Amid an affordable housing crisis, dozens of rent-controlled buildings are listed on short-term rental websites. A 2018 law was supposed to stop that, but the city is struggling to enforce it.

The first complaint about illegal vacation rentals at 1940 Carmen Ave., a rent-controlled apartment building just blocks from Hollywood Boulevard, arrived at the Los Angeles Housing Department nearly a decade ago.

“This place is crazy,” a tenant reported in 2015, according to an inspector’s note, “luggage up and down, different people always in and out. Not safe.”

Inspectors cited the owner for changing the building’s use without a permit. They warned him again the next year. But after that, housing inspectors appeared to drop the matter, even as they ordered the owner to correct other building code violations. A few years later, in 2020, a tenant complained that 14 of the 21 units were listed on Airbnb.