Comment by celestialcheese | Hacker News Reader

Comment by celestialcheese | Hacker News Reader

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celestialcheese

> 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.

You have the law part mixed up.

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.

Exactly. You'd have to be a lunatic to rent out a side unit or ADU without ironclad assurances that you can evict, and who can believe that now?

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.

I’m glad we agree.

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