A lawsuit obtained by The Daily Mail revealed that Brentwood, CA’s nightmare Airbnb tenant—who has overstayed her visit in a luxury home by more than a year—has a history of at least one similar issue.
Harvard-educated Elizabeth Hirschhorn was previously evicted from a home in Oakland, CA in a scenario that eerily parallels her embroilment with current landlord Sascha Jovanovic.
Hirschhorn moved into a guest house on the prominent periodontist’s property in September 2021. She was approved for a six-month stay, but things turned ugly when the landlord asked her to temporarily move out so repairs could be made. He offered hotel accommodations and even money for expenses, but Hirschhorn said she felt unsafe leaving amidst the pandemic. She likewise refused an offer of a room in Jovanovic’s family home due to her cat allergy. A judge recently ruled she can’t be evicted due to California law.
Court records from a different 2020 incident first reported by The Daily Mail tell essentially the same story.
Hirschhorn began renting a room in Alex Lewin’s North Oakland address a year prior. Once again, matters quickly came to a boil over cleanliness. After the landlord sprayed some sort of cleaning substance around the house, Hirschhorn “made unreasonable requests of Mr. Lewin to replace all her personal items that were allegedly damaged by an unknown substance that was released into the air,” legal filings state. She also asked Lewin “to clean the premises in a very specific manner due to her hypersensitivity to allergens.”
Hirschhorn said she was “pressured” to leave at the height of the pandemic while the home was cleaned to her satisfaction, but returned once it was finished. However, “the cleaning was insufficient” and she “continued to be exposed to the harmful substance and pressured by cross-defendants to vacate, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic shelter-in-place order.”
On March 5, 2020, Lewin moved out of his own home due to Hirschhorn’s “hostile” behavior towards him. Despite not having a lease agreement and not paying any rent, she stayed by herself in the home for over a year.
Hirschhorn’s case against Lewin was settled in July 2021, just over a month before she moved into Jovanovic’s property.
Jovanovic hasn’t been nearly as lucky as his predecessor. Because his house was never properly licensed as a rental property and doesn’t have a certificate of occupancy, a judge ruled that Hirschhorn cannot be evicted and (once again) doesn’t have to pay rent. The Ivy League grad is asking for $100,000 to vacate, which Jovanovic called “extortion.”
“She is a smart person who knows how to manipulate the system and it is dangerous that people like this are allowed to do this,” Jovanovic told KTLA on Thursday. “She is obviously trying to extort a community member and she has done this before.”
“The landlord broke the law and tried to make money by renting out an illegal bootleg unit,’ Hirschhorn’s lawyer, Colin Walshok, told the Los Angeles Times about her current dispute. “After he was caught, instead of doing the right thing, he has resorted to bullying, harassment and the filing of frivolous lawsuits containing elaborate false stories, all in an attempt to cover his tracks.”
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