrip workplace.
For people who aren't bouncing around the world and never living in one place for more than a few months at a time, being forced to move is a very big deal even if finding the new place to live is easy.
Lower protection leads to lower demand because low protection means high incentive for ownership. Higher demand leads to higher protection because that market implies a higher inherent power imbalance. The causal relationship you propose isn't the whole picture. Yeah, if it's difficult to find renters landlords will be happy about any that show up.
I'm no longer a Californian, but I support extremely strong tenant's rights laws. Landlords risk money. Tenants risk housing. The law should shift the balance of power here. Landlords love to say how they deserve their rents because they are taking on risk for the tenant - so they should actually take on that risk.
Moving is very expensive. You have a deposit on the new rental. You have to pay for moving your stuff over to the new place. You might have to take time off work to search for a new rental. You probably have some overlapping lease time where you are paying double on rent.
I don't understand why this was downvoted. It is a very reasonable position. For perspective, I have family members that are California landlords and have been screwed by tenants and California laws.
The problem with using the government to socially engineer society is that you even if you have good intentions one way or another, you end up playing whack-a-mole with infinite possible unintended consequences.
Its also like 300,000 dollars to get a liquor license in L.A. which is the government essentially excluding all small business from starting a bar and playing favoritism to big corporations with the stated intention of safety/regulation.
That’s exactly the case with renter protections. I’m a landlord in a large American city. I’m also a “nice guy” who makes sure that things work. We don’t evict except when other options have been exhausted.
Now for the problem: it takes many months to evict here, best case. As a result, we will never take a chance on a marginal tenant. No other decent landlord with whom I’ve spoken will either.
Unintended consequences are real, especially when owners are deprived of their property rights. You might think I’m conservative, but for the most part I’m a flaming liberal. ;-)
I find it hard to believe that completely unregulated markets don't have the same "whack-a-mole with infinite possible unintended consequences", just a different set of consequences.
If only we could have a petition and vote directly on this kind of thing, and not close voting until we confirm that X% of the (legal) population has voted. It's 2023, and I'm honestly baffled we haven't done something along these lines by now.
Perhaps future generations will look back on this period and see us as barbaric because of it.
It might be surprising that many countries have such renters protections, as it attempts to equalise the power disparity between landlord and renters, and makes it harder to be a 'scum lord.'
If you ignore the Airbnb element — then on the surface this appears to be an issue of a landlord letting a property which was not fit for occupation. It is the landlords obligation, not the renters, to determine whether their property is fit for purpose. If they failed to do so, then the renter is protected from punitive actions (such as being evicted) for wanting these fixes made when they are discovered.
I don't disagree with your basic premise, but in this case, the tenant appears to be refusing access to rectify the problems.
And if the residence isn't fit for occupancy, then nobody should be living there, rent or no rent. While apparently legal, the dissonance required to argue "I won't pay rent because the home isn't fit for purpose" while living long-term in that same house makes my eye twitch.
> While apparently legal, the dissonance required to argue "I won't pay rent because the home isn't fit for purpose" while living long-term in that same house makes my eye twitch.
Depends a bit on whether it was "not fit for purpose" knowingly before living there, or part-way through. A landlord shouldn't be able to get around rental protections by intentionally neglecting the property, nor should they be able to hide serious problems and go "welp, move out" when discovered.
It's a crappy sticky plaster on the social problems caused by de-taxing land and granting one class of people the right to extract rents from a other through legal title.
Just like rent control.
If your sympathies side with those on the side of the parasitic rent extraction machine depleting the productive capacity of the real economy (the side of the economy where people work rather than charge for access to assets), you won't be a champion of either of these things and will argue that they are well meaning but inadvertently bad for the victims of the parasites.
Realistically some parasites can't be killed without killing the host - they entrench themselves that deeply. When Cuba decided to overhaul land rights, for example, the US invaded.
The fact that the tenant seems to be exploiting the legal loopholes made me think immediately of "Pacific Heights".
That 100k is probably approaching the opportunity cost if it hasn't exceeded it already. Time to move on and pay the ransom. Although if it were me on the receiving end I doubt I'd see it so rationally.
