Eviction Notices : 12 Elderly Tenants Fearful as Owners, Housing Officials Blame Each Other
Filled with pictures of laughing relatives, birthday cards from great-great-grandchildren and brightly colored crocheted afghans, Susan Repasky’s small, neat Canoga Park apartment would seem to be a festive place.
But lately, Repasky has been spending hours sitting in her chair by the window, fingering her rosary, clutching her worn black Bible and praying that she will not be evicted.
“Sometimes I wish I were dead,” said Repasky, 84, a white-haired widow who walks with the help of a cane and has been told by doctors she has a potentially deadly aneurysm.
Repasky’s upstairs neighbor, Patricia Johnson, an 84-pound, 5-foot-1 woman of 71, shakes uncontrollably when she thinks about the eviction notice she recently received.
“My nerves are shot,” said Johnson, who has hypoglycemia and a pacemaker and is prone to fainting spells. “I just never stop thinking about it. It’s like somebody stalking you.”
Repasky, Johnson and nine other elderly tenants received eviction notices in May from Dusablon & Chase Investments, the Woodland Hills company that bought their 29-unit apartment project.
The 11 tenants, all of whom receive federal rental assistance, paid their portion of the May rent to Rubicon Properties, a subsidiary property management company owned by Donald Dusablon and John Chase. A week later, they received eviction notices alleging non-payment of rent.
The building’s owners say they are seeking the evictions because the city’s Housing Authority has failed to make more than $10,000 in federal subsidy payments for the 11 tenants since the building was purchased.
Housing Authority officials, meanwhile, say they have not paid the subsidies because the building’s new owners have failed to submit the paper work necessary to register the building with the authority--charges that Dusablon and Chase deny.
The two owners maintain that they submitted the papers shortly after the building was sold and accuse the Housing Authority of dragging its feet in making payments.
Caught in the middle are the 11 panic-stricken tenants, ranging in age from 70 to 90, some of whom have lived in the two-story white stucco complex in the 7300 block of Variel Street more than 20 years.
A 68-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis in a neighboring building purchased by Dusablon & Chase in December is also being threatened with eviction because she, too, depends upon subsidies the Housing Authority has not paid.
The eviction lawsuit by the owners against the tenants is scheduled to be heard July 17 in Encino Municipal Court. San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services is representing the tenants.
Most of the 12 elderly tenants are on Social Security or pensions and have incomes of less than $600 a month. They suffer a litany of health problems, including inoperable cancer, paraplegia, arthritis and heart ailments, said Ellen Michiel, director of planning for Raznick & Sons, a Woodland Hills developer, working as a volunteer advocate for the tenants.
Michiel and Katheryn Waters, 72, a paraplegic with multiple sclerosis facing eviction after 18 years in the project, both contend that the company is using the elderly tenants to force the city Housing Authority and federal housing officials to raise the rental subsidies. If that fails, “I think their prime target is to get us out of here so they can raise the rents in the buildings,” said Waters.
“These people are terribly, terribly frail. They have no place to go, and they are frightened,” Michiel said. “They have so much stress because of this, and these are people who do not have the physical or mental wherewithal to deal with stress.”
‘Vise Around My Heart’
Repasky, a rotund woman in a lilac-colored house dress and sturdy black shoes, said that, when she read the eviction notice, it felt like “a vise around my heart.”
“I broke out with a rash all over my head like hives. I cannot concentrate on anything at all. If I wasn’t a religious person, I don’t know what I’d do. I just sit here and I pray constantly, and that’s all I do.”
Another tenant, 84-year-old Margaret Cernuto, had a heart attack June 13. Michiel and the other tenants believe Cernuto’s anxiety over the eviction proceedings was a contributing factor.
“She had never been in the hospital in her life before this happened,” said Cernuto’s daughter, Josephine Franovic, who has come from her home in Las Vegas to help her mother recuperate.
“It is constantly pressing on our minds,” said Waters. “We were a close-knit group of people here who were happy with their surroundings, took care of their properties and looked out one for the other. It’s a very caring group. It’s like a family. We had planned to stay here the rest of our lives.”
