Editor’s Note: This article was updated on Dec. 15, 2023, to correct references to the amount of time Ms. Hirschhorn is alleged to have overstayed.
(KTLA) – Elizabeth Hirschhorn, the woman who is accused of squatting for well over a year in a Los Angeles guesthouse that she booked on Airbnb, is finally out.
Hirschhorn left the guest house last Friday after 570 days of rent-free living, according to a court filing.
“It was quite a crazy moment because we were in the house, filming with a news channel,” landlord Sascha Jovanovic old NewsNation. “And then these three men started walking [to the guest house], and I had no idea who was walking into it. I approached them, they didn’t want to speak to me. … Then I called the police as a home invasion, three men entering our property.”
Those three men turned out to be the movers, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Jovanovic met Hirschhorn when she rented his guesthouse through Airbnb for six months at $105 per night. Hirschhorn, who Jovanovic’s lawyer dubbed the “tenant from hell,” refused to leave when her stay was over.
Hirschhorn’s attorney previously told the Los Angeles Times that “she was not required to pay rent because the city had never approved the unit for occupancy and that its shower was constructed without a permit.”
“This is like a nightmare, to be honest,” Jovanovic previously told KTLA. “This is extortion. This is like manipulation. Nobody should go through this.”
Jovanovic claimed that Hirschhorn also wouldn’t let him in the unit to bring everything up to code.
Jovanovic’s guest house was never properly licensed as a rental on Airbnb and since Hirschhorn stayed there for at least six months, Jovanovic could not evict her under Los Angeles’ “Just Cause” ordinance.
The ordinance “prohibits terminations of tenancies without just cause and requires relocation assistance for no-fault evictions,” according to the Los Angeles Housing Department.
Both parties had filed lawsuits against each other, but Jovanovic’s attorney, Sebastian Rucci, filed a notice of voluntary dismissal of prejudice in Los Angeles County Superior Court regarding the eviction case, People reported.
While the judge granted the request to dismiss the eviction case, the lawsuit regarding damages against Hirschhorn is ongoing, Rucci confirmed to the publication.
It’s unclear if Hirschhorn has moved out permanently or plans to return. The landlord has since changed the locks on the property, which he told NewsNation has not been kept up.
“There was a lot of flies in the guest house. … There was smell. It was dirty. My first reaction was, ‘Everything has to go or be given to charity,’” Jovanovic said.
Hirschhorn was involved in a similar incident in 2019 in Northern California after she moved into a sublet in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, according to The Mercury News.
In that case she allegedly refused to move out, claiming health concerns and protection under COVID regulations, remaining in the cottage for over a year.
In that case she finally reached a settlement with the landlords in July, 2021 the Mercury News reported.