How is not paying rent for a year not legal grounds for eviction? That's what's wrong. I can see being delinquent a coupe of months or three but a freaking year?
But in this guy's case, because he was renting out an unregistered AirBnB, and for a term of greater than 30 days, it was treated as a normal tenancy rather than as a short-term stay, and thus normal landlord-tenant laws apply.
Generally, one of the main rules of rental law is that tenants cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent if there are habitability and compliance issues with the unit, which it appears there may be. (EDIT: also, it appears the unit itself was never permitted for occupancy, so he shouldn't even have been renting it out on AirBnB. This is probably why he didn't register it as a short-term rental.)
Basically, she's the tenant from hell...but he's also made a number of serious mistakes which let her take advantage of him in the first place.
The owner offered the unit for rent illegally. This is like the proverbial drug dealer that calls the cops to report someone stole $10k of product and is upset that the police are unconcerned with returning his property.
Did they? That's what is being claimed but it's not clear to me that's actually the case, but maybe I read over it?
Regardless, I don't think this should matter for the eviction, although the city could imposes additional fines for the landlord if they wanted to. "You rented it illegally therefore I don't have to pay rent and I can stay here for as long as I want" is obviously not reasonable.
According to the article she paid $20k and her lawsuit says that she wants that money back since he didn't have a legal right to collect rent. Assuming her account is correct (and it sounds like the city agrees this was an illegal rental) why is it unreasonable for her to remain in the unit until he pays restitution? Why should the fine go to the city (and do you think the fine should be less than the amount collected in rent?)
Demanding all your rent back is ridiculous. That there may not have been a license is a matter for the appropriate authorities to deal with such matters.
Fact is the services were rendered and that some bureaucratic procedure may not have been entirely correct, something she did not suffer any damages from, is frankly none of the tenant's business but between the city and landlord.
This has all the hallmarks of someone intentionally trying to find flaws to exploit (also see the whole business with the shower).
If there’s any language regarding the dwelling being habitable, then the lack of a license makes it by definition not a habitable dwelling and thus the he never fulfilled his end of the agreement, making it necessary to refund the rent paid.
In other words, services might be rendered, but not the services as agreed upon in the lease.
The secondary matter would be if occupying someone’s property is an allowable remedy until the payment is made, which is a bit more thorny, on the other hand, occupation notwithstanding, it’s not uncommon to maintain possession of someone’s property until payment is made as a form of leverage (e.g. keeping a customer’s laptop until they’ve made payment for repairs made on said laptop).
What’s interesting is that he’s a Netherlands native, but then acts stumped about LA’s Just Cause requirement.
In the Netherlands leases for consumers are always under a Just Cause principle and pretty much the only way to cancel a lease as a landlord is non-payment.
End dates in leases are void, landlord wanting to occupy the property themselves is not a valid reason to cancel the lease, sale of property is not a valid reason to cancel the lease (lease gets transferred over to new owner).
Basically the only way to get a tenant out is if the tenant cancels the lease themselves or if there’s a significant period of non-payment.
That is quite insane. I guess many owners keep their flats empty rather than renting them under these conditions. Ultimately, this decreases supply and drives prices up.
The alternative is also insane, when the property owner can break your lease and kick your family out of your residence at their whim (often by claiming owner occupancy)
The legislature has to choose who gets the power in rental relationships and i see the arguments for either choice.
No, this is like a drug dealer that calls the cops to report someone stole $10k of product and exchange the police requires the drug dealer to keep supplying the one with the same product on the ground that product is on of satisfactory quality.
She paid $20,000. Her argument is that he stole $20,000 from her since he didn't have a legal right to rent the property but took her money anyway. She has offered to leave if he returns the funds. Analogies fall flat pretty quickly, but the fact is it does seem like this situation is an intended penalty for a civil infraction he committed.
She would have a better argument if she did not occupy the abode and then would claim fraud or whatever and ask for her money back. Here she's eating her cake AND having it too.
This is the real problem. How can not paying rent for an year, and staying in a property that you don't have legal title/rent agreement for not construe a legal cause for eviction under "Just Cause Ordinance".
Shame on such city leaders who care only for votes.
They have to have some accommodation for blatant and willful violation of the spirit of the law and taking advantage of the law and violating other people's property rights for an excessive amount of time.
