The fight to stop the massive Ellis Act eviction of Lincoln Place now heads to the Court of Appeal after a trial court ruled on Wednesday for their landlord, the mega-corporate landlord AIMCO. Tenants at the 795-unit Lincoln Place complex in the Venice district of Los Angeles have been subjected to a series of outrageously bad legal decisions that involved Republican judges rewriting the Ellis Act to eliminate tenant protections written into the original law. Set forth below is a report from the tenants on the most recent adverse court ruling. For the full story of their long battle, go to lincolnplace.net.
WHAT HAPPENED IN COURT ON AUGUST 16, DEPT. 86:
Judge Yaffe issued a Tentative Ruling not in our favor and our attorney, John Murdock, did a great job in oral arguments explaining to Judge Yaffe that the tenant relocation benefits required by CEQA and incorporated within the Tract Map precluded eviction of the tenants. However, Judge Yaffe was clearly confused and retained his position that the tenants could raise the CEQA defense before an eviction court judge during an unlawful detainer action. This position taken by Judge Yaffe is circular in reasoning. Here is why:
Judge Yaffe’s minute order confirmed that “this court was ordered by the District Court of Appeal to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the City of Los Angeles, ‘from issuing a demolition permit for any Lincoln Place structure unless … the applicant shows satisfactory evidence of compliance with the preconditions on demolition adopted in the authorization of the Lincoln Place Redevelopment project.’ Such an injunction was issued by this court on December 8, 2005…. That injunction prohibits the City from authorizing the demolition of any tenant’s apartment without satisfactory evidence that the tenant has been provided with the relocation benefits afforded to the tenant by any of the documents adopted by the City in the course of approving the Lincoln Place project, as a precondition of demolition.”
Judge Yaffe agreed in open court that the reason the landlord, AIMCO, was evicting the tenants now was to enable AIMCO to demolish the buildings later. But the Judge wouldn’t connect the dots that the evictions were in violation of the relocation benefits and project conditions which clearly state that tenants are to be relocated within the property not evicted off the property.
Even when Murdock pointed out to Judge Yaffe that unless the evictions are stopped now, by the time AIMCO applies for the demolition permits and the City asks AIMCO how they complied with the tenant relocation benefits, there would be no tenants on the property – again the Judge didn’t understand the problem.
There was a lot of dialogue between Judge Yaffe, Murdock, the City Attorney and AIMCO’s attorney which was all captured by the court reporter. We now have a good basis for our appeal on the record.
WHAT THIS MEANS:
While we are not happy with Judge Yaffe’s decision today and are concerned about the fate of the current tenants here at Lincoln Place, there is a bright side to this story.
In July, 2005, when we first began this journey to fight our Ellis Act evictions, we strongly felt that the Ellis Act was an unjust law. We knew the road would be bumpy and long. But we knew that we had to stand up and fight for what was right – both for us at Lincoln Place and for all renters in California who were facing Ellis Act evictions.
Our situation at Lincoln Place has now become a battle between two state statutes – CEQA (California Environment Quality Act) versus Ellis Act. Which statute trumps when there is a conflict? We believe CEQA should win, which means, this is now a battle about public rights versus private rights.
In the California case of Nash v. City of Santa Monica, the California Supreme Court upheld that a city had the constitutional right to control Land use to assure there would be an adequate supply of rental housing in their city. This case was about public rights versus private rights. But the Legislators were concerned about the landlord who no longer wanted the responsibility of being a landlord and enacted the Ellis Act to prevent involuntary servitude. That was in 1985.
The situation is different now. There is a massive shortage of rental housing in the State of California and the Ellis Act can be blamed for this shortage. It is time to have the courts declare that the Ellis Act is infringing on a city’s constitutional right to provide housing for it’s people, as well as a tenant’s right to have housing.
Lincoln Place has become the poster child here in LA that has encouraged other renters to stand up and fight their evictions. Lincoln Place can now become the poster child for how the Ellis Act is abusing the protections provided under CEQA, how the Ellis Act is being abused by large landlords, and why the Ellis Act should be declared unconstitutional in order to restore the power back to the cities of California.
We are finally in the right court to listen to our story. We have faith that the Court of Appeals will rule as they did in the “Alliance case” (Lincoln Place Tenants Association v. City of Los Angeles, 2005, 130 Cal.App.4th 1491) and declare these evictions illegal and enable Lincoln Place to be a community once again.
