Payoff to Former Tenants : Dream House to Rise Out of Slum Nightmare

Irene Garcia and her husband, Gregorio, will finally have the casita (little house) of their dreams, thanks to the slumlord of their nightmares.

The Garcias were among 37 former tenants who received checks in the settlement of a suit against the owner of a Silver Lake apartment building who was ordered last March in a Superior Court judgment to pay a total of $365,000 to the renters.

The Garcias, like the other tenants in the suit, are a low-income family, and like most of the plaintiffs, Spanish-speaking. They are not the kind of people who normally use the legal system to protect their rights, said Dino Hirsch of United Hispanic Tenants, a community group that helped the Silver Lake renters fight their case.

But Hirsch and attorney Roberta Stovitz, representing the Hollywood-Wilshire Fair Housing Council, said it is likely that more and more Los Angeles residents such as the Garcias will be fighting and winning their cases against slumlords.

Hirsch, Stovitz, the Garcias and several other former tenants of their Sunset Boulevard building were attending a press conference called to publicize the victory and pass out the checks.

Hirsch and Stovitz said the case in which the Garcias were among the plaintiffs is one of two or three in the last few months in which slumlords have been ordered to pay large cash settlements.

Just three weeks ago, Michael Schaefer, a mid-Wilshire-area slumlord, was ordered to pay $1.83 million in an unusual class-action suit to tenants of his Berendo Street building, but that order may be appealed, and payments are yet to be made.

The defendant in the Garcias’ case was Edward J. Eng, a lawyer and certified public accountant who was ordered March 18 by Superior Court Judge Richard A. Paez to pay $365,000.

Acted as Own Lawyer

Eng, who represented himself at the trial, was not available for comment Tuesday. He is vacationing in China, a secretary at his office said.

At the news conference, Irene Garcia told of living in a $116-a-month bedroom apartment at 3724 Sunset Blvd. where “the ceiling was leaking, the windows were broken and there were mice, rats and roaches.”

She said she and her husband complained to Eng and the building manager numerous times during their five-year stay in the late 1970s and early ‘80s but repairs were never made. “All he was concerned about was the money,” she said.

Testimony to that effect from the Garcias and other plaintiffs was cited by Paez in his finding against Eng.

Paez also cited Eng’s record of violations of city building, health, fire and safety codes--the landlord was prosecuted in 1982 by the city attorney’s office and pleaded no contest to several counts. He was granted probation on condition that he either repair the building or demolish it; Eng chose the latter and the lot remains vacant.

‘A Living Hell’

While the building was there, it was “a living hell for the tenants and their families,” Stovitz said Tuesday. “At times, they went without water and they couldn’t bathe or flush their toilets, and often they were without electricity.”

Conditions were so intolerable, that the tenants banded together, launched a rent strike and sued Eng, Hirsch said.

He said the unity shown by the tenants in the Eng case could be an indication of things to come. Other Latino tenants may be encouraged to band together to sue slumlords, Hirsch said, while lawyers, attracted by their potential cuts of large court-ordered judgments, may be more willing to take the cases.

“These are people who come from a culture where a landlord is treated as a little god,” Hirsch said. “Yet if tenants are not scared of landlords and are willing to fight for their rights, then the plague of slumlords will come to an end.”

It has ended for the Garcias. With the earnings from his job for a small-boat manufacturing firm in the San Fernando Valley, they have been able to move to a better apartment in Huntington Park. With the $14,800 they received as part of the Eng judgment, they will be able to make a down payment on a home for their five children, ages 1 through 9.

“I’m very happy that the judge paid attention to our complaints,” Irene Garcia said in Spanish. “We plan to use the money wisely. . . . We plan to look for a little house.”