If a person has nowhere to go they are at risk of being homeless, no court will sign eviction notice. Same thing in many EU countries. I've seen some stories where tenants don't pay rent for months, so the landlord rents one of the rooms to some super noisy, aggressive, smelly tenants who are actors. Their role it to make life of the tenants so miserable they move out on their own.
1. Otherwise good tenants just without means who would otherwise be homeless.
2. Hellish tenants without means who also would be homeless.
3. Hellish tenants with means who play the "But I would be homeless" card as an excuse to cheat landlords.
The tenant in question here is 3. rather than 1. A judge cannot side with everyone as 1, must treat everyone equally with the given facts but should not enable those refuse to pay or exploit technicalities to create a situation without relief.
The landlord didn't understand the law, was too generous, and failed to hire a lawyer.
>But instead, he says he’s scared to walk to his car because there’s a woman who won’t leave his guesthouse. She says she has the right to stay. So far a judge has ruled that, under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, he has no legal reason to evict her.
How does this setup work logistically? Does the woman ever leave? What if the owner just waits for the woman to go grocery shopping and breaks into his own property and changes the locks? Are there any cases of such a thing happening?
Or what if he just turned off her water from the main house? So many scenarios, I don't understand.
If he changed the locks, the police would force him to let her back in and he'd be in court for an illegal lockout, which wouldn't help his overall case.
If he turned off the water, she would report the issue to the city and they'd force him to turn it back on, and he would likely face a fine.
His only option is to fight it out in a court that is heavily tilted in favor of tenants, and she (his "tenant") knows it.
I think at this point police may not do anything. Even he changes the locks. In SF and LA and few other metro area, they tend to ignore anything that can be a “civil matter”
Corporate news does tend to add a lot of undue spin to these stories; but assuming there are any parts of this that hold up with a little bit of extra context this is a case of completely dysfunctional government.
Taking the article at face value; there is nothing here that I can recognise as property rights. It reads like state-sanctioned theft. To a level of crazyness where I'd like to read the court records to find out the details.
The main problem is he doesn't have a lawyer and doesn't understand how anything works. There are a half dozen ways to evict this insane, scofflaw mooch legally.
Did you read the article? The guy does have a lawyer. This isn’t some struggling young family; the guy is a periodontist to the stars. He has a custom built home in freaking LA. He says he can afford to pay the tenant $100k to make her move out, but refuses to do so on principle.
This was a PR piece designed to make him look good.
Not only LA is a weird place, Germany has similiar laws in action. If your airbnb tenant decides to stay forever, there is not much you can do except going the long court way. You can't simply push a tenant out of your house even if the guest isn't paying or staying longer than allowed.
While true, tenant protections are known in advance, this simply becomes a risk of renting property (Airbnb or long-term).
Everybody I know who owns rental property has dealt with problem tenants. It's a hassle. But, nobody should be buying rental properties without understanding how/if the local laws protect tenants.
And I'm guessing in many jurisdictions, regular rental laws apply to Airbnb, at least in part. As they appear to do in this story. This is, in part, why hotels have different regulations (though even then, guests have some rights).
Coming to France I discovered something similar: France has very strong tenant laws. Afaiu they cannot evict a tenant that doesn't want to leave. As a result, renting a place here is a nightmare. Landlords require a ton of stuff to reassure themselves that they get the rent. Basically if you don't have a well-paying full-time job you have to buy insurance. A bunch of startups now act as credit-check companies and insure the landlord. They take 3.5-4.5% of rent.
You say that, but when I rented a place in France, the landlord turned up in the middle of my 1 year tenancy, about a week before Christmas, and told me I have 2 weeks notice because he had sold the flat to a new owner. He hadn't mentioned anything about it until he turned up at the door with this news.
I was just about to travel for Christmas (outside France), so I had to urgently find somewhere else to live in a few days, then move all my stuff, just before I went away. That was difficult.
I was lucky some lovely Mormon friends stopped by, and when I asked if they could help me move my stuff, they obtained the church van, ignored that they weren't insured to carry me or my things, and did a brilliant job of helping me move quickly.
