Tenant-activists sue L.A. over Hollywood hotel conversion
Tenant-activists are suing the city of Los Angeles after local lawmakers paved the way for a Hollywood apartment building to be converted into a boutique hotel.
The Los Angeles City Council rejected an appeal against the planned makeover of the Cherokee Avenue building earlier this year, approving the environmental review for the project.
At the time, tenant-activists argued that the city had failed to properly consider how turning the vacant building into a hotel would affect the neighborhood, especially as renters grappled with a housing crisis.
Tenants were evicted from the Cherokee Avenue building years ago under the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to eject renters from buildings that fall under rent control if the owners plan to take the property off the rental market. Former tenants said they have struggled to find affordable apartments since.
Tenant-activists are now seeking to force the city to toss out its approval of the project. The lawsuit, filed this week by the newly formed Hollywoodians Encouraging Rental Opportunities, accuses the city of violating state law and demands that it prepare a more exhaustive report on the environmental effects of the hotel plan.
The City Council’s decision is part of “an egregious pattern of wrongheaded decisions by city officials who welcome project after project destroying housing that serves low-income city residents,” Frank Angel, the attorney representing the group, said in a statement released Friday to reporters.
The plaintiffs also include Max Blonde, a former tenant of the Cherokee Avenue building, and Sylvie Shain, who was recently ejected from another Hollywood apartment building and initially appealed against the hotel plan.
Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for City Atty. Mike Feuer, said that city lawyers would review the complaint but had no other comment.
Building owner David Lesser, who was also named in the lawsuit, said he had yet to see the lawsuit and declined to comment Friday. During the debate over the hotel plans, his representatives argued that California law does not allow the city to consider purely economic and social effects when it weighs the environmental effects of a development project.
Shain and other tenants who lodged the lawsuit were also sharply critical of City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who represents the area where the Hollywood building is. O’Farrell did not back the hotel plans but saw no legal basis for granting the appeal, his staff told lawmakers in June.
An O’Farrell spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Follow me on Twitter at @LATimesEmily
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