Rent Increases Hit Glendale Seniors ‘Like a Bomb’
After receiving notice of rent increases as high as $400 a month, dozens of elderly Glendale residents who live in a 132-unit apartment building have been forced to search for new homes.
But in a city with no rent control, the tenants have little recourse.
Moreover, because of a 2- to 15-year wait for federally subsidized housing, many of the tenants said they have no choice but to move into smaller Glendale apartments, while others said they are physically and emotionally unable to make a move.
“It was like a bomb,” said Otella, 91, of the rent increase. Otella, who asked that her last name not be used, is among the tenants who are moving to less costly Glendale apartments. “I just went to the doctor and he found my blood pressure so high he told me to come home and lie down. I never had a blood-pressure problem, but this has been traumatic.”
Last month, Kenneth S. Hayashi Corp. of Los Angeles, the new owner of the complex at 245 W. Loraine St., informed tenants by mail of rent increases of as much as $400 a month for those living in two-bedroom apartments and about $90 a month for those in one-bedroom units.
About 75% of the building’s residents are elderly, manager Nancy Berry said.
Beginning in March, two-bedroom apartments in the security building will rent for between $1,150 and $1,165, depending on size, and one-bedroom units will rent for $735, Berry said.
Management is also requiring rent payments by the first day of each month. Social Security checks don’t arrive until the third day, residents said.
Residents and renters’ advocates interviewed say they are concerned that the ability of landlords to raise rents as high as they wish may make Glendale too expensive for its elderly, forcing some to move away from their friends and doctors.
Worse, they fear, those who are physically unable to search for new homes or cannot afford rising rental costs in a non-rent-controlled community may be forced out onto the streets.
“This used to be a community for the elderly,” said one frustrated tenant who is moving with his wife into a smaller, less expensive Glendale apartment.
Requests by tenants last month to meet with a representative of Hayashi Corp. were refused, said Jim Bishop, a conservator for an 89-year-old tenant who has opted to dip into her modest savings instead of move.
Bishop said he and the tenants wanted to ask that the new owner gradually raise the rent so that residents who could not afford to pay the increase would have time to find a new home.
‘Requesting a Discussion’
“We really aren’t demanding anything,” Bishop said. “We’re requesting a discussion on the rent increase and the problems it is posing to the tenants.”
But Luis O. Carmenate, assistant vice president of the corporation and spokesman for Hayashi, has refused to meet with tenants, Bishop said.
Carmenate, contacted by The Times, refused to comment on the rent increase.
So far, more than 16 tenants, including Otella, have found new homes and have given the new owner notice, Berry said. About a dozen others, interviewed at the apartment complex, said they are still searching.
Others, such as an 88-year-old woman and her 96-year-old husband, said they are physically unable to leave, even if they could afford to.
“My husband cannot move,” the woman said. “He hasn’t got the strength, and he hasn’t got the ability.”
The couple said initially they were not concerned when the former owner refused last fall to renew their lease another year.
“I didn’t think either one of us would live so long as to worry about a lease,” she said.
But now, with only a “few years” of savings remaining in the bank to absorb their $340 increase, they find their future uncertain.
“I don’t know what will happen,” she said.
Those familiar with rental rates said the increase at the Loraine Street apartment is the largest they have heard of in Glendale. However, such severe increases are legal in Glendale because the city has no rent-control ordinance.
“They can raise the rent as much as they want, as often as they want,” said Susan Bilow, housing coordinator for the Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley. “The way California state law is written, all they are required to do is give them a 30-day notice in writing.”
Rent-control advocates characterize the Loraine Street increase as an extreme example of how rising rental costs can adversely affect the elderly in Glendale.
‘Skyrocketing Costs’
“The biggest factor in homelessness is the cost of housing,” said Gregg Roth, president of the Glendale Coalition for Emergency Food and Shelter, “and particularly in Glendale, we’re going to see an increase because of the skyrocketing costs due to no rent control and increased development.”
“What do you do with people who just can’t afford to pay more?” asked Kenneth H. Carlson, a Glendale attorney and advocate of rent control in Glendale. “We don’t have rent control . . . Housing assistance is inadequate, and they can’t afford to live anywhere. The vast majority of them will be homeless.”
On any given day, about 21 elderly citizens wander homeless in Glendale, according to a recent study by Roth’s group.
The organization, formed in 1984, is seven-agency coalition that includes the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Catholic charities.
