Scoop: Hollywood Neighborhood Council Member Sued by Apartment Owner For Filing Complaints, or: Mrs. Kravitz in Los Angeles
Gentle reader,
To hear the City of Los Angeles tell it, joining a Neighborhood Council is a priceless opportunity to get involved and help your community as an elected official to an official advisory board, where you can have a voice in deciding local issues and be of service as a liaison between your fellow citizens and City Hall.
Neighborhood Councils hold hearings to give feedback on proposed new real estate developments and conditional use permits for businesses, and they can vote to submit formal Community Impact Statements to be considered by Commissions and City Council before a vote. An NC representative can also request five minutes to make public comment in City Hall, which unlike the scant 60 seconds allotted to citizens, is sufficient time to form a coherent argument—and even get a couple of laughs.
Because Neighborhood Council members learn how to navigate the City’s opaque and confusing systems, it’s not uncommon for them to help neighbors outside of public meetings, providing advice on how to complain about quality of life issues, or even filing complaints and following up themselves.
It’s the following up part—copying down a complaint number, then forwarding it to a City Council deputy or to a Community Law Corps rep and asking that they expedite a response—that is essential in this broken City where so many serious neighborhood problems are allowed to go unresolved for months or years. Neighborhood Council members, with their cordial working relationships with City staff, know the ropes and how to pester effectively.
These targeted squeaky wheel tactics are like a secret cheat code for making Los Angeles function—not always effective, but much more likely to succeed than just filing a 311 or LADBS or Housing Department complaint, going back to your life, and expecting the City to do its job.
So yay for the Neighborhood Council system, and the dedicated volunteers who give of their time and expertise to help make things better. Busybodies like the nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz character of Bewitched fame are heroes in a broken City.
What the City won’t tell you is that, should your community advocacy become sufficiently annoying to a local landlord, you might be personally sued in Los Angeles Superior Court for damages in excess of $35,000!
That’s what happened to Brandi D’Amore, longtime volunteer with the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council (HUNC) last August, with the court case just resolved in her favor, and you’ll read it here first—and maybe only here.
Back when the Los Angeles Times was headquartered kitty-corner from the courts in Downtown Los Angeles—and didn’t have an owner intent on squandering decades of respect and goodwill—Angelenos could rely on a steady diet of breaking news sourced directly from freshly filed legal complaints.
Crafted by counsel to present a compelling case for their clients to prevail, packed with visual exhibits and potential sources, and pulled by friendly court clerks for their favorite reporters, all that was missing on the courthouse beat was a red bow on top.
While today’s El Segundo based L.A. Times still reports on select, high profile legal matters, many of the most interesting and locally significant cases that are heard in the Downtown courthouses come and go with no media attention.
This scattershot coverage makes for an uninformed citizenry, leaving Angelenos confused, anxious and angry about why it seems like nearly everything we love about the City is in decline or under attack. From such negative emotions with nobody to blame, it’s a straight shot to doom scrolling lurid social media channels that highlight street violence and encampment squalor or searching New Mexico real estate listings.
Try not to get caught in that negative feedback loop. Get informed instead.
We believe Angelenos deserve to understand why the City is falling apart and who is making it worse—especially in the aftermath of the terrible wildfires and the many questions they raise about planning failures and poor land stewardship. You should know the real names behind the LLCs and Delaware corporations that are causing harm through their business activities and the City staffers or elected officials who are neglecting their civic duties.
Better informed, you can find ways to work with others who still love and believe in this City to hold those with wealth and power accountable, to see through misleading narratives, to demand better public policies and to support the unsung L.A. angels who try to make things better.
Now admittedly, none of this is as immediately exciting as a cell phone video of screaming people smacking each other, but public records can reveal some hot stuff.
Sometimes, we get a tip about an interesting case, and will attend a hearing, or pull filings from the docket. That’s how we broke the story about Olvera Street’s iconic La Golondrina Cafe fighting the City for the right to operate in a habitable structure (it, and we all, lost that battle), and about a Knock LA freelancer who was personally sued by a landlord she’d reported was listing rent controlled units by the night, and uncovered the real, and extremely sleazy, reasons that Skid Row Housing Trust collapsed and had to be bailed out with public funds.