Well, that was illegal. They have to give you at least a month notice, and it has to be via registered letter. And I'm not positive, but selling the house might not even be a legit reason to kick you out before the lease contract (that's what I heard from my agent).
in France it is a legit reason if the new owner bought the place to move in. Illegal if it bought the place with the purpose to rent it.
Same without purchase in fact. The owner can tell you to leave if it plans to move in.
I am however not sure if law is specific enough to avoid being exploited with loopholes like "owner move in legally for 1 month (while not actually living there and doing renovation), then start renting again to someone else"
An individual owner is a fool to rent in California. Only a large corporation with lots of money and lawyers and that can amortize bad tenants over its many properties can actually survive.
Squatting is a funny thing in many places. In Spain you have 48 hours to make a police report. After that evicting squatters will be a many months long legal process during which you'll need to keep paying all the bills and taxes for your property.
In Belgium, police cannot evict squatters unless they are caught during the act of entering. Lunacy and a veritable nightmare if your property is targeted.
The regulation incentivizes one to actually use the property instead of parking one's money there, so I think it's working as intended.
In order to avoid squatting, put the property to use or hire a security company. Don't expect the state to provide protection for land that's not being put to use.
Do you really want to live in a world where you need to hire security if you want to go on a two-week vacation? I fail to see how the squatting that is described in the article is different from theft.
There are already lawyers involved on both sides so the landlord would get bulldozed for playing tricks like that.
When I lived in CA I had to help my friends and family with lawsuits against some legitimately bad landlords (a meth head in one case, heroin in another, and frivolous eviction because they wanted to jack the rent up for a new tenant before the lease ended). While I was researching California Civil Code (not to mention what cities like SF and LA have stacked on top of it), the deck is completely stacked against property owners. Like it’s relatively trivial to exploit the law to live rent free for six+ months while a lawsuit is pending and then ride off into the hills and do it again with your next landlord.
Fun fact, if you stay in a CA hotel for 30+ days you are legally a tenant and they have to sue for eviction if you don’t feel like leaving.
Although I think AirBNB rentals are in general morally wrong I don’t think these laws are always fair either, and I would definitely avoid renting out property in CA.
California renters pay 43% more than US, but the gap’s shrinking
California rents up 14% since July-through-September 2019. Meanwhile, the typical US tenant paid 21% more...
Extending the "lease" beyond the date agreed to as well as writing legal statements to her without running them by a lawyer really screwed him over in the beginning.
Nothing wrong with exercising your rights but uh do make sure that they're actually rights ...
It sounds to me that the owner must be badly represented.
The reason he can't evict appears to be that the accomodation isn't considered suitable to let, because it has an "illegal shower". As a consequence he is denied access to remedy other causes of problems with the property (damp penetration).
I'm not American, and definitely not from CA; and I'm certainly not any kind of lawyer. It seems to me that the Department of Building and Safety must be guilty of gross maladministration, and the landlord should be able to sue for compensation and punitive damages. It seems obvious.
Meanwhile, I detest AirBnB. My neighbour is a non-resident AirBnB host.
Yup, GP was definitely referring to the "should we allow squatters" vote of 2017. Nothing else they could possibly be referring to. Great job responding to the strongest interpretation of his argument.
IN this case, he was renting an accessory dwelling ("granny flat"). I don't generally find this problematic - it's putting an otherwise unused piece of land (the owner's back yard) to economic use. The problem in this case was the ADU was not properly permitted - the owner shouldn't be surprised this caused problems.
This kind of attitude is what makes the internet exhausting to me anymore. It's identity politics, but for deciding who I'm supposed to hate. Everyone is so high on constantly hating anyone that's doing better than they are, and I can't tell if it's jealousy, self-hatred, something else entirely, or a mix of all of the above, but it just makes me so tired.
Critique is important, but constantly celebrating when someone with perceived privilege has property stolen or is injured or whatever is damaging to society and our own selves.
What are you trying to say actually here? How is this "deserving" in any way? He worked, he got an apartment to make some extra cash and that's about it. I know plenty of people doing this since I was a child, Airbnb or not.
That maybe housing, a basic human need that too often goes unfulfilled in a supposedly developed country, shouldn't be an investment?
