The ‘landlady from Hell’ suddenly left Airbnb where she wasn’t paying rent – A strange story

It must be a big relief for the Airbnb owner who has been waging a major legal battle for months now against his landlady who has been living in his house without paying rent since April 2022, when she moved out.

Elizabeth Hirtschhorn, the “housekeeper from Hell” he was trying to evict from his residence, finally left on Nov. 3 after, he says, she spent 570 days refusing to pay for her stay at his Brentwood, California, property.

It finally took 570 days of legal battles, about $60,000 in unpaid rent and a police escort for Elizabeth Hirtschhorn to leave the property on Friday, Sebastian Rucci, Jovanovic’s attorney, told Insider. However, a cryptic e-mail from the landlady’s lawyer suggests the matter is far from over.

“What is written about me is false,” says the tenant

“This is a smear campaign. The reports are false,” Hirtschhorn said in a statement sent to Insider by her attorney, Amanda Seugaard. “It was never a six-month Airbnb stay, we never had an agreed-upon end date of March 19, 2022, I didn’t refuse to pay rent, I didn’t demand $100,000 to leave, or that a certain amount must be paid by Jovanovic to leave. I was advised not to speak immediately, to clear things up. People don’t know that the real story is very different from what they’ve been told.” It should be noted that, before what happened in Brentwood, Hirtschhorn had done the same to other Airbnb owners in July 2021.

And so she suddenly took her things and left the Airbnb

Jovanovich was at his home on Nov. 3 when he saw a moving crew moving items in and out of the rental apartment where Hirtschhorn lived, according to a court filing by his attorney.

When he asked the crew what they were doing, they refused to answer, according to the filing, prompting Jovanovich to call the police out of fear that the men might move in with his unwanted housekeeper.

It is recalled that Jovanovic, in the last 18 months, had filed both a claim for compensation for the collection of unpaid rents and a claim for illegal detention against Hirtschhorn.

The tenant, for her part, had some successes in court – including a court order in her favor that ruled she could not be evicted because the apartment was wrongly listed as a rental due to the lack of a certificate of occupancy or a permit to rent. shower construction.

Why did he decide to leave?

However, despite that court order, Hirtschhorn eventually left the property, with her attorney telling Insider via email that his client was not escorted out of the apartment by police, never refused to pay rent, and , instead, “decided to go to another location for her personal safety, due to extreme harassment from the owner, including false stories and false press releases, stalking and doxxing (searching and publishing personal data with malicious intent); both for herself and her friends, as well as the conditions in the property”.

However, within an hour of the tenant leaving his apartment, Jovanovich changed the locks.

How it all started

The problems began about five months after Hirtschhorn moved into the property, according to a Los Angeles Times report, when she requested repairs to the electric blinds that no longer worked. After Jovanovich went to repair them, he noticed water and mold damage to the bathroom sink that wasn’t there before he rented the residence and wanted to fix it.

The Times reported that Jovanovich offered to pay for his lodger to stay in a hotel while repairs were completed, but she declined. He invited her to stay at his guest house, according to the report, but she again declined, citing an allergy to cat fur.

Jovanovich claims that Hirtschhorn paid about 5 months of rent, at $105 a night, and then stopped paying in April 2022 — after she contacted a housing department investigator, Pedro Gonzalez, claiming she was facing illegal eviction. harassment and non-payment of relocation fees.

According to the Times of Los Angeles, the tenant refused to move out unless the Airbnb owner paid her $100,000. Later, according to the Times, she filed a countersuit against Jovanovich, claiming he “inappropriately” invited her to move into his home.

The problems in the apartment

Hirtschhorn also contacted the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, with the Department finding two code violations at the apartment regarding the certificate of occupancy and the shower installation permit.

For her part, the tenant, through her lawyer, tells Insider that she only went to the housing department after Jovanovitch “attempted to evict her with one week’s notice in mid-March 2022, after she had paid next month’s rent as he had agreed and had extended the rental agreement for a year.’

The property owner eventually had to withdraw the eviction notices until he could prove to the city that the apartment was legal — but he said Hirtschhorn wouldn’t let him in to complete the repairs, at least until this weekend, when she eventually dropped it for safety reasons, according to her lawyer.

The owner, though he plans to eventually get the necessary permits to rent out the property again through Airbnb, told the Los Angeles Times that for now he will turn it into a recreational space for his two children.

“We need to banish the bad energy and turn it back into a happy, family space,” he told the paper.

But didn’t the tenant leave? Her lawyer’s cryptic e-mail

But after he left, Hirtschhorn’s lawyer sent an e-mail on Nov. 4 saying Jovanovitch “rushed” in changing the locks. “Ms. Hirtschhorn had discussed with me her concern about the continued surveillance and harassment, but also her desire to fix things that needed to be fixed,” her lawyer wrote to Jovanovich’s lawyer. “Subject to my discussions with Mrs. Hirtschhorn, I inform you that you have no authority to change the locks or assume the house has been abandoned. Furthermore, you have broken the law by trespassing and changing the locks.’

Jovanovic’s lawyer considers the idea that his tenant would return absurd and told Insider that his client intends to proceed with his lawsuit asking the woman for the rent back.

“Her lawyer’s statement that she could return is an example of the poison used by those who want to terrorize friendly owners like Sakha Jovanovic,” said Rucci, the owner’s lawyer, adding: “The good news is that she didn’t get a penny from extortion. But there is no basis for Elizabeth Hirtschhorn to terrorize Saka. He secured 570 days of free rent and harassed him to no end. Her many arguments that she has the right to stay in the apartment are absurd. You can’t … dress up these arguments – it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.’