Gone,but notforgetting
LINCOLN PLACE — Ousted tenants and their supporters have established a “tent city” in front of their former apartment complex, and plan to stay put until their landlord is willing to renegotiate a settlement that will allow them to resume living in their apartments.
Dozens of tenants took to the streets on Tuesday when the largest real estate management company in the country evicted 65 adults and 21 children from Lincoln Place, a 55-year-old post- World War II apartment complex located on the 1000 block of Elkgrove Avenue. Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department assisted the court-ordered evictions.
Since then, some tenants and their supporters have been protesting behind the Ross clothing store on Lincoln Boulevard and California Avenue. They have demonstrated against the evictions by pitching tents, picket signs, lawn chairs and barbecue grills on a corner of Los Angeles city property. They insist they will remain as long as they can, or until Apartment Investment Management Co. (AIMCO) — the Denver-based landlord that plans to redevelop Lincoln Place into condominiums — is willing to offer a settlement similar to the one tenants previously turned down.
Lincoln Place, a garden-style campus of 52 buildings built in 1950, was originally backed by the Federal Housing Authority to support World War II veterans and their families. However, it’s always been privately owned. Once offering 795 affordable apartments, the 35-acre site has been largely abandoned in the face of an ongoing legal debacle that began shortly after 1992, when a redevelopment plan was introduced that called for 850 units, most of which would be market-rate condominiums.
For years, the two sides have been embroiled in litigation, with recent settlements being offered by AIMCO and subsequently declined by the tenants. In October, Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa organized a meeting with AIMCO and Lincoln Place tenants to resolve the dispute. However, that meeting failed because tenants didn’t trust AIMCO’s offer.
Patti Shwayder, AIMCO’s senior vice president of communications, said her company has taken steps above and beyond what is required by law in order to assuage the tenants.
Hundreds of Lincoln Place tenants have settled privately with AIMCO. They received as much as $10,000 in relocation money, Schwayder said.
For those who’ve wanted to keep their homes, Shwayder said AIMCO was prepared to provide as many as 180 Lincoln Place households with apartments at the new site, in which they would pay below market rent for life. In addition, 50 more units also were to be designated as historical and would not be redeveloped, under the terms of the settlement.
As a condition of the settlement, tenants would have had to agree to let AIMCO build more than 1,000 units and stop suing AIMCO over disputes.
Due to years of distrust, tenants said they were unable to make that promise, and refused the offer.
Rosendahl, Villaraigosa and the Grassroots Venice Neighborhood Council have pledged to deny giving any development concessions to AIMCO if they lock out tenants. Tenant organizers contend in a press release that AIMCO has extracted development concessions from Los Angeles without community input, and in violation of state and city environmental laws.
Further, the evictions are in clear violation of the tenant protection conditions of the only approved development plan for the site, tenants said. They claim Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has refused to issue an injunction against the evictions while a resolution is worked out.
However, tenants say that, despite the previous setbacks to settle the dispute, they are ready to accept an offer.
AIMCO’s previous offer, which would have allowed 180 households to stay, is an option they say they would accept.
“We just want our homes,” said Barabara Eisenberg, a tenant and organizer. “That’s all we ever wanted.”
It’s believed 80 households remain at Lincoln Place. Consisting of the elderly and disabled, they have until March to leave. One of them is Lucy Siam, a senior who moved to Lincoln Place in 1974.
On Tuesday, Siam sat in a lawn chair, wrapped up in a blue vest, sipping wine from a Dixie cup and watching the cars pass.
“I don’t have any place to go, so now I’m taking it day by day,” she said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 10, 2005. Read the original PDF.