I mean, I can think of people even more deserving, but in the end, charging 3 grand per month for what looks like a room with at least one code violation should be considered some kind of moral failing.
He was renting out part of his property so it can be used by people other than himself. This helps address the housing issue. Why would anyone risk that now?
Renting short term housing to tourists does not help the housing issue, and it is unfair to neighbors that did not sign up to live next to or in the same apartment building as a hotel. Tourists belong in hotels, not in residential buildings.
NYC, where I live, has effectively banned Airbnb recently. It’s a great change. LA should do it too.
Presumably this tenant who is staying for a year would be staying elsewhere in the city if they couldn't stay at the Airbnb. How is it adding to the housing crisis?
The more potential landlords see how the local governments are tilted to screw them, the fewer of them are going to rent out or expand their rental properties.
Congrats on turning over all rentals to large, soulless corporations. You think you have problems now? Ha!
> If he had a standard year long lease with this tenant, I would be much more upset for him not getting paid or the tenant evicted!
He did have a long term lease with her. From the ladies lawyer:
> “This is not a short-term Airbnb — it was a long term rental, they had a separate long term rental agreement and there’s documentation to prove it. In fact, the City of Los Angeles has sent multiple letters to Jovanovic outlining to him why his conduct is illegal and must cease.”
That's the whole premise of this legal loophole. He didn't have the permits to rent long term, yet did so because airbnb makes it easy and he didn't know the law.
Then he was nice and let her stay longer, which gave airbnb an out for liability.
Then she realized she had an ace up her sleeve and is milking the system to get a payout.
The net result is that this lady wins, but society loses because people will read this, and start question if it's actually worth taking advantage of SB9 and building that ADU for long-term leases, if something like this can happen if you make a single mistake with the law or rental ordinances.
This type of thing just hurts housing availability, and drives consolidation to corporate landlords.
He chose not to register his guest house as a short-term rental prior to putting it on AirBnB, even though the law had been on the books for several years before he started. But that doesn't matter, because he allowed this tenant to stay for more than 30 days, so the tenancy was not subject to the short-term rental regulations.
But even before that, he chose not to have his guest house permitted for occupancy, which requires some paperwork and a building inspection. This is probably why he didn't register his guest house as a short-term rental, but it is also the reason he's in this mess, since the lack of an occupancy permit is the reason he can't evict his tenant for nonpayment of rent. (Los Angeles's eviction moratorium ended earlier this year, see https://cityattorney.lacity.gov/tenant-protections)
He also made unpermitted changes to shower (in this context, meaning he failed to get a permit for the shower from the building department before commencing the work), which would have brought it out of compliance with the building code, even assuming it had been properly permitted for occupancy.
If the government’s statements and rules/regulations are to have any internal consistency the building should be condemned until brought up to code, and the tenant evicted for their safety.
The building was up to code. That was not the problem.
The problem is that it was permitted as an ADU, and sons of the work was not permitted, because the owner landlord was too cheap to get the proper permitting. The cure was for him to get the proper permitting, which the article makes clear he had yet to do.
Why is it a lunacy to rent out your spare unit, but not a lunacy that an agreement between two adults somehow is going to lead to someone else using your property for free indefinitely?
The ironclad assurance is a legal system, that allows you to evict when one side breaks the agreement, which failed ridiculously in this case.
By making application process very tedious, large security deposits and unwillingness of some landlords to put extra space for rent, which would work for many.
The person is saying the host stole $20k from them because they rented a property that they didn't have the legal right to rent out. Both sides say they are being stolen from.
I know what you mean. A lot of people in my country just say 'fuck it' to property rights and steal shit by threat of violence. A lot of people here also say 'fuck it' to human rights and it's even wilder the crazy stuff they do. And then those 'asshole' hackers come here and defend these rights. Oh, the audacity.
The property is expensive and the lawyer is also not free. So we can assume the renter is not someone destitute.
As someone who once was a small business owner, I was always way more afraid of rich scammer clients than of the poor ones. The rich when they feel entitled to take what is yours, are far more brazen, well equipped to explore the laws to do so, and completely shameless.
Except, if you read the headline, the law is protecting this guy. It’s not like this person is barricaded in the house with guns and ammunition holding off a siege from the police.
