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.
(Part 2): Endangering tenants; letting slumlords slumlord
The Los Angeles Housing Department’s (LAHD) failure to protect tenants at the St. George residential hotel continues. We last reported that LAHD had issued a 10 day order to vacate the building, end date August 3, but had been unable to hold owner Leo Pustilnikov and his company HALA to fulfill their legal obligations to relocate the tenants to comparable housing units. Despite the urgent, dangerous, and unhealthy conditions in the building that justified the short notice vacate order, LAHD has now extended the deadline twice to allow Pustilnikov time to do what he already should have done.
The building conditions include inadequate, malfunctioning and non-existent fire safety equipment, as well as defective plumbing, lack of security, and general deterioration. LAHD determined that continued residency in the building risked tenants’ lives.
The tenants appreciated the initial extension, believing relocation would be handled immediately. However, even with the additional time, Pustilnikov continued to disregard his obligations. The first plan he submitted proposed to move the tenants to the Olympia Hotel, but LAHD rejected it because the Olympia was not in suitable condition. In fact, LAHD issued a Stop Work Order because Pustilnikov was attempting to do illegal construction on the property.
By Friday, August 7, with the extension running out on Tuesday, August 11, and LAHD not working on the weekend, tenants still had heard nothing about when, where and how they would be moved. The only thing they had heard was that there were five boxes for each of them in the St. George lobby, and no tape.
Meanwhile, conditions were continuing to deteriorate. During the week of the extension, water in the building was cut off entirely and, even after it was turned back on, there was no hot water for a few days. HALA did not address the urgent fire safety repairs, and employees of both management and the service provider Libertana, who are supposed to provide support to tenants, continued to bang on tenants’ doors demanding that they leave.
That Friday, with time running out and tenants at the height of stress and fear, LA CAN organizers met with nearly all of them and asked what they wanted to do. They all said that they should be relocated temporarily to hotel rooms while HALA and LAHD figure out where to relocate them to regular apartments. Their main concern was to get out of the St. George before something worse happened.
The hotel idea was not the tenants’ invention. The notice to vacate, issued by LAHD, says that if the owner cannot relocate tenants to a comparable unit within the time of the notice, the owner must place them temporarily in hotel rooms until they find the longer term option. LAHD has the power to enforce this requirement through civil remedies, referral to criminal prosecution, and “emergency abatement”—paying for it themselves, then recovering the costs.
Following that August 7 meeting with the tenants, LA CAN immediately conveyed the demand to LAHD, reminding them that the tenants remained in a dangerous building and that HALA has demonstrated that they are either unable or unwilling to meet their relocation obligations.
HALA did not move the St. George tenants into hotel rooms, even as many of them had packed up their possessions in the boxes provided and were simply waiting in limbo. It is unclear if LAHD pressed HALA to do so. But, on August 10, just before the deadline, LAHD simply extended the time another ten days, giving Pustilnikov and HALA more time to delay, while leaving the tenants with more uncertainty while they remained in dangerous and worsening conditions.
With these delays, many are contemplating simply taking a payout to leave the building. The payout means they will lose their rental assistance subsidy, and it is not enough to cover rent on the open market for an extended period of time. It does help to empty the HALA buildings of tenants, possibly giving Pustilnikov a freer hand to attempt to convert the buildings to some other type of housing.
On August 11, some of the tenants informed LA CAN organizers that they were being brought to the Abbey Hotel on San Pedro Street to look at possible relocation units. They invited LA CAN to accompany them to prevent management intimidation. However, when organizers arrived, HALA staff members would not allow them to see the units and then cancelled the tenants’ viewing, saying it was because of LA CAN’s presence—an obvious effort to discourage tenants from organizing and seeking representation. LAHD had previously said that LA CAN was welcome to attend the viewings at the tenants’ invitation. The HALA staff members then said that the apartments were not ready for occupancy.
Over the past few days, some of the tenants have seen relocation units and some have agreed to move to them. However, many others have not, and HALA is claiming that some of the St. George’s long-time residents are not tenants and therefore are not entitled to any relocation.One tenant who did agree to move was then told by the Housing Authority that her rental assistance subsidy could not transfer to the new unit, leaving her to pay a market rent rate she cannot possibly afford. LA CAN and Legal Aid lawyers are attempting to clarify the rules around the subsidies.
While all this is happening at the St. George, tenants at the New Carver received a notice from LAHD that they would have to vacate their building by October 15, 2026 for renovations. While the renovations are no doubt necessary, Pustilnikov’s pattern of failing to make repairs and refusal to obey the law around relocation, along with LAHD’s failure to require repairs, and complete inability to get Pustilnikov to treat tenants fairly at the St. George leaves us greatly concerned that similar patterns will repeat at the New Carver and his other buildings.
Of particular concern at the New Carver is that, shortly before LAHD served the notices of the renovations and need to vacate, HALA gave the tenants there a notice restricting their use of their community room, including requiring them to make reservations a week in advance, pay a $250 security depends, obtain approval from the management, limiting the time and frequency of their meetings. These new rules are clearly intended to interfere with tenants’ ability to meet and organize to protect their rights. HALA drafted this notice the same day that HALA management employees disrupted a tenants’ meeting with LA CAN at the St. George. These restrictions on tenant organizing follow a pattern and indicate just how much HALA does not want the tenants to know and assert their rights.
HALA’s blatant violations of tenants’ rights and willingness to place them in danger, along with LAHD’s inability to enforce existing laws to protect tenants, points to larger problems with a city government that is too deferential to the profit motives of developers. It also indicates problems with city policies towards homelessness that do not prioritize permanent housing, especially permanent supportive housing like the St. George, over simply warehousing people in shelters. We expect as this story unfolds that the flaws in those policies will become more apparent.
