14 ms·

Airbnb tenant refuses to leave for more than a year

66 points by YeBanKo 3y ago

Willish42 3y ago
[flagged]
- mikestew 3y ago
  given there are people on the street who are actually homeless and didn't have the opportunity to buy tons of land in the 90's before the housing crisis exploded and continues to get exponentially worse. And this is the individual homeowner's problem to solve because...? Sounds like a local government problem. Regardless, just because the victim is wealthy doesn't mean you're not victim-blaming.
  - Willish42 3y ago
    Because using space that could be permanently lived in by somebody to instead seek profits as a luxury vacation rental, along with bad housing and tax policies in CA, is exactly the reason we have so many homeless. 1. Too many homeless people 2. Keep making luxury condos and rent them out on AirBnB, while NIMBYs continue to veto affordable higher-density housing developments 3. Blame local government and say it's their problem to fix 4. Get more homeless people 5. Return to step 1
    - mikestew 3y ago
      Saying essentially the same thing twice does not an argument make. I'm sure if you re-read the article, you'll find that #2 doesn't even apply. And you haven't even bothered to refute the idea that it is a local government problem. Don't like it? Talk to the local zoning board. Otherwise, whining about the actions of individuals, assuming the law allows such actions, is going to do fuck-all to solve the problem.
    - EricE 3y ago
      The vast majority of homeless are addicts and wouldn't move into free housing if provided, or mentally ill and should be cared for instead of dumped on the street - and also wouldn't remain in free housing even if provided - because they are mentally ill! If you sincerely think homelessness is just a lack of housing I heartily encourage you to get out from behind your keyboard and go volunteer at a local homeless shelter. Ignorant people such as yourself are our real problem in making meaningful progress towards solving homelessness - luckily ignorance can be overcome if you choose to actually get involved. And it is rewarding when you do reach the occasional folks who are homeless but don't want to be and just need some help getting out. They may be the minority, but there are still many there and they are underserved. Those are the folks I focus on and what inspire me to remain involved.
  - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    Thank you! I couldn't give two shits about someone who has forced they're way onto the property of someone who has owned it for 30+ years, and refused to leave. I would hope the common sense response to this would be to give the squatter a free year of housing in the local prison. 540 days of unpaid Airbnb rent x $1,000/day is more than half a million in stolen money, that's a criminal charge. There is quite literally no excuse for what has happened here outside of failed local government.
- arp242 3y ago
  Well, maybe, but "simply don't pay rent" clearly isn't any solution to any housing crisis. Not every landlord is actually rich for starters, and "you're rich enough, so who cares people commit crimes against you?" is not something I'm hugely comfterable with, to put it mildly.
  - Willish42 3y ago
    I totally agree about folks needing to pay rent, and that this is a bad situation for the landlord. I do find the slant in defending homeowners' side of things in a place with as much homelessness as LA to be an ... interesting editorial choice. He played stupid games and won stupid prizes, and even admits further down in the article that the lawsuit is a "principled stance" rather than anything he truly can't resolve through some kind of agreement with the tenant.
baz00 3y ago
Trick here is to get a better lawyer. Edit: to clarify this was mostly a stab at trying to deal with this sort of stuff yourself.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  It sounds to me that the owner must be badly represented. The reason he can't evict appears to be that the accomodation isn't considered suitable to let, because it has an "illegal shower". As a consequence he is denied access to remedy other causes of problems with the property (damp penetration). I'm not American, and definitely not from CA; and I'm certainly not any kind of lawyer. It seems to me that the Department of Building and Safety must be guilty of gross maladministration, and the landlord should be able to sue for compensation and punitive damages. It seems obvious. Meanwhile, I detest AirBnB. My neighbour is a non-resident AirBnB host.
  - bagels 3y ago
    Government has no obligation to do its job. Supreme court says so.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Pretty sure it's to involve a lawyer sooner. Extending the "lease" beyond the date agreed to as well as writing legal statements to her without running them by a lawyer really screwed him over in the beginning. Nothing wrong with exercising your rights but uh do make sure that they're actually rights ...
User23 3y ago
https://archive.ph/TRCkv https://archive.ph/TRCkv
rllearneratwork 3y ago
In 90-ies, when police and courts stopped doing whatever they have been doing during USSR collapse, the vacuum of "law enforcement" was filled with criminal gangs. So businessmen would pay some gang for their business protection. Specifically, a landlord, hotel owner, etc. would be paying a local gang so that they enforce "laws" and resolve disputes. LA has a bunch of gangs/cartels operating in it already. Is this something that is already happening? What prevents them from offering a "service of getting rid from problem tenants"?
- bagels 3y ago
  The landlord is the obvious person to investigate when the tenant is "rid of"
  - mynameishere 3y ago
    Nah, such services already exist. You just have some extremely loutish, heavy-hitting-seeming dude "move in" with the squatter with a legit lease. The mission is to be so foul and unpleasant that the original squatter leaves. In other contexts due to jury nullification, prosecutorial misconduct and similar you might actually see vigilante groups for hire. The opening scene from The Godfather was based on reality.
    - chimen 3y ago
      That's another can of worms in itself.
    - daft_pink 3y ago
      My experience representing wealthy client is that you don't want to be the person worth millions of dollars in some lawsuit against someone worth almost nothing. While the tenant can always declare bankruptcy for money they owe you, engaging in illegal activity against a tenant could easily result in you owing that person far more than the nuisance and lost rent from them living in your backyard. Reality is the landlord has a lot more to lose than the tenant, so what you're describing is completely impractical.
hobotime 3y ago
[flagged]
- bagels 3y ago
  I don't remember squatters being on the ballot.
  - SkinTaco 3y ago
    Yup, GP was definitely referring to the "should we allow squatters" vote of 2017. Nothing else they could possibly be referring to. Great job responding to the strongest interpretation of his argument.
  - atentaten 3y ago
    Elected law makers are on the ballot. They are supposed to make legislative decisions based on the needs of the people they represent.
  - rllearneratwork 3y ago
    politicians protecting them by "feel good" policies always are and are getting more and more radical
jimt1234 3y ago
Never long-term rent your short-term rental.
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  That's not it. Know the law before deviating from the contract by being too accommodating.
Dig1t 3y ago
>But instead, he says he’s scared to walk to his car because there’s a woman who won’t leave his guesthouse. She says she has the right to stay. So far a judge has ruled that, under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, he has no legal reason to evict her. How does this setup work logistically? Does the woman ever leave? What if the owner just waits for the woman to go grocery shopping and breaks into his own property and changes the locks? Are there any cases of such a thing happening? Or what if he just turned off her water from the main house? So many scenarios, I don't understand.
- bagels 3y ago