That’s what makes the story noteworthy. Somehow a person can do this and NOT go straight to jail 450 days ago for trespassing
well yeah. Same way people like heist movies or murder mysteries. Theres something compelling about something so brazen. Doesn't mean i'd ever want to meet the people involved or think they're good or whatever
There is a correct way to address this by slapping him with a hefty fine.
But having someone so clearly misuse laws meant to protect vulnerable persons, should not evoke sympathy. She should be thrown out of the place quite literally.
Yes, of course, with the asterisk that the allowable non-cash expenses for a rental property are pretty high, resulting in typically a low net income (and current taxes) as compared to the free cash flow.
You get to deduct the interest portion of the mortgage (but that's a cash expense, so hits free cashflow as well).
Depreciation is the non-cash expense. It's not exactly as simple as this, but you can depreciate a residential building at 1/27.5 per year and commercial at 1/39 per year. That means if you buy a property for $1.5M where the land is worth $418K and the building $1072K, if it's residential, you'll get a reduction of income of $39K/yr if it's residential and $27.5K/yr if it's commercial. That of course decreases your basis in the property by the same amount (making it a timing preference, not a permanent preference).
Thats genuinely incredible. Reminds me of when I looked into accounts at maersk and realised they did a similar thing with their ships. The idea that something could ever depracate all the way to zero but still be on the books as an asset seems broken to me but I'm not a financial guy so I haven't been able to dive into arguments about why it may or may not make sense.
The fundamental idea is "things wear out" and that wearing out is a real cost (albeit a lumpy, non-cash cost).
In your personal life*, your roof gradually wears out. You buy a place and, at some point in the future, you have to replace the roof. If you sell a house with a 30 year old roof, you get paid less for the property than if it had a 30 day old roof on it.
If that roof was on a piece of incoming-generating property, it would seem wrong to say "for 24 years, the roof was perfect and then in the 25th year, it degraded all at once, needing replacement". If you sell the building halfway through the roof's expected life, it seems wrong that you got paid less for the building (because the buyer knows the roof is ~50%) but that you get no credit for that loss in value while it was happening.
Same for Maersk: if they had a freshly commissioned ship and a 20 year old ship with the same original specs, the new one is worth more money to a buyer.
So, the tax system says "for business-use property, we allow depreciation to model that things wear out and become worth less money over time". This is true for your rental house, an airplane, a ship, a laptop, a desk, a chair, etc.
If you have a roof (on a 27.5 year depreciation schedule) that you manage to get 40 years out of, you get to deduct the value of the roof over the first 27.5 years and then get no deduction for the last 12.5 years because your basis in the roof is zero. Likewise, if you only get 20 years and a day out of it, you depreciate it at 1/27.5/yr for the first 20 years and then take all the remaining basis as a deduction on the day you replace it.
* - where house repairs are not deductible, because they're a personal consumption expense.
Thanks for your insight. I can understand why depracation can go down a certain amount (second hand resale market value demonstrated that etc) but going all the way to zero? like even beyond scrap value (for a ship)? It seems that its not uncommon for people to be able to deduct things that far while still demonstrably making income with them elsewhere on the books.
For example a residential property depracated entirely for 1/27.5 its value every year for 27.5 years, but still being rented out after that period. Presumably it can no longer be deducted from tax, but the accounting idea is that the house has degraded to being worthless but is demonstrably not?
The way I think about that part (which is valid) is:
What would I do if someone tasked me to sit down and try to write a universally applicable tax code that closed that "loophole" without introducing a bunch of other waste/complexity/cost of compliance?
I'd probably wrestle with it a while and then say "screw it; let it go to zero; we're going to recapture it upon sale anyway, so given the projected/hopeful lifespan of the government versus the taxpayer, it doesn't really matter; we'll eventually get our money."
If you don't want to take depreciation (for whatever reason), you need to change the facts and circumstances such that depreciation would not be allowable under the facts.
If she was some struggling person in some low value housing for sure. But that fact she asked for relocation fee of 100k on top of this BS you think that is a cool hacker mindset?
She has a lawyer, she is living in a high value house. She seems to be an entitled bitch.
