LOS ANGELES — The tenants of this 43-unit apartment building in downtown Los Angeles have typical complaints about their landlord Nela Petrusan.

They claim she has not fixed plumbing issues; that she has turned off their hot water; that she allowed a roach infestation to fester and that she has failed to make repairs in an expedient manner.

They also have other — less typical — complaints.

One tenant claims Petrusan sprayed her with bear mace and that Petrusan’s boyfriend torched her car, though Petrusan and her boyfriend deny that and the case is still under investigation. Another tenant said Petrusan swung a broom at her head. A third claims that Petrusan’s pit bull attacked her, forcing her to get surgery.

Welcome to 1430 Wright St.

Wedged within a gritty loop of the 10 and 110 freeway interchange, the century-old apartment building rises beside a cul-de-sac, in the shadow of the Los Angeles Convention Center. While thousands of Angelenos motor past the property every day, they are oblivious to the war raging inside, between Petrusan and her tenants.

Amid the backdrop of a severe housing shortage and soaring L.A. rents, the battles at 1430 Wright St. are being fought in hallways and apartments and in the civil and criminal courts, where both sides trade wild allegations of violence and harassment that they claim make the building a nightmare.

“This is the most extreme situation that I’ve ever seen,” said David Albright, a Los Angeles Tenants Union organizer who works with residents at the building.

Out of the more than 23,000 complaints filed against landlords citywide, Petrusan is the only building owner to ever be charged under L.A.’s Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, which the City Council passed in 2021 and strengthened in 2024 to protect tenants from abusive landlords.

Since 2022, four tenants have filed civil suits against Petrusan and nine have filed for restraining orders against their landlord, alleging a pattern of threatening behavior marked by outbursts of physical and verbal assaults.

Petrusan denied any wrongdoing in an interview with The Times.

“We don’t harass [tenants],” she said. “We say ‘Hi.’”

Petrusan claims the allegations against her are false, and were stirred up by seven tenants who have prevented her from doing work on their apartments so they do not have to pay rent.

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Olga Moreira, the tenant in Apartment 11, did not always wear a GoPro camera around her apartment building.

The 53-year-old tenant and her husband have lived at 1430 Wright St. for 11 years, many of those in relative peace. Their rent is $650 per month — far below the city’s average — and Moreira said she remembers the calm, responsive building managers who took care of the space.

That all changed, Moreira said, when Petrusan took over the building in 2022. Petrusan said she has owned the building for 21 years, but only moved in after her father, who managed the building, died of COVID.

“You have to wear a camera to come and go out of the building because the moment you get near the front entrance she’ll start aggravating you,” Moreira said.

She and other tenants claim the building has fallen into disrepair under Petrusan’s stewardship. A roach infestation has plagued the three-story apartment complex; one tenant’s bathroom wall peeled off, revealing rotting wood; the police have been called hundreds of times for a range of incidents from reports of shots fired to vicious dog attacks to instances of domestic violence, according to public records obtained by The Times.

Moreira has made numerous serious allegations against Petrusan and her boyfriend, Jeremy Noor.

Moreira claimed that in 2022, Petrusan had “inexplicably” discharged bear spray at a tenant and that the caustic aerosol got into Moreira’s eyes, forcing her to go to the doctor, according to a lawsuit. Moreira claimed Noor threatened her with a rifle in the building, according to her court-filed application for a restraining order.

Petrusan denied ever using bear spray on Moreira and said that neither she nor Noor owns a gun, except a pellet gun that Noor uses to shoot rats.

Moreira claimed that Petrusan hurled insults at her as well.

“You fat a— b—, I’m gonna getta gun and I’m gonna shoot you right in the f— head,” Petrusan yelled at Moreira once, according to the lawsuit.

Petrusan denied threatening to kill Moreira.

“I did say the first part, but I didn’t say the last part,” she said.

Moreira claimed in the suit that two years after Petrusan bear-sprayed her, Noor used the chemical irritant against her and her husband. Petrusan denied that Noor ever sprayed Moreira.

Moreira claimed that on the same day Noor bear-sprayed her, he also set fire to her Jeep Cherokee, according to the lawsuit and an application for a restraining order.

Police responded to a report of an arson on July 5, 2024, according to public records. No arrests have been made in the case. Noor denied setting fire to the car and said that he was putting the fire out with a fire extinguisher.

Petrusan denied that she or Noor had anything to do with Moreira’s car catching fire.

“If we lit her car on fire, then I would have to do that to the other 20 people in here that don’t pay me. Like with my kids. I can’t give one something if I don’t give the other something,” she said.

An investigator for the Los Angeles Fire Department said only that the case was still under investigation and no charges had been filed.

From the perspective of Noor and Petrusan, it’s the tenants who are the violent ones.

Noor said that he was trying to put out the fire that was burning Moreira’s Jeep, but that Moreira’s husband, his brother and other tenants attacked Noor with a steel pipe.

At a court hearing in September 2024 where Moreira was seeking a restraining order, Noor showed the judge a video of the alleged beating, which he said Moreira took part in. During questioning from the judge, Moreira admitted that she was in the group.

“There’s no way in this universe, in my lifetime, that I would ever grant a restraining order for your client based on her participation in this,” L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael Powell told Moreira’s attorney.

“That was close to ... attempted murder,” Powell said about the beating caught on video.

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On a recent December day, residents outside 1430 Wright St. greeted each other, largely in Spanish, and walked their dogs down the block, where a small homeless encampment hugged the corner. A group conversed in a car down the street playing music.

