Thread by @esotouric

The city ignores code violations and Angelenos suffer. Despite LAFD's incident report on last night's big fire, 5287 Sunset, with 60 tenants, is NOT a (legal) commercial to residential conversion. We need to talk about LADBS and Housing inspectors who close out valid complaints.

Fox 11 picked up last night's East Hollywood fire and like LAFD misidentifies the radio studio as a commercial-to-residential conversion. It's nuts dozens of unpermitted beds can burn and reporters are just, oh, apartment fire. foxla.com/news/25-people…

.@NBCLA also covered the East Hollywood "apartment" fire, talking to tenants of the illegal studios & an RV dweller. Management admits they rent by the night! LAFD says they've been here before. Is the city insane? This was a Ghost Ship waiting to happen. nbclosangeles.com/news/local/fla…

@NBCLA Remember right after the Ghost Ship fire, Mike Feuer supposedly launched a warehouse task force, shut down one building full of artists, and then we never heard anything else about investigations of unpermitted residential buildings? @ethanvarian citywatchla.com/index.php/neig…

This man returned from driving for Uber to find his illegally converted "apartment" red tagged by fire. Look at that commercial drop ceiling! If Los Angeles investigated illegal conversions of businesses to living quarters, we'd lose our service industry. These people matter.

The ARN radio studio in East Hollywood that caught fire and displaced 60 tenants was listing rooms on Airbnb two years ago, according to someone who booked a stay, was horrified by the conditions. So Airbnb brokers illegal living spaces? reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/c…
@CityAttorneyLA

As 60 are displaced by the ARM Studio Fire from illegal Airbnbs, the home share database approved by City Council in 2022 to track non compliant listings is nowhere to be found. cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkcon…

Community members continue to post public comment, most recently...

...the Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council requesting an end to whole-house, unhosted short term rentals within the Very High Fire Severity Hazard Zone, in response to the mass murder in February. clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/201…

So the question for @BobBlumenfield @mikebonin @PaulKoretzCD5 @nithyavraman @cd4losangeles @kdeleon is simple: where is the promised database so Angelenos can track illegal homeshare @Airbnb listings like the ARN Radio Studio in @CD13LosAngeles that burned, displacing 60 people?

In Montreal, 7 people are presumed dead after a historic building filled with Airbnbs, which are banned in the neighborhood, burned down. montrealgazette.com/opinion/column…

Some of those illegal nightly rentals freaked out previous guests because they had no windows. Photos were posted in

reviews, and some refused to stay there. Yet Airbnb continued to profit from illegal listings, just as it did at ARN Radio Studio in East Hollywood, where it's just luck nobody died. One presumed victim is a Californian, An Wu, a neuroscientist from UCSD. montrealgazette.com/news/local-new…

From @AllisonHanes in @mtlgazette: Old Montreal fire exposes our collective failure in dealing with Airbnb "it’s worth asking what duty Airbnb had to customer safety after reviews flagged a windowless unit with no fire escape in the now-scorched Old Montreal building. It may not

have the authority to conduct inspections for violations of local fire codes, yet surely Airbnb has at least a moral obligation to investigate potential dangers?" - Here in East Hollywood, Airbnb has escaped any scrutiny over profiting from beds in illegal radio studios.

As the bodies are being pulled out of the illegal windowless Airbnb units in Old Montreal, we're poking around on insideairbnb.com/los-angeles looking for the unpermitted listings in the ARN Radio Studio that burned last week. Could you sleep in a plywood box? It's so... coffin-y.

How about some reviews? Shannon from Chicago stayed prior to the building catching fire, but she got to see a skunk and a knife fight, and had to call the cops to remove intruders.

Benjamin was bummed out to be shown to a dirty, pee soaked trailer filled with mosquitos. He met the local skunks, too. Airbnb gets this review in November, refuses to refund the guest and host Fen is still booking people into this filthy hovel when it burns in March.

Zinat and her boyfriend got so high from second hand meth smoke, they thought about going to the hospital!

Adam from Florida explicitly calls out ARN Studios for what it is: an old radio station building with beds in the recording booths. He provided documentation of the filthy accommodations to Airbnb and got nowhere until he said he was getting sick from the place.

& Ivoree, who stayed in a coffin pod, warns Airbnb guests "honestly not sure how this place is legally operating and have never seen such a bare minimum of human living in the US. but if u ABSOLUTELY have nowhere else to go and all u can afford is this place, just gird ur loins."

Meanwhile, a neuroscientist who booked a room in the illegal Montreal firetrap where people died shared her communications with Airbnb, feels haunted that they ignored her warnings the property was unsafe. canoe.com/news/local-new…

In Montreal, elected officials are falling over themselves to hold Airbnb accountable for the illegal, deadly listings at 135, rue du Port. In East Hollywood, nobody died & it seems nobody cares. It shouldn't take a mass death incident to clean these firetraps up! @CD13LosAngeles

It is amazing how quickly Airbnb can act to delete the illegal listings from its platform after a bunch of tourists are trapped in windowless cells and die in a fire. Montreal's tragedy was just avoided in East Hollywood. Shut these criminals down! msn.com/en-ca/news/can…

Meanwhile, in East Hollywood, the ARN Radio Studio which burned w/ 60 people inside, none in permitted bedrooms, is apparently still renting out @Airbnb RVs in the parking lot. With the building gutted, what's the bathroom situation? @LAFD @HugoForCD13 reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/c…

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