  That's called an illegal eviction. Unsure is the penalty is worse than the lawsuit or not.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  Pacific Heights is a great film about a nightmare tenant scenario.
- pyrophane 3y ago
  If he changed the locks, the police would force him to let her back in and he'd be in court for an illegal lockout, which wouldn't help his overall case. If he turned off the water, she would report the issue to the city and they'd force him to turn it back on, and he would likely face a fine. His only option is to fight it out in a court that is heavily tilted in favor of tenants, and she (his "tenant") knows it.
  - YeBanKo 3y ago
    I think at this point police may not do anything. Even he changes the locks. In SF and LA and few other metro area, they tend to ignore anything that can be a “civil matter”
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Go watch the movie "Pacific Heights"
mc32 3y ago
How is not paying rent for a year not legal grounds for eviction? That's what's wrong. I can see being delinquent a coupe of months or three but a freaking year?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  Because it’s California.
  - sangupta 3y ago
    This is the real problem. How can not paying rent for an year, and staying in a property that you don't have legal title/rent agreement for not construe a legal cause for eviction under "Just Cause Ordinance". Shame on such city leaders who care only for votes.
- agilob 3y ago
  If a person has nowhere to go they are at risk of being homeless, no court will sign eviction notice. Same thing in many EU countries. I've seen some stories where tenants don't pay rent for months, so the landlord rents one of the rooms to some super noisy, aggressive, smelly tenants who are actors. Their role it to make life of the tenants so miserable they move out on their own.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    > If a person has nowhere to go they are at risk of being homeless, no court will sign eviction notice this is FALSE, and typical of the kind of table-talk among older landowners
  - oldbbsnickname 3y ago
    There are 3 groupings that should get conflated: 1. Otherwise good tenants just without means who would otherwise be homeless. 2. Hellish tenants without means who also would be homeless. 3. Hellish tenants with means who play the "But I would be homeless" card as an excuse to cheat landlords. The tenant in question here is 3. rather than 1. A judge cannot side with everyone as 1, must treat everyone equally with the given facts but should not enable those refuse to pay or exploit technicalities to create a situation without relief. The landlord didn't understand the law, was too generous, and failed to hire a lawyer.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Jian Yang living rent free in Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE
- pandaman 3y ago
  They had Jared getting kicked out of his own condo by an AirBnB tenant in the same show.
fnfjfk 3y ago
[flagged]
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  He was renting out part of his property so it can be used by people other than himself. This helps address the housing issue. Why would anyone risk that now?
  - _cenw 3y ago
    The housing issue is affordable housing, not $3000 for a single room. You're acting like the guy ran a charity.
  - fnfjfk 3y ago
    Renting short term housing to tourists does not help the housing issue, and it is unfair to neighbors that did not sign up to live next to or in the same apartment building as a hotel. Tourists belong in hotels, not in residential buildings. NYC, where I live, has effectively banned Airbnb recently. It’s a great change. LA should do it too.
    - jonny_eh 3y ago
      The squatter isn't a tourist.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- chimen 3y ago
  What are you trying to say actually here? How is this "deserving" in any way? He worked, he got an apartment to make some extra cash and that's about it. I know plenty of people doing this since I was a child, Airbnb or not.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    That maybe housing, a basic human need that too often goes unfulfilled in a supposedly developed country, shouldn't be an investment? I mean, I can think of people even more deserving, but in the end, charging 3 grand per month for what looks like a room with at least one code violation should be considered some kind of moral failing.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
An individual owner is a fool to rent in California. Only a large corporation with lots of money and lawyers and that can amortize bad tenants over its many properties can actually survive.
hbosch 3y ago
I really don't understand the logic here. If the space is not permitted for occupancy, how can she be a tenant (legally speaking)?
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  Catch-22. The main problem is he doesn't have a lawyer and doesn't understand how anything works. There are a half dozen ways to evict this insane, scofflaw mooch legally.
  - whiddershins 3y ago
    But not quickly.
  - sundaeofshock 3y ago
    Did you read the article? The guy does have a lawyer. This isn’t some struggling young family; the guy is a periodontist to the stars. He has a custom built home in freaking LA. He says he can afford to pay the tenant $100k to make her move out, but refuses to do so on principle. This was a PR piece designed to make him look good.
mistrial9 3y ago
btw- this is in the local news cycle California renters pay 43% more than US, but the gap’s shrinking California rents up 14% since July-through-September 2019. Meanwhile, the typical US tenant paid 21% more...
- bagels 3y ago
  Landlords pay a 500% premium to buy houses here, so, tenants are pretty lucky to only pay 43% more.
0ct4via 3y ago
[flagged]
- sokoloff 3y ago
  In the context of this story, is there any evidence or even inkling to suggest that what is being reported isn't happening? Is the left-leaning LA Times in on the hoax as well? https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-04/airbnb-guest-refuse-pay-leave-luxury-rental https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-04/airbnb-g...
- nedrylandJP 3y ago
  This story is not from Fox News, it is from the LA local Fox broadcast network affiliate.
  - simonw 3y ago
    Yeah, local Fox affiliates are an entirely different kind of thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTTV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTTV
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
thebitrot 3y ago
[flagged]
- alistairSH 3y ago
  IN this case, he was renting an accessory dwelling ("granny flat"). I don't generally find this problematic - it's putting an otherwise unused piece of land (the owner's back yard) to economic use. The problem in this case was the ADU was not properly permitted - the owner shouldn't be surprised this caused problems.
RugnirViking 3y ago
[flagged]
- sxg 3y ago
  Definitely not something that should be endorsed as the hacker mindset. This is a scam and an overall detriment to society even if legal.
  - wildrhythms 3y ago
    Leave it to 'hackers' to come out to defend landlords, property rights, and enclosures in general.
    - gruez 3y ago
      >property rights Nice MBP and iPhone 15 pro you got there, would be a real shame if someone stole it.
    - EL_Loco 3y ago
      I know what you mean. A lot of people in my country just say 'fuck it' to property rights and steal shit by threat of violence. A lot of people here also say 'fuck it' to human rights and it's even wilder the crazy stuff they do. And then those 'asshole' hackers come here and defend these rights. Oh, the audacity.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Running an illegal rental is also a detriment to society. Is the tenant more to blame? Possibly. But let's not pretend the owner is a complete innocent here.
    - sxg 3y ago
      Owner is definitely not innocent either. Nothing to be praised in this story for anyone.
- matusp 3y ago
roenxi 3y ago
