JURY TRIAL SET FOR REMAINING LINCOLN PLACE TENANTS
A jury trial, to be held on Jan. 17 at Malibu
Superior Court, will determine whether the owner of Lincoln Place acted in good
faith using the Ellis Act to evict the tenants.
The trial pits AIMCO, a Denver corporation,
against the remaining senior and disabled tenants of Lincoln
Place.
On Dec. 15, Superior Court Judge
Patricia Collins ruled that Lincoln Place tenants are entitled to a trial by
jury on the issue of whether rental giant AIMCO acted in good faith in evicting
13 households - mostly elderly and disabled - under the Ellis Act, a state law
that allows landlords to evict tenants, subject to certain protections to
prevent abuse of the Act.
Rent control laws
in Los Angeles require that all landlords who evict tenants under the Ellis Act
must establish that they are acting in “good faith,” meaning that
the landlord must honestly intend to permanently remove the units from the
rental market. The Ellis Act does not permit the landlord to do any of the
following:
1) Remove less than all the units
in a building;
2) Evict the tenants in order
to increase the sale price of the
building;
3) Evict the tenants so that new
tenants can be brought in at a higher rent (in other words, to circumvent rent
control);
4) Interfere with the city’s
power to regulate land use, including redevelopment
entitlements.
In their defense against
unlawful detainer actions, the tenants say that AIMCO, one of the largest
apartment owners in the country, is violating Los Angeles rent control laws.
Sheila Bernard, president of the Lincoln
Place Tenants Association (LPTA) explains, “all over the country AIMCO
purchases older garden apartments, upgrades units from low rent to high rent
units and obtains local concessions to increase density, and often then sells
the property to the highest bidder. They see rent control as an obstacle to
their plans to maximize profits on the backs of seniors and the disabled, many
of whom have lived here for more than 25
years.”
AIMCO had challenged the
tenants’ right to a jury trial. Amanda Seward, the pro bono attorney who
has joined the legal team defending the tenants, said, “AIMCO’s
challenge was rejected by the court, making way to a full trial on the issue of
AIMCO’s good faith.”
In a
separate legal action, LPTA and one family sued AIMCO and the city to enforce
the tenant protection conditions agreed to by the owner when the city approved a
redevelopment plan of Lincoln Place. That plan gave the landlord the right to
certain land use entitlements in exchange for AIMCO’s agreement that it
would not evict the tenants. Under the tenant protection conditions, the owner
promised to allow tenants that wanted to remain on the property that they would
have the right to relocate to comparable or better units within Lincoln Place at
their current rent. AIMCO has refused to abide by these conditions and the city
has refused to enforce them.
These
lawsuits ask the court to clarify the interaction of the California
Environmental Quality Act or “CEQA,” and the Ellis Act. CEQA
requires cities to mitigate the damages of development on the environment,
including the impact on the rental market. These two suits
are:
1) Marlin v AIMCO, a suit for
declaratory relief on whether AIMCO can evict the tenants in violation of the
mitigation measures spelled out in the Lincoln Place Redevelopment Project, and,
2) LPTA v City of LA and AIMCO, in which the
tenants ask the court to mandate that the City of LA cease its collusion with
AIMCO in illegally evicting the tenants, and that the court stop AIMCO from
engaging in the unfair business practice of illegally evicting the
tenants.
On December 6, 2005 AIMCO had the
Sheriff’s Department lock out 52 households (21 children and 65 adults)
from Lincoln Place. More evictions followed. Fifty-four of these evictions are
currently on appeal.
The tenants hope that
when the dust settles on these cases, the hundreds of families who have been
driven from Lincoln Place by AIMCO will have the opportunity to return to the
historic apartment complex, which has offered thousands of
low-and-moderate-income families stability and community in Venice since
1950.
Posted: Mon - January 1, 2007 at 05:10 PM