Slum Housing Task Force Files Charges Against Hotel’s Owner

The Brandon Hotel is the kind of building where some people go to live when they’re down on their luck, and others when they want to hide.

“I would never tell my mother that I live here,” one resident said in a near whisper, displaying a bathroom shared by several tenants on one hall. The room stank, and a three-inch cockroach lay dead in the shower stall.

On Thursday, the city attorney’s slum housing task force filed 30 criminal charges against the owner of this five-story, 81-room building at 733-735 S. Hartford Ave., about a mile from downtown Los Angeles.

Ramon Mora, 51, of Silver Lake is charged with violations of health, fire, building and safety codes, including lack of heat, inoperative plumbing, exposed wiring and rat infestation.

“It’s a total slum,” said Stephanie Sautner, task force leader.

The 1920s-era brick building is a forbidding, unfriendly place, where people tend to move away when asked a question. Some residents, who didn’t want their names used, said the people there are worse than the conditions, that prostitutes, crack and heroin dealers are common.

Los Angeles Police Officer Brian Miyakawa of the Rampart Division said the hotel is a source of crime in the neighborhood. “Myself and residents of that area feel the majority of problems there generate from that hotel,” he said, “problems such as robberies, burglaries from vehicles and assaults. A lot of the people living there are druggies, parolees, mentals.”

Owner Mora said the charges were unfair and called for a reinspection. “I’m improving my property,” he said, citing about $400,000 in building improvements and many recent repairs.