Spencer Pratt is setting the record straight about why he stayed at a luxury hotel during his campaign to become Los Angeles’ next mayor.
“Remember when you first met me? For those of you in the [Pacific] Palisades, that was likely many years ago, but the majority of folks met me when my first campaign ad dropped back in April,” Pratt, 43, wrote via X on Tuesday, November 3. “I showed Karen Bass’ and Nithya Raman’s multimillion-dollar homes and then showed everybody the grim reality of what became of my home. A sleek, Airstream perched precariously on my hillside lot, a stark contrast to the nuked out wreckage where my home used to be.”
After Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, lost their home in the January 2025 Palisades fire, The Hills alum worked to get an Airstream trailer installed at his burned property.
While running to become Los Angeles’ next mayor, however, Pratt found himself in controversy when outlets claimed he was actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air, which has a nightly rate between $900 to $1,200 for standard luxury rooms.
“When the media found out I was staying there, they were most certainly not cozy nor at ease. The backlash was intense, and predictably so,” Pratt shared via X. “Now, in many ways, our campaign was perfectly fine with the controversy, because the kerfuffle over me staying at a hotel just reminded everyone of my opponent’s biggest failure; Karen Bass is the reason I didn’t have a home to go to. But, nonetheless, it was becoming such a big controversy, it was eating up all the oxygen in the room, and it was a distraction from all my winning policy ideas; instead of talking about the campaign, we were talking about a damn hotel.”
Pratt consistently criticized Bass, 73, for not being present in Los Angeles at the time of the Palisades fire. He also claimed she was not prepared to deal with a fire that destroyed more than 6,800 structures. (Bass and Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman ultimately received the most votes in the June primary, leaving Pratt off the ballot for Tuesday’s election.)
In his X post, Pratt answered the question some may be asking about his pricey accommodations.
“Why is he spending $1,200 a night? Why couldn’t he stay somewhere for $300 a night? Well, the answer to that question is not as pretty as any of us may like to hear,” he said. “Most people simply presumed that I was being a bougie spoiled brat, and that I was abusing campaign funds. … At the time, I couldn’t explain the math to people, and my campaign staff told me I wasn’t allowed to divulge the real reason I had to stay there, but now that the election is coming to a close, I don’t need to listen to anyone anymore.”
According to Pratt, he endured “numerous death threats” to the point where he had to hire full-time security.
He described the Hotel Bel-Air as a “unique” property “surrounded with a fortress wall.”
“Unlike normal hotels, it is a very secure facility, which is why Presidents and Royalty like the Prince of Wales or Saint Thomas of Cruise feel comfortable staying there,” he explained. “When my security team dropped me off behind the walls of the Bel Air, they felt good about leaving me alone in the secure facility. Had I stayed anywhere else, I would have needed to book out 3 rooms for my team to maintain overnight security, which would’ve cost an additional $3,000 per night. Paradoxically, by this calculation, I was actually saving a ton of money by staying at the secure Bel Air; even staying at a Motel 6 would’ve cost me more money, and in a campaign…money is everything.”
Pratt said he appreciated having security “watching everything and everyone around me.”
“Now that there’s no campaign, I can’t afford that level of protection, even though I still deal with death threats and trespassers at my property, routinely,” the Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain author claimed before promoting an app called Patrol.
“They’re building out an app that’s like the Uber Black of private security. Soon, my neighbors and I can all subscribe to have these operators patrol our neighborhood and provide the same executive-level security that I enjoyed on the campaign, but we can actually afford it,” he said. “Patrol is planning to integrate private firefighting operators into the app, so now, as a community, we can crowdsource our own private contractors to do the job that our governments are failing to do.”
Pratt continued, “This is the way of the future, and I’m doing everything in my power to keep my family safe. … I’m done leaving our lives in the hands of government. We are on our own.”
