Hotel’s Owners Reach Pact With Tenants on August Gun Incident

Attorneys for tenants of a Van Nuys residential hotel obtained an agreement Friday with the hotel owners not to allow hotel employees or agents to carry guns on the property and to provide tenants with a list of those authorized to collect rent.

The agreement, reached under threat of a legal action, followed an incident last month in which a partner in the hotel was arrested after he allegedly ordered tenants to leave at gunpoint.

Michael F. Duran, an attorney for the tenants, said the owners of La Casita Hotel agreed to the provisions after he requested a hearing in Encino Municipal Court. He was going to ask that the ban on firearms and the list of authorized rent collectors be added to the demands made in a lawsuit he filed against the owners Aug. 18.

A hearing on the matter had been scheduled Friday but was canceled after the agreement was reached out of court, Duran said.

David Seror, an attorney representing hotel owners Ronald Bentley and John Busby, confirmed the agreement.

Duran filed a lawsuit against the owners on behalf of 29 tenants, seeking $25,000 in damages for emotional distress caused by 3-day eviction notices issued to them in mid-August.

The tenants obtained a court order preventing their eviction until at least Oct. 12, when a hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled.

Because some of the tenants have lived at the hotel for several months and others for as long as two or three years, Duran said, they deserve the same legal protection provided to apartment dwellers, who are entitled to at least 30 days notice of eviction.

Bentley and Busby, who want to close the dilapidated building for refurbishing, argue that state laws governing hotels allow evictions with 3 days’ notice.

The owners, who acquired the hotel in foreclosure Aug. 16, have said they did not know the hotel had been operating like an apartment building.

The provisions agreed upon Friday, Duran said, were prompted by an incident that occurred at the hotel on Aug. 31, involving David Scott Halcrow, 31, a Burbank accountant. Halcrow allegedly burst into the hotel lobby armed with a semiautomatic rifle and began telling residents to get out.

Halcrow, who was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, has since been identified as one of the hotel’s owners, Duran said. Halcrow, who is free on bail, has recently been back on the property supervising maintenance work and “involving himself in the rent situation,” he said.

“He’s been asking for rent receipts” to demonstrate that tenants are paid up to date, Duran said. “Because he was connected with the rifle incident earlier, people felt afraid.”

Although Halcrow is not listed in title company records as an owner, Seror said Halcrow bought some or all of Busby’s interest in the hotel. But he does not represent Halcrow, Seror said.