The elderly homeless account for 12% of the city’s homeless population, the 1987 study indicates. Most of them, it states, have fallen on difficult times financially and cannot afford a place to live.
“Some kind of unexepected emergency destroys their lives and they wind up on the streets,” Roth said. “Usually, it’s a medical emergency or a rent increase . . . A majority of them live in their cars.”
Tenant Safeguards
In Los Angeles, a nine-year-old rent control ordinance prevents landlords from raising the rent more than 4% each year, said Jim McGuirk, spokesman for Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Division of the Los Angeles Community Development Department.
“The intent of the ordinance is to safeguard tenants from excessive and unjust rent increases . . . while at the same time providing landlords with a reasonable return from their rental units,” McGuirk said.
But even Roth and other proponents of rent control agree that it is not the only answer.
“Rent control is not the ultimate solution,” Roth said. “Somehow, we need to continue working at finding a larger number of units that are available to elderly on fixed income . . . because there’s a very tight connection between availability of housing and homelessness.”
In Glendale, there are 524 federally subsidized apartments available to residents 62 years or older who earn less than $12,550 a year.
About 260 of them are scattered throughout Glendale and are part of the city’s Rental Assistance Program, said Madalyn Blake, community development administrator for Glendale.
The remainder are part of a separate program and are located at two federally subsidized buildings for elderly residents. The projects, Casa de la Paloma on Kenwood Drive and Park Paseo on South Isabel, are operated by the Southern California Presbyterian Church in Glendale.
Both programs require a tenant to contribute 30% of his or her income toward the rent. The Rental Assistance Program safeguards tenants from paying more than the fair market rent for an area. In Glendale, that amounts to about $564 for a one-bedroom apartment or $656 for a one-bedroom apartment with paid utilities, Blake said.
Long Waiting Lists
But for the seniors living at the Loraine Street apartment, the long waiting lists make such programs seem useless.
Eligible tenants can expect to wait at least two years for one of the 260 apartments in the Rental Assistance program, Blake said.
The picture is even bleaker at the two senior projects which offer independent living for the elderly.
At the 97-unit Park Paseo, applicants are placed on a waiting list with more than 2,000 names, said Mary Kranz, assistant manager of the 2 1/2-year-old project.
“We’re in the 200s,” Kranz said of the names on the list. “We’re telling people 10 to 15 years, but we don’t know.”
“We hear from people all the time telling us their rents are up, and they need a place to go,” said Hugh Foley, manager of the 167-unit Casa de la Paloma. “I sympathize with them . . . they’re frustrated with the length of the waiting list and people say, ‘It won’t do me any good to get on that list because I won’t be around that long.’ ”
About 600 seniors have been on the waiting list for the eight-year-old Casa de la Paloma, Foley said.
Scott Reed, spokesman for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in Los Angeles, which allocates the federal funds to cities throughout Los Angeles County, said Glendale and other cities can increase the amount of aid by encouraging and working with nonprofit organizations such as the Southern California Presbyterian Church.
“Any city could choose to work with nonprofit sponsors to help those sponsors find sites for buildings,” he said.
When a city finds such an organization to sponsor a low-cost housing program, it then must compete with other cities for the limited funds, Reed said.
In Pasadena--a city with about 45,000 fewer residents than Glendale--there are four housing projects with about 3,000 units for the elderly and 450 other Housing and Urban Development subsidized apartments throughout the city, said Joseph Brumfield, housing program administrator for the Pasadena Housing Authority. The waiting list for such housing is about one year.
The average rental costs for one- and two-bedroom apartments in Pasadena are about $100 less than those in Glendale, according to realtors in both cities.
Glendale Mayor Ginger Bremberg said Glendale is constantly seeking more HUD funds. “Any time there is any opportunity to get more, we apply for more,” she said. “Sometimes we get everything we ask for and sometimes we don’t . . . The seniors have a high priority.”
Bremberg said the disparity in senior housing is due to the fact that Pasadena has a larger minority population then Glendale, and therefore receives more HUD funds for senior housing.
But Reed said senior housing subsidies are not based on minority populations.
“There’s nothing to that statement . . . “ he said.
Meanwhile, an 84-year-old tenant at the the Loraine Street apartment offered advice to a visitor:
“You young people better put things away,” she said. “Don’t spend it on a microwave oven because when the chips are down, you’re in there drowning. That’s life for you.”
