We’ve written before about the rogue real estate zillionaires CIM Group and their scofflaw shenanigans, from infiltrating their Brown-Act-flouting minion Monica Yamada onto the BIDs’ Joint Security Committee to their bribery, permit-condition-ignoring, and general villainy. They are lately, of course, famous for having so egregiously ignored the terms of a deal with the City over their building at Sunset and Gordon that a judge voided their permits and told them to evict all their tenants.

And just now, on April 3, 2015, the LA Board of Building and Safety Commissioners slapped an “ORDER TO COMPLY” on the window of the Sunset/Gordon building which states:

An investigation of various complaints received by the Department has revealed that the subject apartment building is being used as a hotel without the required permits and Certificate of Occupancy.

Therefore, you are hereby ordered to stop the unapproved use and occupancy as a hotel on or before April 10, 2015.

So it’s illegal, but they’re still renting it out as a hotel. First we gotta wonder how would they be doing that? There’s no sign on the building. Find out after the break!

Well, if you’re suspicious like we are, maybe Airbnb comes to mind. And lo! A few minutes stumbling about on the site yields a shadowy host named Mart, who has hundreds of reviews for dozens of listings, a significant number of which have the same roof shot, shown here.

We’ve never been on the roof of the Sunset/Gordon building, so we can’t positively identify it that way. But there’s more. First note the location of these listings, shown here in another screenshot.

It sure looks like it’s right there at Sunset and Gordon, doesn’t it? And if we need more evidence, one of the reviews tells us that the apartment is “right across the street from Emerson College Los Angeles,”¹ which is, of course, right across the street from the Sunset/Gordon building. Here find screenshots of these three listings: one and two and three.

So we get a picture of some serious villainy here. A court ordered CIM Group to get all its tenants out. Instead of doing that they start renting out their unleasable apartments using Airbnb. Another order is issued telling them to stop this by April 10, 2015, but as of 10 p.m. PDT on April 9, 2015, the listings are still live. And note well that on page 2 of that order we see that:

No person shall fail, refuse,² or neglect to comply with all orders issued by the Department pursuant to this division. Any person violating this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor which shall be punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000.00 or by imprisonment in the County Jail for a period of not more than six months, or by both.

But even worse, CIM Group, as we’ve mentioned, employs current Hollywood Entertainment District BID Board President Monica Yamada. Monica presided over a meeting of the Board just last month in which they voted unanimously to adopt positions allowing them to keep arresting homeless people for sitting on the sidewalk and to be able to continue arresting ice-cream vendors who are sufficiently unwise as to venture into the BID’s boundaries. For the sake of at least plausible consistency, we hope President Monica will send her BID Patrollies out to arrest herself and her CIM Group compatriots tomorrow if those Airbnb listings are still up. But we’re not holding our breath.

1. We’re not linking directly to the Airbnb listings in the body of the article because that website excludes archive.org so we’re worried they’ll disappear. A PDF of the page where the quoted review appears is here. In case the links stay live, the three salient ones are: Luxury Apartment with Pool and View, Magnificent Highrise in Hollywood, and Luxury 2 Bedroom with Washer & Dryer.
2. Evidently the City of Los Angeles doesn’t like the Oxford comma. We, however, like the Oxford comma. So we added this one. But we’re trying to do straight reporting here, so we’re just letting you know that the instant comma does not appear in the original document.

Image of ORDER TO COMPLY is ©2015 MichaelKohlhaas.org. Image of Mart is kiped from Airbnb and appears here under a claim of fair use. Screenshots of Airbnb stuff are also fair use, friends.