(Part 3): the building is forcibly emptied, some relocated, some return to homelessness; the battle continues.
The fight for the rights of tenants in the St. George reached a boiling point on Saturday, August 22, when the owner Leo Pustilnikov and his company HALA brought in private security guards and police to forcibly evict the remaining tenants.
To recap, conditions at the St. George, an 88 unit apartment building for people with very low-income, most of whom require supportive services, have been bad and deteriorating for years, as the owner has stalled on making repairs. Throughout that time, inspectors from the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) have responded to complaints about uninhabitable conditions and ordered the owner to make repairs constantly, but have not taken effective actions to enforce those orders. Conditions include inadequate, defective and absent fire safety equipment, defective plumbing, mold, broken windows, lack of security and others.
Meanwhile, largely in response to the deteriorating conditions and unresponsive management, tenants had been moving out of the building, leaving only about twenty units occupied by the end of July this year. Pustilnikov and HALA own a total of 21 buildings in Skid Row that they purchased in 2024 for an extremely discounted price from the city after the former owner, Skid Row Housing Trust, went into bankruptcy and forfeited its entire affordable housing portfolio. Pustilnikov promised to make repairs to the St. George and other buildings by August 2026. He has, however, dramatically cut operating costs, likely by skimping on repairs and services, notably security for all occupied buildings. LA CAN has seen that people in other buildings owned by HALA, in similar disrepair as the St. George, have been moving out in large numbers, raising questions about whether the owner is deliberately emptying them.
In July 2026, HALA gave the St. George tenants an illegal notice to vacate which they had to withdraw when tenants, supported by LA CAN and lawyers from Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), objected on the grounds that there was no Tenant Habitability Plan approved by the City. A few days after withdrawing that notice, LAHD inspectors came to the building and issued a 10 day notice to vacate, citing dangerous, uninhabitable conditions, particularly related to fire safety. Suddenly, tenants were being forced to move immediately, though the building conditions had been the same for months, if not years.
The vacate notice required HALA to relocate the tenants to comparable apartments. HALA failed to do so. In fact, HALA made little effort to do so in the first notice period; its managers (Hart Management Company) simply and aggressively told tenants that they had to leave right away. With LA CAN’s support, tenants organized and demanded their rights. LAHD extended the time, giving HALA another ten days to move the tenants. HALA dragged their feet, refused to help some, and generally failed to meet their obligations, while allowing building conditions to worsen.
Tenants demanded to be moved into hotel rooms while HALA and LAHD sorted out where they could be relocated to. HALA refused; LAHD did not force them to, despite the vacate notice saying that the owner was required to post people in hotels if relocation could not be arranged in time. Instead, LAHD extended the deadline for another ten days.
During this second extension period, in large part due to tenants demanding their rights and organizing with LA CAN, HALA and LAHD managed to move many of the tenants into apartments in other buildings in Skid Row. However, due to delays and obstacles created by management, several tenants felt pressured to take pay-outs instead of actual relocation. The pay-outs will not be sufficient to replace the rental assistance these tenants are giving up, and they may end up on the streets. In fact, several St. George tenants are now unhoused.
Some tenants remained in the building, with HALA either failing or refusing to relocate them. On Saturday morning, the day after the second extension expired, LAPD officers came to the St. George with the manager and told remaining tenants that they had to leave immediately or face arrest for trespassing. Later in the day, LAPD officers returned, along with private security officers, again telling people that they had to leave and threatening arrest. One tenant described LAPD officers attempting to kick down her door.
LA CAN organizer Jade Arellano arrived at the building and called representatives from City Council District 14. This enforcement action was a surprise to the tenants because officials from LAHD had assured them just a few days earlier that there would be no lock-outs or “self-help” evictions.
With the help of Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who came out to the St. George, and her staff, police agreed to back off until Monday, giving the few remaining tenants a chance to complete packing and make arrangements to leave. However, when one of the tenants returned to her apartment, she found that management had bolted the door shut. LA CAN and the councilmember had to pressure management to unbolt the door. The situation seemed to be resolved for the moment, with the tenants secure in their apartments until Monday. LA CAN organizers and the councilmember left the St. George.
The calm was short-lived. Around 10:30 pm that Saturday night, security guards came banging on the tenants’ doors, demanding again that they leave or be arrested for trespassing. For their safety, those tenants left the building. It is unclear if they were able to bring their possessions with them.
The end result is that the building is now empty and the former tenants are scattered– some have been relocated to other buildings owned by HALA; some are on their own, living on the streets or in temporary places; some are still fighting to prove their tenancy (which HALA denies) so they can get relocation. Still others are gone and not accounted for because they left in the months before the notice to vacate.
Meanwhile, at the St. Marks Hotel, LA CAN organizers are seeing very similar conditions to those that preceded the St. George being yellow-tagged and shut down: faulty fire doors, severe plumbing issues, and most notably, improper notices from the landlord demanding that tenants relocate. Just like with tenants at the St. George, property managers are telling tenants at the St. Marks that the reason for the relocation notices is that the building will be imminently red-tagged, “shut down,” or demolished, despite there being no permits or Tenant Habitability Plan filed with the City.
Because tenants at the St. George organized, with help from LA CAN, they were able to limit the harm. Many of them got the replacement apartments or relocation assistance to which they are entitled, while others continue to fight for their rights. LAHD has proven itself unable to effectively enforce the law against HALA and Pustilnikov without intense pressure from organizers, lawyers, and the council office. Tenants at the St. Marks will need to organize similarly. They know that LA CAN will stand with them.