Corporate news does tend to add a lot of undue spin to these stories; but assuming there are any parts of this that hold up with a little bit of extra context this is a case of completely dysfunctional government. Taking the article at face value; there is nothing here that I can recognise as property rights. It reads like state-sanctioned theft. To a level of crazyness where I'd like to read the court records to find out the details.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nobodyandproud 3y ago
[flagged]
TekMol 3y ago
Even after reading two articles about this, I don't understand the legal context. The guest seems to not have a contract for a long term stay. So how can they have any protections that cater to real renters? Does this mean everybody who breaks into a house has those protections? What would happen if the owner evicted the guest via some private security firm? Would police help the guest to get back into the house? On which legal grounds?
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  > The guest seems to not have a contract for a long term stay. So how can they have any protections that cater to real renters? Airbnb provides a contract page that can be considered a rental document in the eyes of California regardless of length. > Does this mean everybody who breaks into a house has those protections? See point 1. California is a real life big rock candy mountain.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Seriously. I'd say this doesn't make sense, but see LA and California. >> Because she stayed in the unit for six months, Hirschhorn qualified for L.A.'s recently adopted Just Cause Ordinance, which requires a landlord to have a legal reason to evict her But... >> Hirschhorn’s attorney told the Times that "she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit." So she's staying in an unlicensed rental unit, not paying, and yet entitled to renter protections?
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    It'd be nice if anywhere would link to the actual legal fillings ... The previous article was saying that she had to pay the market rate and she considered the market rate for an unoccupaniable unit as 0$. That should fail in court imo; plenty of people rent storage spaces that are unoccupiable and those have costs > 0. I guess the 0$ is pretty critical to her side as you generally can't legal _not pay rent_. You can put the money into escrow (i.e. LA's REAP [1]) if the property is in violation of a housing ordinance. I'm still going with this was probably a slam dunk for him to evict her if he actually went to a lawyer in the first place instead of trying to placate her when he first started having problems. [1]: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lamc/0-0-0-197431 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lam...
sgt 3y ago
Has he tried all the usual tricks.. switching off water, turning off electricity?
- smeej 3y ago
  Those are probably also illegal, if the squatter is already being protected by other laws that protect renters.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  That can count as an illegal eviction, which can mean serious penalties.
- henriquez 3y ago
  There are already lawyers involved on both sides so the landlord would get bulldozed for playing tricks like that. When I lived in CA I had to help my friends and family with lawsuits against some legitimately bad landlords (a meth head in one case, heroin in another, and frivolous eviction because they wanted to jack the rent up for a new tenant before the lease ended). While I was researching California Civil Code (not to mention what cities like SF and LA have stacked on top of it), the deck is completely stacked against property owners. Like it’s relatively trivial to exploit the law to live rent free for six+ months while a lawsuit is pending and then ride off into the hills and do it again with your next landlord. Fun fact, if you stay in a CA hotel for 30+ days you are legally a tenant and they have to sue for eviction if you don’t feel like leaving. Although I think AirBNB rentals are in general morally wrong I don’t think these laws are always fair either, and I would definitely avoid renting out property in CA.
- Condition1952 3y ago
  The owner is still paying those utilities, aren’t they? they should just stop paying
  - rascul 3y ago
    Not sure how things are there but in my experience in different parts of the country the tenant is generally responsible for the utilities.
xwdv 3y ago
After all the insanely high cleaning fees and lists of chores these AirBnB landlords make you do just for the “privilege” of paying to stay in their property, along with driving up the prices of properties and rent in their area, I’m kind of glad the tables have turned. They had it coming.
- hrudham 3y ago
  If this is a risk, all it's going to do is rise the prices even further.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    If landlords could raise prices to make more money, why wouldn't they already be doing that? Rents aren't priced based on landlord expenses. Otherwise we'd see rents plummet when a landlord pays off their mortgage.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
joenot443 3y ago
> Because she stayed in the unit for six months, Hirschhorn qualified for L.A.'s recently adopted Just Cause Ordinance, which requires a landlord to have a legal reason to evict her, and if there is no legal reason, the landlord is required to pay for relocation assistance for the tenant Wow. Is that a law most Californians support?
- strangesmells02 3y ago
  The problem with using the government to socially engineer society is that you even if you have good intentions one way or another, you end up playing whack-a-mole with infinite possible unintended consequences. Its also like 300,000 dollars to get a liquor license in L.A. which is the government essentially excluding all small business from starting a bar and playing favoritism to big corporations with the stated intention of safety/regulation.
  - allenrb 3y ago
    That’s exactly the case with renter protections. I’m a landlord in a large American city. I’m also a “nice guy” who makes sure that things work. We don’t evict except when other options have been exhausted. Now for the problem: it takes many months to evict here, best case. As a result, we will never take a chance on a marginal tenant. No other decent landlord with whom I’ve spoken will either. Unintended consequences are real, especially when owners are deprived of their property rights. You might think I’m conservative, but for the most part I’m a flaming liberal. ;-)
  - ttymck 3y ago
    I find it hard to believe that completely unregulated markets don't have the same "whack-a-mole with infinite possible unintended consequences", just a different set of consequences.
- pydry 3y ago
  It's a crappy sticky plaster on the social problems caused by de-taxing land and granting one class of people the right to extract rents from a other through legal title. Just like rent control. If your sympathies side with those on the side of the parasitic rent extraction machine depleting the productive capacity of the real economy (the side of the economy where people work rather than charge for access to assets), you won't be a champion of either of these things and will argue that they are well meaning but inadvertently bad for the victims of the parasites. Realistically some parasites can't be killed without killing the host - they entrench themselves that deeply. When Cuba decided to overhaul land rights, for example, the US invaded.
ndbe 3y ago
[flagged]
OsrsNeedsf2P 3y ago
An article with actual meat on the subject: https://archive.ph/TRCkv https://archive.ph/TRCkv
- dang 3y ago
  (We merged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37788906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37788906 into this thread, which points to that article)
siva7 3y ago
Not only LA is a weird place, Germany has similiar laws in action. If your airbnb tenant decides to stay forever, there is not much you can do except going the long court way. You can't simply push a tenant out of your house even if the guest isn't paying or staying longer than allowed.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  While true, tenant protections are known in advance, this simply becomes a risk of renting property (Airbnb or long-term). Everybody I know who owns rental property has dealt with problem tenants. It's a hassle. But, nobody should be buying rental properties without understanding how/if the local laws protect tenants. And I'm guessing in many jurisdictions, regular rental laws apply to Airbnb, at least in part. As they appear to do in this story. This is, in part, why hotels have different regulations (though even then, guests have some rights).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ftyhbhyjnjk 3y ago