Inside the rust and white-colored low-rise, strange signs studded the lobby and tenants complained of uneven floors, collapsing infrastructure and a regular parade of Los Angeles Housing Department inspectors who peer in and mark down alleged code violations that tenants say rarely get remediated.

Edgar Melchor, who pays $742 in rent, lives in apartment 7. The wall in Melchor’s bathroom has eroded over the past two years because of a water leak that still has not been fixed, he said, so he and his wife are forced to shower under exposed wood.

“She made our lives miserable,” Melchor said of Petrusan.

Petrusan told The Times said she had gone in “so many times” to do repairs in Melchor’s apartment and claimed many tenants won’t allow her in to do repairs.

Other tenant plaintiffs claim in court papers that Petrusan has threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on them — an accusation Petrusan denies.

“I didn’t threaten to call immigration. If I called immigration, all my tenants would leave,” said Petrusan, who moved to the United States from Romania when she was a child.

One plaintiff in a suit against Petrusan, Adriana Montes de Oca Cervantes, alleged her wrist was fractured when she was attacked by Petrusan’s pitbull Apollo in April 2024. The case is pending.

Petrusan denied Apollo ever bit Cervantes. Cervantes provided medical records to The Times showing she visited California Hospital Medical Center in April 2024 and was diagnosed with an open fracture of her right wrist from a dog bite.

In another lawsuit, tenants Blanca Diaz and Antonio Mauricio claimed that in January 2024, they found a gun in the community bathroom on the first floor and turned it over to police. Diaz and Mauricio also claimed that Petrusan threatened to “throw feces on and kill” them, according to their lawsuit. The suit is pending, although a judge found the plaintiffs had not properly served Noor and Petrusan.

“They threw feces on me,” Petrusan claimed, when asked about the suit. Petrusan claimed Diaz and Mauricio plugged a toilet with Taco Bell napkins and that Petrusan had to clean it up. “I was knee-deep in feces.”

Milagros Del Socorro Jimenez Rizo said she had been attacked by Petrusan and Noor on June 25, 2024.

She claimed Petrusan swung a broomstick at her and then Noor tear-gassed her, according to her filing for a temporary restraining order. Jimenez Rizo said she lost consciousness during the incident.

“My life was in danger,” she wrote in her application for a temporary restraining order, which was granted.

Petrusan claimed that it was Jimenez Rizo who swung a mop at her, not the other way around.

“She hit me in the head,” Petrusan said.

Noor was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for the alleged assault. That case is pending.

Petrusan has filed her own applications for restraining orders, alleging that tenants have threatened her life, thrown a rock at her face, attacked her with a baseball bat, vandalized her car, and lived in units without permission.

The issues at the building have been documented for years.

The housing department’s code enforcement division lists more than 100 complaints filed at the property since 2021.

The building has fallen into the housing department’s Rent Escrow Account Program, which is meant to resolve “the most persistent health and safety and habitability issues.” When a building is in REAP, tenants pay some of their rent to the housing department, which can be used for repairs at the property.

Albright said Petrusan has repeatedly violated the city’s Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, which outlaws threatening tenants with violence or threatening to call ICE on them, among other actions.

While filing a tenant harassment complaint is relatively easy under the law, securing penalties against a landlord is far more difficult, city data show.

Tenants have filed 23,326 cases alleging harassment since the law passed in August 2021, but of those, just 30 have been referred to the city attorney for potential criminal cases, according to the city’s housing department.

Six of those 30 referrals were related to Petrusan for allegations regarding her treatment of tenants at 1430 Wright St. The referrals were tied to separate allegations by six individual tenants at the building, said Sharon Sandow, a spokesperson for the housing department.

After the department makes a referral, it is up to the city attorney’s office to bring charges if they believe there is a criminal case.

The city attorney has brought just two cases — both against Petrusan.

The fact that Petrusan is the only landlord charged criminally through the program highlights the severity of the case against her, but also the limitations of the TAHO law, according Edna Monroy, director of education at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.

“What’s unusual about this case isn’t that it happened, it’s that we’re hearing about it,” Monroy said.

Many tenants who deal with harassment or threats from landlords don’t document or assert their rights out of fear of retaliation or loss of housing, she said.

One of the cases against Petrusan is a 43-count case alleging a slew of misconduct she has committed as the landlord at 1430 Wright St.

Petrusan is accused in the complaint of “interfer[ing] with the peaceful enjoyment, use, possession, and occupancy of any premises by the lawful lessee and tenant of such premises by threat, fraud, intimidation, coercion, duress,” the complaint said. Eight different tenants were named in the complaint as victims under the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance.

Petrusan also used force and violence against three tenants, including Moreira and her husband, the complaint alleged.

The alleged violence was committed on July 5, 2024, the same day Moreira claimed her car was set on fire and the same day Petrusan and Noor said they were assaulted by tenants.

The complaint also accuses Petrusan of demanding higher rent than was legal from certain tenants, which Petrusan denied.

“I’ve never asked for additional rent,” Petrusan said. “They pay almost nothing.”

In the other case, Petrusan is accused of failing to maintain sanitary conditions, allowing trash and debris to accumulate, failing to maintain safe doors and failing to fix plumbing, among other issues.

The cases are open still and Albright, the Los Angeles Tenants Union organizer, said Petrusan has stopped showing up to court appearances. A warrant was issued for Petrusan’s arrest on Nov. 12 after she failed to appear for her court date, according to records.

But she is still at her apartment building, arguing with tenants even as her court cases loom.

She has handwritten signs across the lobby that reveal aspects of her battles with tenants.

“You will pay owner back rent ... No free rent for lies,” reads one.

Another declares: “Nothings free. I worked for it.”

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