Criminal Charges Filed Over Slum Conditions at Hotel

Criminal charges were filed Monday against a Northridge man whose downtown-area residential hotel complex was listed as one of the city’s worst slum properties in a recent lawsuit by the city attorney’s office.

Timothy Michael Preis, 39, was charged with 15 misdemeanor counts stemming from building, safety and health-code violations in the residential hotel complex at 2616 Idell St. in the Glassell Park area north of downtown. The two-story complex has 25 units, Deputy City Atty. Diane Stepheson said.

Preis refused to comment on the case.

Among the conditions cited were cracked and peeling paint, holes in walls, broken windows, unsanitary and defective plumbing and exposed electrical wires, Stepheson said.

Preis, who has been prosecuted three times for slum conditions at other apartment complexes that he co-owned, is a defendant in a lawsuit filed March 28 by the city and two other plaintiffs against Highland Federal Savings & Loan, A & B Loan Co. and 137 other defendants, Stepheson said. The defendants are accused of racketeering, fraud and other civil violations in connection with the financing and ownership of 11 slum buildings.

Stepheson said she did not know the outcome of the previous three prosecutions.

The suit alleges that the two loan institutions have systematically driven up the paper value of the slum buildings. They frequently changed the buildings’ owners to generate new, bigger loans and to increase mortgage payments, officials said.

The scheme allows lenders to siphon off tenants’ rent to ever-higher payments and fees on the new loans, leaving no money to maintain the buildings, the suit contends.

Highland Federal President Ben Karmelich, who is also named as a defendant in the suit, has denied the charges.

Arraignment for Preis was scheduled for June 8 in Los Angeles Municipal Court.