Slumlord Sentenced to More Time in Jail

A Beverly Hills man repeatedly in trouble for allowing slum conditions to exist at a Westlake district residential hotel he owns was sentenced last week to six more months of jail time, city officials said.

Aaron G. Kempe spent 45 days in house arrest last year and was sentenced in July to four months in jail. He was sentenced to the additional six months in jail for his continuing refusal to repair slum conditions at the Stratford Hotel, a four-story, 93-room residential hotel at 2629 W. 8th St., according to City Atty. James K. Hahn. Kempe remains free on bail while pursuing appeals in both cases.

Kempe has missed a total of four deadlines since March, 1988, when Hahn first charged him with allowing vermin infestation, defective bathrooms and smoke detectors, electrical defects and lack of self-closing fire doors at the hotel, according to the city attorney’s office.

“I’d say Aaron Kempe is quickly becoming the most recalcitrant landlord in Los Angeles,” Deputy City Atty. Stephanie Sautner, supervisor of the city’s Slum Housing Task Force, said in an interview. “The case is now more than a year and a half old and he consistently refused to comply with orders--no matter who they come from--to repair the place.”

Sautner said many physically handicapped people live in the building and that frequent elevator failures often have forced them to sleep in the hallways because they can’t get to their rooms.

Kempe, 63, was unavailable for comment. He received the new sentence from Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Carol Boas-Goodson on Jan. 29.

Boas-Goodson first threatened Kempe with jail in May, 1989, after he completed his house arrest without making the required repairs on the hotel. The judge set a new deadline of July 6, 1989, for the repairs and required Kempe to post a $100,000 bond that would be forfeited if he missed the July date.

When Kempe missed that date, Boas-Goodson sentenced him to four months in jail and ordered that the $100,000 be divided evenly between five agencies serving the homeless--the Midnight Mission, the Downtown Women’s Center, the Los Angeles Mission, the Fred Jordan Mission and Para Los Ninos, Sautner said. Kempe has appealed both the sentence and the order that he forfeit the money.

Jerry Carson, Kempe’s manager at the Stratford, said: “We have dope pushers, addicts here. It’s bad, but not as bad as it’s put out to be. It’s a roller coaster--sometimes it’ll be good and, right behind that, it’ll get bad.”

Carson said Kempe has been sick recently and left the repair work in the hands of lazy employees who have let the building deteriorate.

“The man’s no saint--but he’s not the devil people make him out to be,” said Carson. “He’s in business to make money and the place just got too much for him.”

Both jail terms, according to Hahn, were the result of probation violations that stemmed from Kempe’s repeated failures to meet court-ordered deadlines for making repairs at the hotel.

In the past, Boas-Goodson also has ordered Kempe to pay $11,750 in fines and penalties and $3,446 in restitution to investigative agencies. She has set May 1 as the next date upon which Kempe must fix the problems.

Kempe has appealed the September sentence and the matter is pending in the appellate division of Los Angeles Superior Court. He also filed a notice of appeal after his sentencing last week and posted $20,000 bail, said Deputy City Atty. Diane Stepheson, who is handling the case.