Today’s story is about a disturbing case, with roots that stretch back a decade. By the time we got the tip, it was already settled in community advocate Brandi D’Amore’s favor. And while we’re not able to report from the courthouse in real time, this case is so worrying that we’re dedicating a newsletter to letting you know that it happened, and expressing our sincere hope that the City ensures nothing like this ever happens to a Neighborhood Council volunteer again without that person being offered civic resources and support.
On to the case. On August 2, 2024, D’Amore (along with unnamed parties Does 1 through 100) was personally sued by 5959 Franklin Bliss, LLC, the legal entity that owns and operates the historic Villa Carlotta apartments in Franklin Village.
Why? Because D’Amore had filed complaints with the Los Angeles Housing Department, the Fire Marshall and Film LA about short term rentals, filming and ticketed events in and around the building.
To understand why a community advocate like D’Amore might be watching Villa Carlotta closely and would file complaints seeking to ensure the City enforced its own rules, you need to to understand how this rent controlled, 50-unit 1926 apartment building got emptied out a decade ago for a proposed boutique hotel, and the roles of displaced tenants dressed as ghosts and the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council in successfully opposing the rezoning scheme.
And you need to know that the formerly affordable building didn’t ultimately become a hotel, but instead was emptied out, remodeled, and reopened as a short-term rental property, with furnished studios without parking starting at an eye-watering $4950/month.
The changes to Villa Carlotta are sad and confusing, with an impact felt beyond Franklin Village: the battle inspired formation of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, and an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit against the City for caring more about protecting migratory birds than vulnerable Angelenos.
As it happens, we’ve been on the Villa Carlotta beat for years, and on our Franklin Village Old Hollywood tours we tell the story of how a loving community of creative neighbors (except one) got displaced in favor of deep-pocketed transients who appreciate the historic building and walkable neighborhood and are oblivious to the pain and loss that saturates the pretty walls.
Read this 2016 newsletter titled Hollywood Heartbreak, or We Had to Kill the Villa Carlotta to Save It, or listen to this 2015 podcast interview with then resident Stinson Carter, then read on.
So informed, you can understand the background to the legal case brought against Brandi D’Amore, which you’ll find below.
The short version: 5959 Franklin Bliss LLC, a Delaware company associated with CGI+ Real Estate Investments, filed suit against Brandi D'Amore, seeking a Temporary Restraining Order, Preliminary Injunction, and Permanent Injunction, as well as damages in excess of $35,000, to prevent D’Amore from making further “false” complaints to government agencies. D’Amore is described as a "Vexatious Neighborhood Nuisance" who had been an annoyance to building management and tenants for years. The specific complaints that triggered the lawsuit were allegations that Franklin might be illegally renting RSO units for less than 30 days, hosting large events without proper permits and illegally allowing unpermitted filming at the Tamarind Property next door.
While D’Amore is a community volunteer who is active in the local Neighborhood Council, and it might be reasonably assumed that her complaints were filed on behalf of local residents as an extension of this volunteer work, she was on her own. The Neighborhood Council didn’t put the legal case on the agenda for discussion, and the City didn’t offer legal or arbitration support. D’Amore had to find a lawyer, and she did.
On October 11, 2024, D’Amore’s personal attorney Frances M. Campbell responded by filing a Special Motion to Strike, or anti-SLAPP. This is a unique form of legal defense under California law that sought to halt the lawsuit from proceeding on the grounds that her client was engaging in protected speech and civic activities in the public interest. You can read that motion below.
The short version: Campbell argues that D’Amore’s complaints to City agencies and to Film LA are protected free speech / petitioning of local government, so 5959 Franklin Bliss LLC has no legal right to sue to shut her up.
On November 13, 2024, 5959 Franklin Bliss LLC filed its opposition to the anti-SLAPP, which you can read below.
The short version: In their opposition, Franklin complains that D’Amore is an abusive liar, and tries to argue that Film LA, which manages film shoots under contract to the City, is not a government agency.
On November 26, 2024, Judge Joseph Lipner held a hearing on the Special Motion to Strike, granted the motion, struck the complaint and dismissed it with prejudice.