Are you saying this isn't a clever use of loopholes in legible, regulated systems? I.e. "hacking the system"?
You can be entitled and be a hacker. You could argue every single billionaire "hacks" economic systems to achieve their goals. You think none of them are entitled?
I'm really trying to read that comment as you have interpreted it but all I'm seeing is a mutual exclusion being drawn between "entitled bitch" and "hacker" and all I'm saying is they're not mutually exclusive.
It's not some kind of a novel hack, it's a boring old squatting. There are even multiple films made about this (e.g. Pacific Heights cited multiple times in this topic) not to mention countless articles and news pieces. It's as much of a hack as carding.
I agree with you - this is a "law hack" and should be seen as a good thing. It shows a loophole in the system and directs attention towards it so that it can be fixed. There's no system like responsible disclosure in law.
You seem to have a very loose definition of what a "hacker mindset" is than most people: "the ability to find alternative ways to achieve their goals, bypassing bottlenecks and hurdles and thinking outside the box."
This is someone taking that concept to the extent of criminal behavior.
Sorry to break it to you like this but a lot of hacking in the past was explicitly for illegal reasons. Do we hop on HN to scold phreakers every time such an article comes up? No -- so this is a double standard.
given there are people on the street who are actually homeless and didn't have the opportunity to buy tons of land in the 90's before the housing crisis exploded and continues to get exponentially worse.
And this is the individual homeowner's problem to solve because...? Sounds like a local government problem. Regardless, just because the victim is wealthy doesn't mean you're not victim-blaming.
Thank you! I couldn't give two shits about someone who has forced they're way onto the property of someone who has owned it for 30+ years, and refused to leave. I would hope the common sense response to this would be to give the squatter a free year of housing in the local prison. 540 days of unpaid Airbnb rent x $1,000/day is more than half a million in stolen money, that's a criminal charge.
There is quite literally no excuse for what has happened here outside of failed local government.
Because using space that could be permanently lived in by somebody to instead seek profits as a luxury vacation rental, along with bad housing and tax policies in CA, is exactly the reason we have so many homeless.
1. Too many homeless people
2. Keep making luxury condos and rent them out on AirBnB, while NIMBYs continue to veto affordable higher-density housing developments
3. Blame local government and say it's their problem to fix
The vast majority of homeless are addicts and wouldn't move into free housing if provided, or mentally ill and should be cared for instead of dumped on the street - and also wouldn't remain in free housing even if provided - because they are mentally ill!
If you sincerely think homelessness is just a lack of housing I heartily encourage you to get out from behind your keyboard and go volunteer at a local homeless shelter. Ignorant people such as yourself are our real problem in making meaningful progress towards solving homelessness - luckily ignorance can be overcome if you choose to actually get involved. And it is rewarding when you do reach the occasional folks who are homeless but don't want to be and just need some help getting out. They may be the minority, but there are still many there and they are underserved. Those are the folks I focus on and what inspire me to remain involved.
Saying essentially the same thing twice does not an argument make. I'm sure if you re-read the article, you'll find that #2 doesn't even apply. And you haven't even bothered to refute the idea that it is a local government problem. Don't like it? Talk to the local zoning board. Otherwise, whining about the actions of individuals, assuming the law allows such actions, is going to do fuck-all to solve the problem.
Well, maybe, but "simply don't pay rent" clearly isn't any solution to any housing crisis. Not every landlord is actually rich for starters, and "you're rich enough, so who cares people commit crimes against you?" is not something I'm hugely comfterable with, to put it mildly.
I totally agree about folks needing to pay rent, and that this is a bad situation for the landlord. I do find the slant in defending homeowners' side of things in a place with as much homelessness as LA to be an ... interesting editorial choice.
He played stupid games and won stupid prizes, and even admits further down in the article that the lawsuit is a "principled stance" rather than anything he truly can't resolve through some kind of agreement with the tenant.
After all the insanely high cleaning fees and lists of chores these AirBnB landlords make you do just for the “privilege” of paying to stay in their property, along with driving up the prices of properties and rent in their area, I’m kind of glad the tables have turned. They had it coming.
If landlords could raise prices to make more money, why wouldn't they already be doing that? Rents aren't priced based on landlord expenses. Otherwise we'd see rents plummet when a landlord pays off their mortgage.