[flagged]
blululu 3y ago
This is a pretty juicy tabloid story. Naturally the Daily Mail has the coverage you would want: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-guest-Elizabeth-Hirschhorn-kicked-Oakland-rental-two-months-moving-Sascha-Jovanovics-Brentwood-mansion-Harvard-grad-overstayed-540-days.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-gue... Some highlights: * Tenant is a Harvard Alumna. * Tenant pulled the same move a year ago in Oakland * Tenant appears to be a general crazy person. *edit removed amp issue from link (sorry about that).
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > Ten[an]t appears to be a general crazy person. Some folks may remember Pacific Heights[0], where a very different side of Michael Keaton was revealed. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/
  - wyldfire 3y ago
    The fact that the tenant seems to be exploiting the legal loopholes made me think immediately of "Pacific Heights". That 100k is probably approaching the opportunity cost if it hasn't exceeded it already. Time to move on and pay the ransom. Although if it were me on the receiving end I doubt I'd see it so rationally.
- phreeza 3y ago
  (Tennant)
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Tenant...
- throw_m239339 3y ago
  > This is a pretty juicy tabloid story. Naturally the Daily Mail has the coverage you would want: > Some highlights: * Tenet is a Harvard Alumna. * Tenet pulled the same move a year ago in Oakland * Tenet appears to be a general crazy person. Your amp link has a video that is impossible to stop. Here is a non amp link. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-guest-Elizabeth-Hirschhorn-kicked-Oakland-rental-two-months-moving-Sascha-Jovanovics-Brentwood-mansion-Harvard-grad-overstayed-540-days.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-gue... Well one thing is certain, the tenant will have harder time renting anything in USA in the future.
buzzdenver 3y ago
Squatting is a funny thing in many places. In Spain you have 48 hours to make a police report. After that evicting squatters will be a many months long legal process during which you'll need to keep paying all the bills and taxes for your property.
- lifeinthevoid 3y ago
  In Belgium, police cannot evict squatters unless they are caught during the act of entering. Lunacy and a veritable nightmare if your property is targeted.
  - poorlyknit 3y ago
    The regulation incentivizes one to actually use the property instead of parking one's money there, so I think it's working as intended. In order to avoid squatting, put the property to use or hire a security company. Don't expect the state to provide protection for land that's not being put to use.
    - buzzdenver 3y ago
      Do you really want to live in a world where you need to hire security if you want to go on a two-week vacation? I fail to see how the squatting that is described in the article is different from theft.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
soderfoo 3y ago
> Hirschhorn’s attorney told the Times that "she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit." This type of smarmy legal thinking drove me nuts as an attorney and was one of the factors that led to me becoming a software dev. Do these attorney's demand a substantial retainer up front? It is quite the risk, requiring high levels of both dissonance and intestinal fortitude to contort the law to vigorously represent an admitted deadbeat. But I am one to cast stones. I was successful in my criminal defense practice and enjoyed the client work. It's working with other attorneys that was the problem.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Yep, this is one of those arguments that might make sense only in a very literal reading of the law. Because if the unit isn't approved for occupancy, she shouldn't be living there at all, rent or no rent.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    The facts of this case are not legally distinct from any other slumlord, they just have a better marketing team who is fighting the battle in the media and public opinion. The landlord signed a long-term rental contract on a unit that did not meet rental code. Yes, the tenant probably knew it was out-of-code when it was rented. Just like any other person renting from a slumlord. Other than it being Airbnb, and other than the person trying to claim the value of the rental is zero because of the livability issue, it’s a big-standard slumlord situation. The proper move is to escrow the payments etc but generally you have a lot of rights as a long-term tenant (and many hotels/etc will take specific steps to avoid you being considered a long-term tenant as a result) and you don’t lose them just because the owner is a slumlord or allows the unit to fall below code. Rentals are really a high-risk market with a lot of legal protections for the tenant, but everyone hopped into the market over the last 10 years thinking they’d just double their money overnight, and this is what happens when a tenant who knows the rules meets a landlord who doesn’t. The number the landlord recovers won’t be zero most likely but they also won’t get it in a timely fashion, or possibly at all.
- 3y ago
fakedang 3y ago
The state should pay for the landlord's lost revenue as damages, because of its stupid dysfunctional laws. But hey, it's California, so there's probably some legal loophole that would mess that up even more. Wonder if this would qualify for YC's non technical hack question? But then again, they've removed that question...
strikelaserclaw 3y ago
In what way is this a story that intellectually engages the mind? Just seems like tabloid trash that belongs on reddit.
tiahura 3y ago
[dead]
Ekaros 3y ago
I wonder if the tenant can be back billed at full daily rate. That would be only reasonable right?
polski-g 3y ago
Isn't the credit card on file with AirBNB?
gniv 3y ago
Coming to France I discovered something similar: France has very strong tenant laws. Afaiu they cannot evict a tenant that doesn't want to leave. As a result, renting a place here is a nightmare. Landlords require a ton of stuff to reassure themselves that they get the rent. Basically if you don't have a well-paying full-time job you have to buy insurance. A bunch of startups now act as credit-check companies and insure the landlord. They take 3.5-4.5% of rent.
- jlokier 3y ago
  You say that, but when I rented a place in France, the landlord turned up in the middle of my 1 year tenancy, about a week before Christmas, and told me I have 2 weeks notice because he had sold the flat to a new owner. He hadn't mentioned anything about it until he turned up at the door with this news. I was just about to travel for Christmas (outside France), so I had to urgently find somewhere else to live in a few days, then move all my stuff, just before I went away. That was difficult. I was lucky some lovely Mormon friends stopped by, and when I asked if they could help me move my stuff, they obtained the church van, ignored that they weren't insured to carry me or my things, and did a brilliant job of helping me move quickly.
  - gniv 3y ago
    Well, that was illegal. They have to give you at least a month notice, and it has to be via registered letter. And I'm not positive, but selling the house might not even be a legit reason to kick you out before the lease contract (that's what I heard from my agent).
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      in France it is a legit reason if the new owner bought the place to move in. Illegal if it bought the place with the purpose to rent it. Same without purchase in fact. The owner can tell you to leave if it plans to move in. I am however not sure if law is specific enough to avoid being exploited with loopholes like "owner move in legally for 1 month (while not actually living there and doing renovation), then start renting again to someone else"

