Residents of AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Homeless Shelters Site Deplorable Conditions

Michael Weinstein’s Non-Profit Organization, the Principal Backer of 2018’s Proposition 10 and 2020’s Rental Affordability Act (a/k/a, Proposition 10 2.0) Declared a Slumlord by Residents

For a few years, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has been acquiring aging, single-occupancy hotels on Los Angeles’ Skid Row as the organization’s President, Michael Weinstein, criticized the City of Los Angeles’ handling of the homelessness crisis bragging that he could house people at a fraction of the cost.

Today, Weinstein’s bragging rights may be over as the deplorable conditions of AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s shelters have now become public. Tenants at the non-profit’s Madison Hotel on 7th Street in Skid Row have filed a lawsuit accusing the foundation of permitting slum-like conditions at the aging 220-unit building. The complaint cites constant and persistent mold, bedbugs and roach infestations, and plumbing and electricity problems. The complaint also claims that the elevator at the property has been out of order for nine months, requiring elderly and disabled renters to struggle to upper floors on foot. Other accusations include AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s failure to repair and remodel a shower area that has been sitting half-renovated leaving residents with no private bathrooms, to share a single toilet and shower on each floor.

While speaking at a recent news conference, Weinstein acknowledged the tenants’ concerns are legitimate, he quickly pointed blame at the City of Los Angeles, which he accused of delaying for months an inspection of a new electrical system to support the elevator the foundation installed as part of a multi-million dollar renovation. Weinstein also claimed that elderly and disabled renters were offered an option to move to the property’s first floor. According to the City, however, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation did not obtain the proper permits for the planned renovations and did not submit an acceptable plan to protect tenants during construction.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which generates $1.4 billion a year from its healthcare centers and pharmacies, has since 2017 acquired six hotels and a motel in locations within the City of Los Angeles, and now owns 791 residential units that typically rent for $400 to $600 a month. However, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times, as the AIDS Healthcare Foundation was attempting to acquire more housing units, residents at Madison Hotel claim the property was half-empty, and court records show the group may have evicted as many as 40 tenants since 2017. Many of the evicted residents claim the evictions were illegal and that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation did not give them a chance to make-up past due rent payments after they fell behind.

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