LOS ANGELES, CA – The founder of the Academy of Media Arts is seeking at least $20 million from the City of Los Angeles, alleging that conditions surrounding a homeless shelter operating inside the same downtown hotel drove families away and ultimately forced the school campus to shut down.
Dana Hammond and entities associated with the Academy of Media Arts allege the city allowed the LA Grand Hotel to continue operating as homeless interim housing long after what the school understood would be a temporary arrangement.
The lawsuit centers on the hotel at 333 S. Figueroa Street, where the Academy operated educational facilities while hundreds of rooms on the upper floors were being used to house people experiencing homelessness.
The city initially used the LA Grand as part of Project Roomkey, the pandemic-era program created to place particularly vulnerable unhoused residents in hotels and motels rather than congregate shelters.
Project Roomkey was launched in 2020 as an emergency response to COVID-19. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said participating hotels were intended to provide temporary non-congregate shelter, supportive services, meals and on-site supervision for people at heightened risk from the virus.
According to Hammond’s lawsuit, the Academy signed its lease while the program was operating at the LA Grand but was told the shelter use would be temporary and was expected to end before the school began operating there.
Instead, the city repeatedly extended its use of the hotel.
Official city records confirm that the LA Grand became the last remaining active Project Roomkey hotel managed by the city during the 2022-23 fiscal year, with approximately 481 rooms available for interim housing.
The property was later incorporated into the city’s broader homelessness response, including the Inside Safe initiative.
A Los Angeles City Administrative Officer report said the city extended the LA Grand lease through July 31, 2024, retaining 481 rooms for interim housing while officials worked to transition residents into permanent housing or other interim placements.
That timeline is central to the Academy’s allegations.
Hammond contends the school expected to operate in what its lease described as a hotel environment, but instead students and employees were confronted with conditions associated with the continuing shelter operation.
The lawsuit alleges repeated instances of open drug use, discarded drug paraphernalia, trespassing, assaults, trash, human waste and other hazards around areas used by students and school staff.
Those allegations have not been proven at trial.
Hammond said police were repeatedly called to the property because of incidents involving people entering or approaching school areas.
In one alleged incident, he said a man entered the school lobby and was later detained following an attempted carjacking nearby.
“It was a slow grind,” Hammond said of the effect the conditions had on the school.
According to the complaint, parents increasingly became concerned about student safety and began removing their children.
Hammond said enrollment eventually fell to approximately 50 students.
The Academy alleges the decline deprived it of tuition and other revenue, damaged its reputation and made continued operation at the downtown campus financially and practically unsustainable.
The campus stopped operating in January 2024, according to the lawsuit.
State education records add some context to the Academy’s changing status during the period covered by the dispute.
The California Department of Education’s records for the Academy of Media Arts charter school show that the public charter entity opened in 2019 and formally closed June 30, 2023. The state listed it as a Los Angeles Unified charter high school.
A separate California Department of Education record for Academy of Media Arts as a private high school identifies Hammond as custodian of records and lists that school as operating from June 2023 through June 2025.
Those administrative dates are not necessarily the same as the date the downtown campus physically stopped holding classes.
The Academy’s lawsuit alleges that conditions at the LA Grand caused its operation at that location to cease in January 2024.
The Academy also says it subsequently lost accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and suffered losses associated with its investment in the school facility, enrollment, goodwill and future revenue.
It places damages attributed to the alleged nuisance at at least $20 million.
The complaint names the City of Los Angeles and asserts claims including nuisance, dangerous condition of public property, failure to discharge a mandatory duty, inverse condemnation and civil-rights violations.
The Academy and D’Camp Hospitality Group are pursuing claims against the city, while Hammond and the Academy are also involved in separate litigation against the ownership entity associated with the LA Grand Hotel.
No court has determined that the city or hotel owner caused the Academy’s losses.
The city’s financial involvement with the LA Grand was substantial.
A 2023 Los Angeles City Administrative Officer report on interim housing costs said the LA Grand provided 481 rooms at a rate of $125 per night plus $29 per person for meals, bringing the single-occupancy rate to $154 per night.
The same report said the city had spent approximately $8.75 million on the LA Grand lease through June 30, 2023, and projected another approximately $13.2 million through February 2024, subject to occupancy.
Another city financial analysis estimated the annual cost at roughly $58,035 for a single occupant and $68,620 for a double-occupancy room at the LA Grand, figures city officials themselves described as unsustainable for long-term interim housing.
Hammond’s complaint alleges that total city payments connected with use of the hotel ultimately exceeded $54 million and averaged roughly $1.5 million per month.
That $54 million figure is an allegation in the litigation and should be distinguished from the individual spending periods documented in publicly available city reports.
City records nevertheless establish that Los Angeles repeatedly extended its use of the property.
A January 2023 city report recommended extending the LA Grand lease through February 2024, while a subsequent authorization extended the 481-bed operation through July 31, 2024.
As of March 15, 2024, the city reported that approximately 450 people were enrolled in the LA Grand interim housing program.
The city said LAHSA, the Weingart Center, the Mayor’s Office and housing navigation providers were working to move participants into permanent or alternative interim housing before the lease expired.
Hammond argues that whatever public purpose was served by the housing program, his students should not have been forced to bear the consequences of operating alongside it.
“We were just collateral damage,” he said.
He has emphasized that many Academy students came from historically underserved neighborhoods, including South Los Angeles communities.
According to the complaint, the school had invested substantial resources in creating a campus intended to prepare students for careers in media and other creative industries.
Hammond contends those investments were effectively lost when the school could no longer safely operate from the property.
The Academy’s own case information page says a jury trial in its litigation involving the City of Los Angeles is scheduled for March 21, 2028. The school separately lists a February 2028 trial involving the hotel ownership entity.
The trial date does not constitute a ruling on the merits of the allegations.
The Academy says it intends to present documents, communications and other evidence that it believes show city officials knew of conditions inside the building while students continued attending classes there.
The city has not publicly detailed the defense it intends to present at trial.
The dispute raises a broader question over how Los Angeles balanced emergency homeless housing needs against other tenants and uses inside privately owned hotels participating in city programs.
Project Roomkey itself was explicitly created as a temporary pandemic response.
Los Angeles later expanded its reliance on hotel and motel rooms through other programs as officials sought alternatives to unsheltered encampments.
The city’s Homekey program information describes Project Roomkey as the pandemic-era foundation for later efforts to acquire or convert hotels and other buildings into interim and permanent housing.
For Hammond, however, the case is focused less on the broader merits of homelessness policy than on what he alleges happened to one school operating inside one of the city’s largest interim housing sites.
The Academy is seeking monetary damages and has demanded a jury trial.
Liability and the amount of any damages, if awarded, will ultimately be decided through the court process.