66 points by YeBanKo 3y ago

Willish42 3y ago

[flagged]

mikestew 3y ago
given there are people on the street who are actually homeless and didn't have the opportunity to buy tons of land in the 90's before the housing crisis exploded and continues to get exponentially worse. And this is the individual homeowner's problem to solve because...? Sounds like a local government problem. Regardless, just because the victim is wealthy doesn't mean you're not victim-blaming.
- Willish42 3y ago
  Because using space that could be permanently lived in by somebody to instead seek profits as a luxury vacation rental, along with bad housing and tax policies in CA, is exactly the reason we have so many homeless. 1. Too many homeless people 2. Keep making luxury condos and rent them out on AirBnB, while NIMBYs continue to veto affordable higher-density housing developments 3. Blame local government and say it's their problem to fix 4. Get more homeless people 5. Return to step 1
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Saying essentially the same thing twice does not an argument make. I'm sure if you re-read the article, you'll find that #2 doesn't even apply. And you haven't even bothered to refute the idea that it is a local government problem. Don't like it? Talk to the local zoning board. Otherwise, whining about the actions of individuals, assuming the law allows such actions, is going to do fuck-all to solve the problem.
  - EricE 3y ago
    The vast majority of homeless are addicts and wouldn't move into free housing if provided, or mentally ill and should be cared for instead of dumped on the street - and also wouldn't remain in free housing even if provided - because they are mentally ill! If you sincerely think homelessness is just a lack of housing I heartily encourage you to get out from behind your keyboard and go volunteer at a local homeless shelter. Ignorant people such as yourself are our real problem in making meaningful progress towards solving homelessness - luckily ignorance can be overcome if you choose to actually get involved. And it is rewarding when you do reach the occasional folks who are homeless but don't want to be and just need some help getting out. They may be the minority, but there are still many there and they are underserved. Those are the folks I focus on and what inspire me to remain involved.
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  Thank you! I couldn't give two shits about someone who has forced they're way onto the property of someone who has owned it for 30+ years, and refused to leave. I would hope the common sense response to this would be to give the squatter a free year of housing in the local prison. 540 days of unpaid Airbnb rent x $1,000/day is more than half a million in stolen money, that's a criminal charge. There is quite literally no excuse for what has happened here outside of failed local government.
arp242 3y ago
Well, maybe, but "simply don't pay rent" clearly isn't any solution to any housing crisis. Not every landlord is actually rich for starters, and "you're rich enough, so who cares people commit crimes against you?" is not something I'm hugely comfterable with, to put it mildly.
- Willish42 3y ago
  I totally agree about folks needing to pay rent, and that this is a bad situation for the landlord. I do find the slant in defending homeowners' side of things in a place with as much homelessness as LA to be an ... interesting editorial choice. He played stupid games and won stupid prizes, and even admits further down in the article that the lawsuit is a "principled stance" rather than anything he truly can't resolve through some kind of agreement with the tenant.

baz00 3y ago

Trick here is to get a better lawyer. Edit: to clarify this was mostly a stab at trying to deal with this sort of stuff yourself.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
denton-scratch 3y ago
It sounds to me that the owner must be badly represented. The reason he can't evict appears to be that the accomodation isn't considered suitable to let, because it has an "illegal shower". As a consequence he is denied access to remedy other causes of problems with the property (damp penetration). I'm not American, and definitely not from CA; and I'm certainly not any kind of lawyer. It seems to me that the Department of Building and Safety must be guilty of gross maladministration, and the landlord should be able to sue for compensation and punitive damages. It seems obvious. Meanwhile, I detest AirBnB. My neighbour is a non-resident AirBnB host.
- bagels 3y ago
  Government has no obligation to do its job. Supreme court says so.
lesuorac 3y ago
Pretty sure it's to involve a lawyer sooner. Extending the "lease" beyond the date agreed to as well as writing legal statements to her without running them by a lawyer really screwed him over in the beginning. Nothing wrong with exercising your rights but uh do make sure that they're actually rights ...

User23 3y ago

https://archive.ph/TRCkv https://archive.ph/TRCkv

rllearneratwork 3y ago

In 90-ies, when police and courts stopped doing whatever they have been doing during USSR collapse, the vacuum of "law enforcement" was filled with criminal gangs. So businessmen would pay some gang for their business protection. Specifically, a landlord, hotel owner, etc. would be paying a local gang so that they enforce "laws" and resolve disputes. LA has a bunch of gangs/cartels operating in it already. Is this something that is already happening? What prevents them from offering a "service of getting rid from problem tenants"?

bagels 3y ago
The landlord is the obvious person to investigate when the tenant is "rid of"
- mynameishere 3y ago
  Nah, such services already exist. You just have some extremely loutish, heavy-hitting-seeming dude "move in" with the squatter with a legit lease. The mission is to be so foul and unpleasant that the original squatter leaves. In other contexts due to jury nullification, prosecutorial misconduct and similar you might actually see vigilante groups for hire. The opening scene from The Godfather was based on reality.
  - chimen 3y ago
    That's another can of worms in itself.
  - daft_pink 3y ago
    My experience representing wealthy client is that you don't want to be the person worth millions of dollars in some lawsuit against someone worth almost nothing. While the tenant can always declare bankruptcy for money they owe you, engaging in illegal activity against a tenant could easily result in you owing that person far more than the nuisance and lost rent from them living in your backyard. Reality is the landlord has a lot more to lose than the tenant, so what you're describing is completely impractical.

hobotime 3y ago

[flagged]

bagels 3y ago
I don't remember squatters being on the ballot.
- SkinTaco 3y ago
  Yup, GP was definitely referring to the "should we allow squatters" vote of 2017. Nothing else they could possibly be referring to. Great job responding to the strongest interpretation of his argument.
- atentaten 3y ago
  Elected law makers are on the ballot. They are supposed to make legislative decisions based on the needs of the people they represent.
- rllearneratwork 3y ago
  politicians protecting them by "feel good" policies always are and are getting more and more radical

jimt1234 3y ago

Never long-term rent your short-term rental.

oldbbsnickname 3y ago
That's not it. Know the law before deviating from the contract by being too accommodating.