What that means that this particular attempt by a wealthy property owner to silence a community advocate has been nipped in the bud—but only after Brandi D’Amore suffered months of stress living with an intimidating and costly legal battle hanging over her head—as well as the heads of unnamed addition private citizens who had complained to D’Amore. And while D’Amore’s legal exposure has ended with the judge’s ruling, there is nothing stopping 5959 Franklin Bliss LLC, or any other landlord, from filing the same type of case against any citizen who uses the proper channels to file complaints about what they believe to be potential violations of housing and land use law.
This is chilling. Why should any citizen try to make Los Angeles better, when they might be dragged into court for doing so?
And why are Neighborhood Council volunteers afforded no legal aid in a situation like the one that Brandi D’Amore found herself in? Maybe it has something to do with the ambivalent relationship that City Hall has with its constituents.
The Neighborhood Council system was created by the City of Los Angeles 25 years ago, in direct response to an existential threat: home owners in the San Fernando Valley were sick of their districts being neglected and were exploring options to secede from the City and form an independent municipality, taking their property taxes with them.
NCs were sold to voters as a new way of governing, with citizen participation at the most local level affecting positive policy changes in City Hall. Citizens have indeed participated, but their recommendations are often ignored when they don’t fall in line with their councilmember’s agenda. Despite occasional policy wins, the NC system’s impact on City government has been negligible.
We’d like to see real reform in the City of Angels, and one way to do that would be to give the extant Neighborhood Council system a true seat at the table, as was promised a quarter century ago. As Los Angeles seeks to recover from the devastating wildfires, we would rather hear from opinionated locals expressing themselves in open meetings than have policy shaped behind closed doors by the same unelected bureaucrats who got us into this mess.
It seems reasonable that the City should also protect volunteers like Brandi D’Amore from the threat of retaliatory lawsuits, as well. Let’s do what we can to make it a little safer for the Mrs. Kravitzes of Los Angeles to keep sticking their noses in and speaking up about injustice. Somebody’s got to do it!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 2/15) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 3/1) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Downtown L.A. (Sat. 3/8) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (Sat. 3/15) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 3/22) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 3/30) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (Sat. 4/5) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 4/12) • Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles (Sat. 4/19) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/26) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (5/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/10) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (5/17) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Broadway (7/26)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
A bit of our "bristling" preservation newsletter about the wildfire losses appears in the New Yorker weekend essay by Alex Ross, "The Hidden Histories Lost in the Los Angeles Fires." This will never stop hurting.
Mama Shelter hotel in Hollywood closed with no notice on Sunday. It's where Jose Huizar co-conspirator Ray Chan attempted a lobbying shakedown of City Planning Commissioner David Ambroz. 70 rooms—can they shelter fire refugees?
Terrific feature on our preservation pal Rev. Dylan Littlefield and his Skid Row ministry, based in the historic Hotel Cecil.
We are interested in understanding how this all played out, but troubled by the editorializing, sarcastic tone of the narrator of this Los Angeles Times video feature. Is this journalism, or an attack on Los Angeles government? The City is a mess and there is a lot to criticize and to reform, but journalists should do this without snark.
Kathy A. McDonald reports that copper wire thieves appear to have hit the undergrounded power lines and five globe Llewellyn streetlights on Carroll Avenue. Was the Heavy Metal Task Force diverted from scrap enforcement to Palisades fire support?
After a long and passionate public hearing last night, in which preservation pal Damian Sullivan presented a petition signed by 3000 concerned citizens, Glendale City Council voted unanimously to require an Environmental Impact Report before allowing the property owner to demolish the potential landmark, mostly empty Glendale Garden Homes apartments. You can watch the whole thing here, and find our live narration on our social channels.
Thursday 2/6 at 10am, the Cultural Heritage Commission considers landmark status for the remarkable William Mellenthin birdhouse bungalow court apartments, as well as consideration of the lovely Du Barry and Dover Apartments, and you can attend at City Hall, or make public comment by phone or Zoom to help preserve these special multi-family buildings and the naturally occurring affordable housing they provide. Agenda with comment is here, and don’t miss the passionate letters of support from Mellenthin birdhouse lovers.
Locationland is a fun new short video series hosted by Harry Medved, celebrating the cultural and infrastructure landmarks that star in motion pictures and TV.
A thoughtful and brilliant historical explanation
Thank you for informing me. Mom