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# Judge asked to reconsider trial for Lincoln Place
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/judge-asked-to-reconsider-trial-for-lincoln-place/
- Published: 2006-11-07T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T22:03:14.000Z
- Author: Kevin Herrera
- Tags: Crime, Venice, #archive-import

*Tenants hold their ground*

SM COURTHOUSE — The owners of Lincoln Place have asked a Santa Monica Superior Court judge to reconsider her motion to hold a trial in the case involving more than 50 aging and disabled tenants forced to vacate the post-World War II affordable housing complex to make way for demolition.

Attorneys with Apartment Investment Management Co.(AIMCO) filed a request for reconsideration last Friday, just as Judge Patricia Collins was prepared to set a trial date so that tenants can challenge their evictions.

AIMCO claims 13 households still living in the Venice complex are doing so illegally after the Denver-based company ordered them to vacate the premises by Aug. 31\. AIMCO filed its motion on grounds that one of the declarations submitted by the tenants should have been excluded on evidentiary grounds.

A hearing on the latest motion filed by AIMCO will be held Dec. 4 in Department B of the Santa Monica Courthouse.

“We’re optimistic that outcome will be in AIMCO’s favor,” said Cynthia Eichner, vice president of corporate communications.

Tenants are challenging an unlawful detainer filed by AIMCO, claiming the company violated an agreement with the City of Los Angeles to relocate tenants on the property during construction.

Tenants are also challenging the way in which AIMCO demolished structures on the property, charging they are operating without respect for state law that protects affordable, rental housing.

“I think it is very important to get a hearing on the merits of this case,” said Sheila Bernard, president of the Lincoln Place Tenants Association. “How can people have faith in the justice system if they can’t have their day in court?”

AIMCO, which has refused to accept rent from tenants for the months of September and October, has plans to replace all buildings on the 33-acre property with contemporary housing, complete with affordable units for low-income residents, AIMCO officials said.

Most tenants have already left, accepting relocation packages that included thousands of dollars to help pay for moving expenses.

Those who did not accept AIMCO’s offer were evicted this past December, with some forming a “tent city” nearby to stage protests.

Under an agreement reached during a series of mediations, 40 households comprised of elderly tenants and those with disabilities were allowed to remain at the site until demolition commenced.

Officials with AIMCO said they offered — both in October 2005 and in April of 2006 — to allow existing tenants to remain at Lincoln Place in their current rents for life. Those offers were rejected by the tenants’ association, which said residents on fixed incomes would be unable to afford market rate housing elsewhere.

For the past two years, AIMCO officials said they have offered “generous monetary relocation packages” far in excess of what state and local law requires 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 site has been largely abandoned in the face of an ongoing legal debacle that began shortly after 1993, when the property owner proposed a redevelopment plan that called for 850 units to be built on the site, most of which would be market-rate condominiums.

The Ellis Act, passed by the California legislature in 1986, was designed as a way for landlords to sell their property in order to get out of the rental business.

Legal advocates for the tenants contend AIMCO — a corporate landlord that owns 50 apartment complexes in California — is not going out of the rental business. Therefore, they argue, AIMCO is forfeit from exercising the Ellis Act.

Tenants are currently appealing another case against the City of Los Angeles for allegedly failing to enforce conditions of a redevelopment approval which prohibits AIMCO from evicting tenants against their will.

That lawsuit is based on a landmark ruling by the state court of appeals last year, which said that mitigation conditions were “not mere expressions of hope,” and that developers are not allowed to “piecemeal” conditions of the California Environmental Quality Control Act.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 7, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110706.pdf?ref=smdp.com)