Dig1t 3y ago

>But instead, he says he’s scared to walk to his car because there’s a woman who won’t leave his guesthouse. She says she has the right to stay. So far a judge has ruled that, under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, he has no legal reason to evict her. How does this setup work logistically? Does the woman ever leave? What if the owner just waits for the woman to go grocery shopping and breaks into his own property and changes the locks? Are there any cases of such a thing happening? Or what if he just turned off her water from the main house? So many scenarios, I don't understand.

bagels 3y ago
That's called an illegal eviction. Unsure is the penalty is worse than the lawsuit or not.
at_a_remove 3y ago
Pacific Heights is a great film about a nightmare tenant scenario.
pyrophane 3y ago
If he changed the locks, the police would force him to let her back in and he'd be in court for an illegal lockout, which wouldn't help his overall case. If he turned off the water, she would report the issue to the city and they'd force him to turn it back on, and he would likely face a fine. His only option is to fight it out in a court that is heavily tilted in favor of tenants, and she (his "tenant") knows it.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  I think at this point police may not do anything. Even he changes the locks. In SF and LA and few other metro area, they tend to ignore anything that can be a “civil matter”
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
SoftTalker 3y ago
Go watch the movie "Pacific Heights"

mc32 3y ago

How is not paying rent for a year not legal grounds for eviction? That's what's wrong. I can see being delinquent a coupe of months or three but a freaking year?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Because it’s California.
- sangupta 3y ago
  This is the real problem. How can not paying rent for an year, and staying in a property that you don't have legal title/rent agreement for not construe a legal cause for eviction under "Just Cause Ordinance". Shame on such city leaders who care only for votes.
agilob 3y ago
If a person has nowhere to go they are at risk of being homeless, no court will sign eviction notice. Same thing in many EU countries. I've seen some stories where tenants don't pay rent for months, so the landlord rents one of the rooms to some super noisy, aggressive, smelly tenants who are actors. Their role it to make life of the tenants so miserable they move out on their own.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > If a person has nowhere to go they are at risk of being homeless, no court will sign eviction notice this is FALSE, and typical of the kind of table-talk among older landowners
- oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  There are 3 groupings that should get conflated: 1. Otherwise good tenants just without means who would otherwise be homeless. 2. Hellish tenants without means who also would be homeless. 3. Hellish tenants with means who play the "But I would be homeless" card as an excuse to cheat landlords. The tenant in question here is 3. rather than 1. A judge cannot side with everyone as 1, must treat everyone equally with the given facts but should not enable those refuse to pay or exploit technicalities to create a situation without relief. The landlord didn't understand the law, was too generous, and failed to hire a lawyer.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Jian Yang living rent free in Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhZACkzuZeE

pandaman 3y ago
They had Jared getting kicked out of his own condo by an AirBnB tenant in the same show.

fnfjfk 3y ago

[flagged]

jonny_eh 3y ago
He was renting out part of his property so it can be used by people other than himself. This helps address the housing issue. Why would anyone risk that now?
- _cenw 3y ago
  The housing issue is affordable housing, not $3000 for a single room. You're acting like the guy ran a charity.
- fnfjfk 3y ago
  Renting short term housing to tourists does not help the housing issue, and it is unfair to neighbors that did not sign up to live next to or in the same apartment building as a hotel. Tourists belong in hotels, not in residential buildings. NYC, where I live, has effectively banned Airbnb recently. It’s a great change. LA should do it too.
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    The squatter isn't a tourist.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chimen 3y ago
What are you trying to say actually here? How is this "deserving" in any way? He worked, he got an apartment to make some extra cash and that's about it. I know plenty of people doing this since I was a child, Airbnb or not.
- _cenw 3y ago
  That maybe housing, a basic human need that too often goes unfulfilled in a supposedly developed country, shouldn't be an investment? I mean, I can think of people even more deserving, but in the end, charging 3 grand per month for what looks like a room with at least one code violation should be considered some kind of moral failing.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

An individual owner is a fool to rent in California. Only a large corporation with lots of money and lawyers and that can amortize bad tenants over its many properties can actually survive.

hbosch 3y ago

I really don't understand the logic here. If the space is not permitted for occupancy, how can she be a tenant (legally speaking)?

oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Catch-22. The main problem is he doesn't have a lawyer and doesn't understand how anything works. There are a half dozen ways to evict this insane, scofflaw mooch legally.
- whiddershins 3y ago
  But not quickly.
- sundaeofshock 3y ago
  Did you read the article? The guy does have a lawyer. This isn’t some struggling young family; the guy is a periodontist to the stars. He has a custom built home in freaking LA. He says he can afford to pay the tenant $100k to make her move out, but refuses to do so on principle. This was a PR piece designed to make him look good.

mistrial9 3y ago

btw- this is in the local news cycle California renters pay 43% more than US, but the gap’s shrinking California rents up 14% since July-through-September 2019. Meanwhile, the typical US tenant paid 21% more...

bagels 3y ago
Landlords pay a 500% premium to buy houses here, so, tenants are pretty lucky to only pay 43% more.

0ct4via 3y ago

[flagged]

sokoloff 3y ago
In the context of this story, is there any evidence or even inkling to suggest that what is being reported isn't happening? Is the left-leaning LA Times in on the hoax as well? https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-04/airbnb-guest-refuse-pay-leave-luxury-rental https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-04/airbnb-g...
nedrylandJP 3y ago
This story is not from Fox News, it is from the LA local Fox broadcast network affiliate.
- simonw 3y ago
  Yeah, local Fox affiliates are an entirely different kind of thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTTV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTTV
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

thebitrot 3y ago

[flagged]

alistairSH 3y ago
IN this case, he was renting an accessory dwelling ("granny flat"). I don't generally find this problematic - it's putting an otherwise unused piece of land (the owner's back yard) to economic use. The problem in this case was the ADU was not properly permitted - the owner shouldn't be surprised this caused problems.

RugnirViking 3y ago

[flagged]

sxg 3y ago
Definitely not something that should be endorsed as the hacker mindset. This is a scam and an overall detriment to society even if legal.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  Leave it to 'hackers' to come out to defend landlords, property rights, and enclosures in general.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >property rights Nice MBP and iPhone 15 pro you got there, would be a real shame if someone stole it.
  - EL_Loco 3y ago
    I know what you mean. A lot of people in my country just say 'fuck it' to property rights and steal shit by threat of violence. A lot of people here also say 'fuck it' to human rights and it's even wilder the crazy stuff they do. And then those 'asshole' hackers come here and defend these rights. Oh, the audacity.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Running an illegal rental is also a detriment to society. Is the tenant more to blame? Possibly. But let's not pretend the owner is a complete innocent here.
  - sxg 3y ago
    Owner is definitely not innocent either. Nothing to be praised in this story for anyone.
matusp 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago

Corporate news does tend to add a lot of undue spin to these stories; but assuming there are any parts of this that hold up with a little bit of extra context this is a case of completely dysfunctional government. Taking the article at face value; there is nothing here that I can recognise as property rights. It reads like state-sanctioned theft. To a level of crazyness where I'd like to read the court records to find out the details.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nobodyandproud 3y ago

[flagged]

TekMol 3y ago

Even after reading two articles about this, I don't understand the legal context. The guest seems to not have a contract for a long term stay. So how can they have any protections that cater to real renters? Does this mean everybody who breaks into a house has those protections? What would happen if the owner evicted the guest via some private security firm? Would police help the guest to get back into the house? On which legal grounds?

freitzkriesler2 3y ago
> The guest seems to not have a contract for a long term stay. So how can they have any protections that cater to real renters? Airbnb provides a contract page that can be considered a rental document in the eyes of California regardless of length. > Does this mean everybody who breaks into a house has those protections? See point 1. California is a real life big rock candy mountain.
ethbr1 3y ago
Seriously. I'd say this doesn't make sense, but see LA and California. >> Because she stayed in the unit for six months, Hirschhorn qualified for L.A.'s recently adopted Just Cause Ordinance, which requires a landlord to have a legal reason to evict her But... >> Hirschhorn’s attorney told the Times that "she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit." So she's staying in an unlicensed rental unit, not paying, and yet entitled to renter protections?
- lesuorac 3y ago
  It'd be nice if anywhere would link to the actual legal fillings ... The previous article was saying that she had to pay the market rate and she considered the market rate for an unoccupaniable unit as 0$. That should fail in court imo; plenty of people rent storage spaces that are unoccupiable and those have costs > 0. I guess the 0$ is pretty critical to her side as you generally can't legal _not pay rent_. You can put the money into escrow (i.e. LA's REAP [1]) if the property is in violation of a housing ordinance. I'm still going with this was probably a slam dunk for him to evict her if he actually went to a lawyer in the first place instead of trying to placate her when he first started having problems. [1]: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lamc/0-0-0-197431 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lam...

sgt 3y ago

Has he tried all the usual tricks.. switching off water, turning off electricity?

smeej 3y ago
Those are probably also illegal, if the squatter is already being protected by other laws that protect renters.
ceejayoz 3y ago
That can count as an illegal eviction, which can mean serious penalties.
henriquez 3y ago
There are already lawyers involved on both sides so the landlord would get bulldozed for playing tricks like that. When I lived in CA I had to help my friends and family with lawsuits against some legitimately bad landlords (a meth head in one case, heroin in another, and frivolous eviction because they wanted to jack the rent up for a new tenant before the lease ended). While I was researching California Civil Code (not to mention what cities like SF and LA have stacked on top of it), the deck is completely stacked against property owners. Like it’s relatively trivial to exploit the law to live rent free for six+ months while a lawsuit is pending and then ride off into the hills and do it again with your next landlord. Fun fact, if you stay in a CA hotel for 30+ days you are legally a tenant and they have to sue for eviction if you don’t feel like leaving. Although I think AirBNB rentals are in general morally wrong I don’t think these laws are always fair either, and I would definitely avoid renting out property in CA.
Condition1952 3y ago
The owner is still paying those utilities, aren’t they? they should just stop paying
- rascul 3y ago
  Not sure how things are there but in my experience in different parts of the country the tenant is generally responsible for the utilities.

xwdv 3y ago

After all the insanely high cleaning fees and lists of chores these AirBnB landlords make you do just for the “privilege” of paying to stay in their property, along with driving up the prices of properties and rent in their area, I’m kind of glad the tables have turned. They had it coming.

hrudham 3y ago
If this is a risk, all it's going to do is rise the prices even further.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  If landlords could raise prices to make more money, why wouldn't they already be doing that? Rents aren't priced based on landlord expenses. Otherwise we'd see rents plummet when a landlord pays off their mortgage.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

joenot443 3y ago

> Because she stayed in the unit for six months, Hirschhorn qualified for L.A.'s recently adopted Just Cause Ordinance, which requires a landlord to have a legal reason to evict her, and if there is no legal reason, the landlord is required to pay for relocation assistance for the tenant Wow. Is that a law most Californians support?

strangesmells02 3y ago
The problem with using the government to socially engineer society is that you even if you have good intentions one way or another, you end up playing whack-a-mole with infinite possible unintended consequences. Its also like 300,000 dollars to get a liquor license in L.A. which is the government essentially excluding all small business from starting a bar and playing favoritism to big corporations with the stated intention of safety/regulation.
- allenrb 3y ago
  That’s exactly the case with renter protections. I’m a landlord in a large American city. I’m also a “nice guy” who makes sure that things work. We don’t evict except when other options have been exhausted. Now for the problem: it takes many months to evict here, best case. As a result, we will never take a chance on a marginal tenant. No other decent landlord with whom I’ve spoken will either. Unintended consequences are real, especially when owners are deprived of their property rights. You might think I’m conservative, but for the most part I’m a flaming liberal. ;-)
- ttymck 3y ago
  I find it hard to believe that completely unregulated markets don't have the same "whack-a-mole with infinite possible unintended consequences", just a different set of consequences.
pydry 3y ago
It's a crappy sticky plaster on the social problems caused by de-taxing land and granting one class of people the right to extract rents from a other through legal title. Just like rent control. If your sympathies side with those on the side of the parasitic rent extraction machine depleting the productive capacity of the real economy (the side of the economy where people work rather than charge for access to assets), you won't be a champion of either of these things and will argue that they are well meaning but inadvertently bad for the victims of the parasites. Realistically some parasites can't be killed without killing the host - they entrench themselves that deeply. When Cuba decided to overhaul land rights, for example, the US invaded.

ndbe 3y ago

[flagged]

OsrsNeedsf2P 3y ago

An article with actual meat on the subject: https://archive.ph/TRCkv https://archive.ph/TRCkv

dang 3y ago
(We merged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37788906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37788906 into this thread, which points to that article)

siva7 3y ago

Not only LA is a weird place, Germany has similiar laws in action. If your airbnb tenant decides to stay forever, there is not much you can do except going the long court way. You can't simply push a tenant out of your house even if the guest isn't paying or staying longer than allowed.

alistairSH 3y ago
While true, tenant protections are known in advance, this simply becomes a risk of renting property (Airbnb or long-term). Everybody I know who owns rental property has dealt with problem tenants. It's a hassle. But, nobody should be buying rental properties without understanding how/if the local laws protect tenants. And I'm guessing in many jurisdictions, regular rental laws apply to Airbnb, at least in part. As they appear to do in this story. This is, in part, why hotels have different regulations (though even then, guests have some rights).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ftyhbhyjnjk 3y ago

[flagged]

blululu 3y ago

This is a pretty juicy tabloid story. Naturally the Daily Mail has the coverage you would want: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-guest-Elizabeth-Hirschhorn-kicked-Oakland-rental-two-months-moving-Sascha-Jovanovics-Brentwood-mansion-Harvard-grad-overstayed-540-days.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-gue... Some highlights: * Tenant is a Harvard Alumna. * Tenant pulled the same move a year ago in Oakland * Tenant appears to be a general crazy person. *edit removed amp issue from link (sorry about that).