Elderly Tenants Predominate
Since it was built in the 1960s, the apartment building has been filled primarily with senior citizens, about a third of whom receive federal Housing and Urban Development rental subsidies. The federal subsidies are paid to landlords by the city’s Housing Authority. Under the program, senior citizens pay one-third of their gross income in rent. HUD pays the other two-thirds.
Gerald Rosenberg, an attorney who represents the building’s owners, blamed the city’s Housing Authority for “dropping the ball” by failing to pay its share of the rent. He said he chose to seek eviction proceedings against the tenants rather than sue the Housing Authority, however, partly because a case against the authority would take two or three years.
“I have tremendous empathy for those people, and I’m sorry that they’re the ones that are caught in the middle of this, but the problem isn’t one that my client created,” Rosenberg said. “If the Housing Authority had paid money to my client that the Housing Authority was supposed to pay, there would be no problem.”
Chase, 41, of Northridge, accuses Housing Authority officials of failing to return phone calls and answer mail about the matter, and called them “flaky.”
Ed Griffin, a spokesman for the Housing Authority, acknowledged that the authority had mistakenly issued subsidy checks for May and June to the building’s former owner, C. R. Bowen, despite a call from Rubicon to say that ownership had changed. Bowen has since returned the money.
Griffin said that Housing Authority officials on June 15 took Dusablon the documents necessary to authorize the subsidies after Dusablon indicated a willingness to settle the case of one tenant out of court. However, Dusablon refused to sign the documents, he said.
“It’s unfortunate that they would proceed with an eviction action against 12 elderly tenants rather than sign. We would have been able to get a check out that day. If their real desire is to receive payment that they felt was owed to them, their signature on those documents would have taken care of that. Obviously, they have some other intention.”
Owners Deny It
Dusablon and Chase deny that such an offer was made by city Housing Authority officials.
Rents of low-income seniors are set according to market value when the unit is first rented. Federal rules grant annual rent raises tied to increases in the consumer price index. In recent years, the increases have averaged about 5%, Griffin said.
But Bowen, the previous owner, described by tenants as “a compassionate gentleman,” turned down the annual federal rent increases. As a result, rents in the complex today are “lower than the market rate for the area--as much as 100% lower,” Michiel said. Rents range from $285 for a one-bedroom unit to $450 for a two-bedroom unit, contrasted with a range of $475 to $650 in the surrounding area, Waters said.
Bowen also maintained the building well and was responsive to tenant needs. As a result, vacancies rarely arose. Units usually became available only upon the death of a tenant, Waters said.
Soon after purchasing the building, the new owners asked the Housing Authority to relocate the subsidized tenants and were refused, Dusablon said. Then they asked the Housing Authority for an increase to bring rents closer to market value, Chase said.
Court cases have established that eligible low-income tenants cannot be forced out unless a building owner can prove in court that a tenant has failed to pay his share of the rent, destroyed property, committed a violent crime or engaged in some sort of wrongdoing, Griffin said.
Special rent increases are granted only when an owner can demonstrate increases in actual expenses because of a rise in property tax, utility rates or other operating costs. New ownership does not qualify for a special adjustment, Griffin said.
Waters, a white-haired woman with freckled arms and a cheerful, no-nonsense manner, had confided the problem to Sister Miriam Malone of Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church in Canoga Park, during an in-home communion visit.
The sister urged her to contact Michiel, a former deputy for former Los Angeles City Councilman Robert W. Wilkinson.
Working from her wheelchair, Waters organized the tenants.
Michiel and Legal Aid lawyer Yvonne Mariajiminez tell them that they have nothing to worry about because the law is on their side. Michiel has already stashed three bottles of champagne in Waters’ refrigerator for a victory party. But the tenants find it hard not to worry.
“That is very easy to say, and it was wonderful for us to hear, but when you are sitting there looking at four walls and wondering when will the ax fall, it is hard to say, ‘Don’t worry,’ ” Waters said.
