Pomona leaders are pushing three motels on Holt Avenue, a corridor long plagued by prostitution, drug use and other criminal activity, to clean up or face thousands in fines and possible closure.

Under new authority granted by the City Council, the city attorney may pursue legal action against the owners of the Pala, Deluxe and Super Inn motels.

The council’s decision comes after doing away with by-the-hour room rentals in 2020 in an effort to curb prostitution and human trafficking.

“One of the problems that has impacted the city for far too long is prostitution. It was around when I was a kid, as a 9-year-old who moved here, and riding my bike,” Pomona Mayor Tim Sandoval said at the council’s meeting Monday, July 7.

“It impacts us in so many ways, but I specifically want to talk about the people who live in those neighborhoods,” Sandoval said. “Amongst some of the most challenged neighborhoods south of Holt, north of Mission, and certainly north of Holt, that have had to put up with this for years and years and years.”

A bustling thoroughfare from the 1940s until the late 1970s, Holt Avenue has witnessed once-thriving businesses move on, leaving behind shuttered buildings that attract crime.

Calls for police response are common along Holt, and the city said the three motels it’s targeting are responsible for more than 760 calls combined since 2022.

Accounts of homicides, violent attacks and continuous prostitution and gang activity at the motels are detailed in a staff report reviewed by the council Monday.

“The conditions inside these motel rooms are also deplorable,” the report reads in part, with reports of “rooms with torn furniture, graffiti, fluid stains on mattresses, cigarette burns on walls, and bugs crawling around.

“The owners and operators of these properties are aware of the conditions and the illegal activity occurring on the properties, but allow the nuisance conditions to continue without any regard for residents and the impacts on the community,” the report reads.

According to the report, the city attorney can ask a judge to grant a temporary restraining order against the motels, close and board up the properties for up to a year and even take control of the property.

Costs associated with legal action against the motels are expected to range from $150,000 to $250,000 per property, which the city said can be recovered from the motel owners as part of the legal proceedings.

The city claims it has already had some success with such efforts.

Another motel on Holt, the Passport Inn, saw a sharp reduction in calls to the police once the city initiated abatement proceedings, the city said.

From 2022 to 2024, there were 330 calls for service to the Passport Inn. The city filed abatement actions with the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2024, which held the property owner liable for illegal activity at the motel, according to the city.

The property is under new ownership this year, and the number of calls for service to the property has been reduced to under 10, the city said.

But Girishghai Ahir, a representative for Deluxe Motel, said the city’s efforts at Passport Inn have not been a success and instead burdens other property owners.

“Ever since the Passport Inn was obviously shut down, we’ve also noticed the problems have also kind of just shifted towards us even more,” Ahir added. “Some of those problem consumers are just not resolved, and they’re just put into our properties now.”

Shutting down and boarding up properties is not the right solution either, Ahir said, since the problems would carry over to other properties.

“It’s tough for us to find out if this is a good customer or a bad customer. We have to kind of take a chance on them,” Ahir said. “If they show that they’re a problem customer, we know we can’t rent to them again. But I would try to find a solution that would maybe not board us up because if we get shut down, the problem will not be solved.”