Spencer Pratt Says Pricey Bel-Air Stay Was Cheaper Than Security Amid Death Threats

On Tuesday, Spencer Pratt posted a long message on X answering a question that had followed him since spring: why a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles was paying $1,200 a night for a room at the Hotel Bel-Air. His answer was that the hotel was the cheapest option he had, once the cost of protecting him was counted.

The question dates to May. TMZ reported that Pratt, the 43-year-old reality star and Republican candidate, had been staying at the luxury hotel. That sat awkwardly with a campaign ad that seemed to suggest he was living in an Airstream trailer on the site of his Pacific Palisades home, which was destroyed in the fire there. TMZ said he had been at the hotel for more than a month. Pratt disputed that, saying he had spent no more than six days there in the previous month. He lost in the June primary, in which his opponents included Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman.

In May, Pratt told TMZ that the Airstream lot had become unsafe and that the hotel's armed security made it the only option. He said supporters of Bass and Raman were becoming increasingly desperate and hostile after his May debate performance and strong polling. He declined to discuss specific threats at the time. In his new post he says his campaign staff told him not to explain the real reason, and that with the election ending he no longer felt bound by that advice.

Pratt wrote that he endured numerous death threats and had to hire full-time security. He said security professionals advise against discussing threats publicly because doing so can inspire copycats. He then described incidents he says frightened him. People broke into his Palisades lot and left notes containing white powder on the Airstream. A man he called a lunatic, who he says was determined to find him, charged at his young son while the boy was boogie-boarding in the ocean. Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, 40, have two sons, Gunner, 8, and Ryker, 3. He said he hired a second security detail for the family while he campaigned, four or five armed professionals with blacked-out SUVs.

The security team, he wrote, told him the Palisades lot was a nightmare to defend. It sits mid-slope in an exposed bowl, surrounded by high ground in a state park where a shooter could have a clear line of sight to the whole property. He says he was not permitted to stay there.

That is where the Bel-Air came in. Pratt described the hotel as walled like a fortress, with a single entrance reached over a moat and a maze of walled bungalows inside. His team felt comfortable leaving him there overnight. Staying elsewhere, he wrote, would have meant booking three more rooms for his security team, about $3,000 more per night. By his math, even a Motel 6 would have cost more.

Pratt also argued that political violence falls hardest on Republicans, because protection costs drain campaign funds that Democratic rivals can spend elsewhere. He recalled Raman arriving at a debate preparation event with no visible security while he arrived with several armed officers. He said the spending took an enormous share of his fundraising, and that he did it because no one else would protect his family.

He says the danger outlasted the campaign. Without campaign money, he wrote, he can no longer afford that level of protection, though he still routinely deals with death threats and trespassers at his property. The account is his own, and the article offers no independent verification. Police records and campaign finance filings would be the places to test it.