SLUM LORDS ALLOW BED BUGS- TRASH- MOLD- COCKROACHES - LIVE WITH IT OR GO HOMELESS?

By Daniel Ross VICE.COM - UNIHABITABLE LANDLORDS PUSH OUT LOW INCOME TENANTS

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Last November, the tenants of the Madison Hotel, a 220-room residential hotel in downtown Los Angeles, sued the property owners for conditions they described as "untenantable." Among the complaints listed: Trash wasn't being collected within the building, leading to a cockroach infestation; the elevator frequently broke and wasn't fixed; the communal TV room and lobby were stripped of furniture; mold grew up the walls; there was a bedbug infestation; and the landlord allegedly threatened to forcibly remove certain tenants, some of whom said they were harassed about their sexual orientation or their disabilities.

The tenants who sued—there were 15, most of them elderly, disabled, or military veterans—hoped that a lawsuit would make the Madison Hotel, which has some of the last affordable housing units in downtown LA, habitable again. But so far, it hasn't.

"Essentially, for the last month and a half, the owners have ignored that there's a lawsuit," said Jeanne Nishimoto, attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. "They weren't even turning on the heat in the building when it was very cold. And it's an all-concrete building—you can guess how cold it gets in there." (William Holdings, LLC, one of the defendants in the law suit, declined to comment for this story.)