Tenants protest loss of affordable housing
LINCOLN PLACE — One of the largest real estate management companies in the country evicted 52 households here on Tuesday, and some politicians insist business in Los Angeles won’t be better for the landlord because of it.
Dozens of tenants took to the streets on Tuesday after deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department forced their removal from Lincoln Place, a 54-year-old post-World War II apartment complex located on the 1000 block of Elkgrove Avenue. The sheriff’s department was acting on court-ordered evictions requested by Apartment Investment Management Co. (AIMCO), the Denver-based landlord that plans to redevelop Lincoln Place into condominiums.
Meanwhile, local politicians said AIMCO’s move may make it difficult for the company to expedite development projects in the Los Angeles area in the future.
Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl — whose constituency includes Lincoln Place — arrived at the scene and scorned AIMCO’s move.
“These evictions represent an assault on affordable housing, a slap in the face to renters everywhere, and insult the community of Venice and its elected representatives,” Rosendahl said. “AIMCO, do the right thing. Unlock those doors.
“Return to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith with these tenants.”
Rosendahl — known to be on good terms with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — said AIMCO’s willingness to evict tenants won’t help the company’s LA business plan.
“These tactics won’t work if AIMCO expects to get support for moving projects forward,” Rosendahl said. “For a long time, we will be looking at Dec. 6 as a tragic day for affordable housing.”
More than 100 tenants, many disabled, remain at Lincoln Place. Those that are disabled have until March to find housing, due to their infirmities.
Lincoln Place, a garden-style campus of 52 buildings built in 1951, was originally backed by the Federal Housing Authority to support World War II veterans and their families. However, it always has been privately owned. Once offering 795 affordable apartments, the 38-acre site has been largely abandoned in the face of an ongoing legal debacle that began shortly after 1992, when the property owner proposed a redevelopment plan that called for 850 units, most of which would be market-rate condominiums.
Elizabeth Colores, who’s been residing at Lincoln Place for 14 years, said she, her husband and two children — boys ages 12 and 6 — don’t know where they will sleep from now on.
“I’m very sad, but I feel even worse for the kids, and the seniors,” Colores said. “We don’t have a place to live.
“We don’t know where to go.” Colores said she and her husband have remained at Lincoln Place because they’re too poor to move.
One single mother, who earns $8 per hour and has three children, is reported to have moved into a motel. A 92-year-old World War II veteran — believed to have been locked out, accidentally or otherwise — is reported to have wandered into the street, where he disappeared.
Some tenants, anticipating the lock-out, moved their personal belongings into storage before the sheriff’s department showed up on Tuesday. Others still have televisions, coffee tables and pets locked in their vacated units, they said.
Meanwhile, many tenants, receiving frantic phone calls at work, said they returned home during the lunch hour on Tuesday and discovered the locks on their doors had been changed.
Authorities told them they’d have two minutes to enter their units and collect whatever valuables they could, residents said.
For years, the two sides have been embroiled in litigation, with settlements offered by AIMCO but declined by the tenants.
In October, Rosendahl and Villaraigosa organized a meeting with AIMCO and Lincoln Place tenants to resolve the dispute. However, the meeting failed because tenants didn’t trust AIMCO’s offer.
Patti Shwayder, AIMCO’s senior vice president of communications, said her company took steps above and beyond what is required by law in order to assuage tenant concerns.
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.
Shwayder said AIMCO’s offer would have prevented the company from redeveloping at market value nearly 13 acres, or one third of the property.
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. They refused the offer.
Tenants also have received individual settlement offers, which hundreds have accepted. Alex Tejeda, a single mother, said AIMCO offered her $3,200 to move, but she said it wasn’t enough for her to find an apartment she could afford.
Tejeda, who works at the Venice Family Clinic, said she sent her daughter to live with relatives in Florida as she stuck it out at Lincoln Place.
Tejeda said she believed that by staying she would help the fight for affordable housing in Los Angeles.
“It’s a good fight,” Tejeda said. “It’s getting too expensive to live here unless you’re a millionaire. Obviously, we’re not.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 7, 2005. Read the original PDF.