In 90-ies, when police and courts stopped doing whatever they have been doing during USSR collapse, the vacuum of "law enforcement" was filled with criminal gangs. So businessmen would pay some gang for their business protection. Specifically, a landlord, hotel owner, etc. would be paying a local gang so that they enforce "laws" and resolve disputes.
LA has a bunch of gangs/cartels operating in it already. Is this something that is already happening? What prevents them from offering a "service of getting rid from problem tenants"?
LA has a bunch of gangs/cartels operating in it already
So do Dallas, Atlanta, Tuscon, Indianapolis, and a bunch of other extremely red cities which have an excess of law enforcement. It turns out that the amount of law enforcement isn't related to the presence of gangs.
What prevents them from offering a "service of getting rid from problem tenants"?
Because outside of Hollywood movies, life doesn't actually work that way. If problem tenants suddenly started disappearing, it would be pretty easy to follow the clues back to the gang and the landlord, and the punishment for both would far exceed the economic benefits to the landlord or the gang. Law enforcement many turn a blind eye to drug sales when they have to triage prosecutions due to limited prison capacity, but they aren't going to turn a blind eye to murder.
"life doesn't actually work that way" - it absolutely does. When society fails to enforce laws, criminals step it. I lived through that reality during USSR collapse. I'm sure many other people in collapsing/collapsed countries can relate. Your movie experience is the one which isn't relevant, not mine lived experience.
When I was in high school (during the 80s, in St. Louis, Missouri), I had a teacher that was essentially a slumlord. He once told us about how he provided free rent to a house full of bikers, like a biker gang, in exchange for "property management services", mostly forced evictions. He told one story that I wish I could forget: a Black family moved next-door to one of his rental units. He sent the bikers over there to intimidate them into leaving. The bikers burned the house down; a child died in the fire. No one went to jail. I just remember our teacher talking about this like it was no biggie.
So your teacher admitted to a group of children/teens that he essentially funded a group to (in a racially motivated way) burn down a house in which someone (a child no less) died? Do I have that right? I might be off base here but I think your teacher was a real jerk!
Nah, such services already exist. You just have some extremely loutish, heavy-hitting-seeming dude "move in" with the squatter with a legit lease. The mission is to be so foul and unpleasant that the original squatter leaves.
In other contexts due to jury nullification, prosecutorial misconduct and similar you might actually see vigilante groups for hire. The opening scene from The Godfather was based on reality.
My experience representing wealthy client is that you don't want to be the person worth millions of dollars in some lawsuit against someone worth almost nothing.
While the tenant can always declare bankruptcy for money they owe you, engaging in illegal activity against a tenant could easily result in you owing that person far more than the nuisance and lost rent from them living in your backyard.
Reality is the landlord has a lot more to lose than the tenant, so what you're describing is completely impractical.
In ex-USSR that would mean just having the judge either be part of the gang offering protection or have the gang "talk" to him/her for a potentially additional fee. A subscription type of fee was more common though.
There's nothing to investigate if he's just paying a group of people monthly dues, and, entirely unrelated to that, an unknown group of people commit crimes that just so happen to affect the problem tenants. I could see this happening.
I'm not advocating for it, just making the observation that it seems like it happens elsewhere and seems to be reasonably realistic. Gangs providing "protection" for money is a relatively normal thing, yes? I use quotes here since you're also buying protection from the gang itself.
But could you really be prosecuted if there was never any explicit discussion for getting rid of a tenant? Am I responsible for the unrequested criminal actions of a group that I also happen to pay? Is it racketeering if they offer other, legitimate services? These are all asked genuinely, I'm now morbidly curious if it's possible to get away with it, haha.
judges and prosecutors are not stupid, most of the time they are just overworked, so yes, as soon as someone directs their attention to this bulletproof setup, it falls apart and you go to prison
Hey, I have no other way of contacting you because I guess you can't reply after a certain amount of time but the Logitech mouse I was referring to was the Logitech G Pro series
I didn't reply at the time because I wasn't sure if they had upgraded to USB C but I can confirm that as of today, October 8th, 2023 Logitech is still selling $130 mouses with micro usb ports.
