Private LA high school is forced to CLOSE claiming the hotel it used for classrooms is unsafe after being overrun with homeless people staying at the shelter inside the building

An LA private school based in a hotel claims it was forced to close after the homeless shelter it shares the building with made it unsafe for students. 

The Academy of Media Arts moved into the first three floors of the LA Grand hotel in downtown Los Angeles in 2022, sharing the building with the Inside Safe homeless shelter run.

The owner of the school, Dana Hammond, has now filed a breach of contract lawsuit against the owner of the hotel, claiming he had promised the shelter would be moved out but it was still going, making the campus unsafe.

The school claimed there were a series of incidents including a woman exposing herself to students, another woman lying naked outside the hotel threatening to 'shoot and stab' a security officer and a man breaking into the school. 

The school's fifty students - ninth to twelfth graders mostly from low-income black and Latino families - have now been forced to find last-minute alternatives. 

The Academy of Media Arts moved into the LA Grand hotel in 2022 but claims they have now been forced to leave

The hotel is also the site of a homeless shelter that the school claims has made campus unsafe

Principal Dana Hammond claims the homeless shelter onsite was putting their students lives at risk

There was already a mass exodus from the school with enrollment dwindling from 250 students when it opened to just 50 and Hammond said he was unable to pay the $100,000-a-month rent. 

Hammond told the LA Times: 'Our students’ lives were in jeopardy because of the Inside Safe residents.

'We’re not enemies of the homeless shelter, we just can’t put them in the same building as a high school.'

Their complaints included 'human poop on sidewalk, the smell of urine across campus, outburst from 'inside safe' tenants, break-ins by inside safe tenants, drug paraphernalia found on campus, inside safe tenants found in trash bins.' 

In the lawsuit, Hammond claimed the school had been told the homeless residents would be moved out soon after they moved in, but that didn't happen.

A lawyer for Hammond told the LA Times: 'Huang repeatedly made false and misleading representations to suggest that the L.A. Grand Hotel would cease to be a homeless shelter in the near future, despite the fact that Huang had no intention of terminating the lucrative agreement.'

The school has had its own issues aside from safety on campus, it was scrutinized by the LAUSD for failing to meet academic standards and for failing to do criminal background checks on teachers. 

It also had seven principals in four years. 

DailyMail.com contacted Hammond and the Academy for Media Arts for comment. The hotel owner could not immediately be reached for comment. 

Hammond claims he was told the homeless shelter would be moving out of the building shortly after the school moved in

Los Angeles is battling with a housing crisis with over 75,500 people sleeping rough on any one night in 2022

The hotel is owned by Chinese billionaire Wei Huang, who fled the country in 2018 in the wake of a fraud and bribery scandal. 

He is considered a fugitive by the US attorney's office. 

He bought the Grand in 2010 and ran it as a four-star hotel, but in 2021 it became a site for Project Roomkey, a federal program to provide shelter for homeless people during the pandemic. 

The city has paid Huang more than $25 million for use of the site since 2022. 

They recently extended their lease to continue operating the shelter through to the end of July at a cost of $20 million. 

The Mayor's spokesperson told the LA Times: 'The mayor’s office does not condone the behavior of the fugitive owner of the Grand.'

But they added: 'The L.A. Grand has brought hundreds of unhoused individuals inside from the tough elements of living on the streets. The work continues to save lives every day.'

Mayor Karen Bass committed herself to tackling the homeless crisis as soon as she took office last year

Image shows rows of makeshift places to stay for people sleeping rough at night  

Los Angeles is in the grips of a homelessness crisis. 

Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70 percent in the county and 80 percent in Los Angeles city itself.

Last year, California had about a third of all homeless people in the country, and Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and other Golden State cities have among the largest numbers of unsheltered people in the country.

In that count, Los Angeles had the most homeless people in the state, 65,111.