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
> Ten[an]t appears to be a general crazy person. Some folks may remember Pacific Heights[0], where a very different side of Michael Keaton was revealed. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/
- wyldfire 3y ago
  The fact that the tenant seems to be exploiting the legal loopholes made me think immediately of "Pacific Heights". That 100k is probably approaching the opportunity cost if it hasn't exceeded it already. Time to move on and pay the ransom. Although if it were me on the receiving end I doubt I'd see it so rationally.
phreeza 3y ago
(Tennant)
- uoaei 3y ago
  Tenant...
throw_m239339 3y ago
> This is a pretty juicy tabloid story. Naturally the Daily Mail has the coverage you would want: > Some highlights: * Tenet is a Harvard Alumna. * Tenet pulled the same move a year ago in Oakland * Tenet appears to be a general crazy person. Your amp link has a video that is impossible to stop. Here is a non amp link. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-guest-Elizabeth-Hirschhorn-kicked-Oakland-rental-two-months-moving-Sascha-Jovanovics-Brentwood-mansion-Harvard-grad-overstayed-540-days.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12597887/Airbnb-gue... Well one thing is certain, the tenant will have harder time renting anything in USA in the future.

buzzdenver 3y ago

Squatting is a funny thing in many places. In Spain you have 48 hours to make a police report. After that evicting squatters will be a many months long legal process during which you'll need to keep paying all the bills and taxes for your property.

lifeinthevoid 3y ago
In Belgium, police cannot evict squatters unless they are caught during the act of entering. Lunacy and a veritable nightmare if your property is targeted.
- poorlyknit 3y ago
  The regulation incentivizes one to actually use the property instead of parking one's money there, so I think it's working as intended. In order to avoid squatting, put the property to use or hire a security company. Don't expect the state to provide protection for land that's not being put to use.
  - buzzdenver 3y ago
    Do you really want to live in a world where you need to hire security if you want to go on a two-week vacation? I fail to see how the squatting that is described in the article is different from theft.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

soderfoo 3y ago

> Hirschhorn’s attorney told the Times that "she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit." This type of smarmy legal thinking drove me nuts as an attorney and was one of the factors that led to me becoming a software dev. Do these attorney's demand a substantial retainer up front? It is quite the risk, requiring high levels of both dissonance and intestinal fortitude to contort the law to vigorously represent an admitted deadbeat. But I am one to cast stones. I was successful in my criminal defense practice and enjoyed the client work. It's working with other attorneys that was the problem.

alistairSH 3y ago
Yep, this is one of those arguments that might make sense only in a very literal reading of the law. Because if the unit isn't approved for occupancy, she shouldn't be living there at all, rent or no rent.
- paulmd 3y ago
  The facts of this case are not legally distinct from any other slumlord, they just have a better marketing team who is fighting the battle in the media and public opinion. The landlord signed a long-term rental contract on a unit that did not meet rental code. Yes, the tenant probably knew it was out-of-code when it was rented. Just like any other person renting from a slumlord. Other than it being Airbnb, and other than the person trying to claim the value of the rental is zero because of the livability issue, it’s a big-standard slumlord situation. The proper move is to escrow the payments etc but generally you have a lot of rights as a long-term tenant (and many hotels/etc will take specific steps to avoid you being considered a long-term tenant as a result) and you don’t lose them just because the owner is a slumlord or allows the unit to fall below code. Rentals are really a high-risk market with a lot of legal protections for the tenant, but everyone hopped into the market over the last 10 years thinking they’d just double their money overnight, and this is what happens when a tenant who knows the rules meets a landlord who doesn’t. The number the landlord recovers won’t be zero most likely but they also won’t get it in a timely fashion, or possibly at all.
3y ago

fakedang 3y ago

The state should pay for the landlord's lost revenue as damages, because of its stupid dysfunctional laws. But hey, it's California, so there's probably some legal loophole that would mess that up even more. Wonder if this would qualify for YC's non technical hack question? But then again, they've removed that question...

strikelaserclaw 3y ago

In what way is this a story that intellectually engages the mind? Just seems like tabloid trash that belongs on reddit.

tiahura 3y ago

[dead]

Ekaros 3y ago

I wonder if the tenant can be back billed at full daily rate. That would be only reasonable right?

polski-g 3y ago

Isn't the credit card on file with AirBNB?

gniv 3y ago

Coming to France I discovered something similar: France has very strong tenant laws. Afaiu they cannot evict a tenant that doesn't want to leave. As a result, renting a place here is a nightmare. Landlords require a ton of stuff to reassure themselves that they get the rent. Basically if you don't have a well-paying full-time job you have to buy insurance. A bunch of startups now act as credit-check companies and insure the landlord. They take 3.5-4.5% of rent.

jlokier 3y ago
You say that, but when I rented a place in France, the landlord turned up in the middle of my 1 year tenancy, about a week before Christmas, and told me I have 2 weeks notice because he had sold the flat to a new owner. He hadn't mentioned anything about it until he turned up at the door with this news. I was just about to travel for Christmas (outside France), so I had to urgently find somewhere else to live in a few days, then move all my stuff, just before I went away. That was difficult. I was lucky some lovely Mormon friends stopped by, and when I asked if they could help me move my stuff, they obtained the church van, ignored that they weren't insured to carry me or my things, and did a brilliant job of helping me move quickly.
- gniv 3y ago
  Well, that was illegal. They have to give you at least a month notice, and it has to be via registered letter. And I'm not positive, but selling the house might not even be a legit reason to kick you out before the lease contract (that's what I heard from my agent).
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    in France it is a legit reason if the new owner bought the place to move in. Illegal if it bought the place with the purpose to rent it. Same without purchase in fact. The owner can tell you to leave if it plans to move in. I am however not sure if law is specific enough to avoid being exploited with loopholes like "owner move in legally for 1 month (while not actually living there and doing renovation), then start renting again to someone else"