On July 23, 2026 tenants at the St. George residential hotel in Skid Row received notice of an “Order to Vacate and Relocate” from their homes, issued by the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD). LAHD inspectors had found code violations throughout the building that they said presented “an imminent threat to the health and safety of the occupants.” These code violations included failure to maintain fire doors, inoperable plumbing fixtures, nuisance conditions and “general dilapidation or improper maintenance.”
The notice told tenants that they must vacate the building within 10 days—by Monday, August 3.
St. George tenants have lived there a long time, some as long as twenty years. This is home. The St. George is “permanent supportive housing” (PSH), meaning it is home to people with very low income, many formerly unhoused, who need supportive services. The services are part of the tenancy. Without these services and subsidized rents, most St. George tenants would likely end up living on the streets.
The St. George had been owned and managed by the Skid Row Housing Trust (SHRT) until 2023 when that nonprofit organization filed for bankruptcy and subsequently collapsed, leading a judge to order all 29 of its downtown residential hotels into a receivership. The buildings had fallen into disrepair and SRHT was unable to manage them. The receiver maintained the buildings and conducted some repairs for one year at a cost of $40 million, before selling them. On August 7, 2024, Leo Pustilinikov, a private, profit-minded developer, through his organization “Hope for an Affordable Los Angeles” (HALA), bought seventeen of the buildings, including the St. George, for an incredibly discounted price of $10 million. Later he bought four more. HALA has been responsible for maintaining the St. George ever since.
The Notice to Vacate that the tenants received was, in fact, an order from LAHD to HALA, the owner, requiring them to take certain actions required by law: maintain a “fire watch” to protect the tenants, conduct basic maintenance to ensure tenant safety, provide tenants with regular updates, and create and implement a plan to temporarily relocate all of the tenants in comparable homes until repairs are completed. The order required them to submit that plan to LAHD for their inspection and approval of the relocation units before moving tenants into them.
By Tuesday, July 28, HALA had not submitted its plan. They had done nothing to update the tenants on the process. In fact, managers contracted by HALA to run the building, Hart District Management, and, even more disturbingly, employees of the service provider Libertana were banging on tenants’ doors telling them that they had to leave immediately and telling some tenants, falsely, that they were not entitled to any relocation benefits. That day, tenants and LA CAN organizers met with LAHD inspectors to demand support, full enforcement of the order’s relocation requirements, and postponement of the deadline to leave.
At the meeting, LAHD inspectors told tenants that they should start packing and that the following Monday they would have to move. The inspectors confirmed that LAHD had not received a relocation plan, but said that they thought St. George tenants would have to move to units in several other buildings among those owned by HALA. LA CAN organizers, who are supporting tenants in all of the HALA buildings, know that these other buildings have many of the same habitability and safety issues as the St. George. The tenants explained to the inspectors that it was not acceptable for them to be forced to move without any meaningful assistance on such short notice.
The tenants’ objections to being forced to move on so little notice do not in any way minimize the dangerous and unlivable conditions in the building. HALA must make those repairs. However, these conditions are not new. Tenants have been complaining about the deterioration of the building, including bad plumbing and lack of fire safety, for years. The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) sent HALA a letter on the tenants’ behalf in November 2025 alerting them to severe habitability and fire safety problems in the St. George and other HALA owned buildings. St. George tenants have been enduring these conditions only to have this punitive ten day “vacate” order dropped on them suddenly.
LAHD also has known about these conditions all along. Beyond the LAFLA letter, the inspectors admitted that they have been inside the St. George on a weekly basis since HALA took over ownership. HALA purchase documents include an agreement to create a repair plan and submit monthly progress reports to LAHD. Despite LAHD officials knowing about these violations, they have taken little to no effective action to enforce HALA’s legal requirement to make repairs and ensure the tenants’ safety. LAHD has the legal authority to impose civil penalties, to initiate criminal prosecution, and even to make the repairs themselves and bill the owner. They failed to do any of these things, and only now have taken this action, which punishes the tenants for the owner’s failures to fulfill his legal obligations.
But HALA may have another agenda. The St. George has 87 residential units, but, as of November 2023, only 43 were occupied. By the time of LAHD’s vacate order, only about 20 people were living in the building. LA CAN organizers recognize this pattern of emptying the buildings, as it is happening across the HALA portfolio—just as the neglect of maintenance and failure to repair conditions critical to tenant health and safety is happening across the portfolio.
Perhaps most tellingly, about a week before the tenants received LAHD’s “notice to vacate,” LA CAN organizers learned that HALA itself had served St. George tenants with a 60-day notice to vacate their homes. HALA had not filed with the city any of the legally required plans to relocate tenants, and management was applying increasing pressure on the tenants to move “voluntarily” ahead of the required relocation. This was the third time in the past year that LA CAN and LAFLA have had to intervene to force HALA to rescind improperly issued notices to vacate. However, in this case, LAHD issued their own 10-day notice immediately afterward, prompting panic and confusion among tenants, many of them asking: why now?
The LAHD Notice to Vacate, coming after so many months of inaction by that city agency, suspiciously aids Pustilnikov and HALA in their efforts to empty the St. George. It may point to a larger game he is playing, with complicity from government officials.
On Friday, July 31, LAHD agreed to the tenants’ and LACAN’s demand to postpone the move-out date, giving them until August 11. What remains to be seen is whether HALA will provide moving services and relocate St. George tenants into comparable, but habitable new apartments; whether LAHD will hold HALA to its legal obligations; whether these moves will be repeated in HALA’s other buildings. And whether Pustilnikov and HALA will succeed with their other agenda at the expense of the city’s most vulnerable tenants.