Eviction Blues : Elderly Songwriter Waits in Fear for Note Forcing Her Out of Apartment That’s for Sale

On the day the bad news came last October, Bernice Petkere had been prepared for the worst.

Rumors had circulated for weeks among tenants of the West Hollywood apartment building, where she has lived for 11 years, that new owners were about to convert the building to condominiums. The victim of a condominium conversion once before, she had an idea of what to expect as soon as she saw the letter that began, “Dear Tenant.”

Petkere, who is 86 and in poor health, has the option of buying her three-bedroom apartment for $189,000 or--at the discretion of whoever else bought it--face eviction within 90 days.

“They may as well have been asking $5 million. I don’t have that kind of money,” said the former songwriter who wrote “Starlight,” which was recorded by Bing Crosby.

Lives Modestly

With Social Security benefits, an occasional royalty payment and financial help from a relative, she has managed to live modestly in her $900-per-month apartment.

Now, having joined the ranks of elderly tenants who suddenly face being uprooted, she lives in constant fear that the next prospective buyer ushered into her apartment by an eager sales representative will be the one who says yes.

In the last month, she has played the unwilling host half a dozen times.

“I watch for the look in their eyes, and if I can tell that they really like the place, it sends a chill through me,” she said. “I just pray that they will change their minds or something else will cause the deal to fall through.”

As evictions go, hers isn’t likely to be unusual. When investors bought the sprawling, three-story apartment building at 1351 Crescent Heights Blvd. last year, they inherited a conversion permit issued by the county to a previous owner before West Hollywood was incorporated in 1984.

City officials challenged such permits in court, but a Superior Court judge ruled last January that the city cannot block condominium conversions approved by state and county agencies before the city came into existence.

Relocation Fees

Under West Hollywood’s strict rent control ordinance, Petkere will qualify for at least $10,000 in relocation fees. And, owing to a measure approved last month by the City Council, she may also benefit from free relocation counseling.

But neither prospect has helped lessen her fear of starting over someplace else.

“For one thing, I know (having to move) means I’ll never be able to afford a place as nice as this one, since it has been under rent control,” she said. “And there’s just the idea of going someplace new, where I don’t know anybody. . . . I’m too old for that.”

A few weeks ago, she said, a relative invited her to lunch and a drive along the coast before stopping at a retirement home “where she said there are all sorts of games and people are supposedly very friendly.”

“I just gasped,” said Petkere. “That’s not for me.”

Elliott Sharabi, who manages Crescent Heights Inc., the investment company that owns the building, said his company has tried to be sensitive to Petkere and other tenants in the 56-unit building who face the prospect of moving.

“We don’t treat them coldly. We understand that it’s a difficult time for some of them,” he said.

Others are less convinced that Petkere and others in her position have been treated fairly. “It may happen all the time, but that doesn’t make (displacing people) any less criminal in human terms,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a renters advocacy group.

In Petkere’s case, “you have a woman who has lived there for years, who has always paid her rent, and who is having the carpets pulled from beneath her feet . . . and there is essentially nothing anyone can do about it,” he said.

When Petkere was displaced by a condominium conversion 11 years ago, the future didn’t seem so uncertain, she said, even though the eviction came on the heels of the death of her husband, orchestra leader Freddie Berrens.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m that much older, but (the prospect of eviction) feels more terrible this time. . . . I think the older you get, the more secure you start to feel once you’ve stayed in a place for several years.”

For Petkere, security includes being able visit with friends at the nearby Farmers Market most weekday afternoons.

And it means playing Bingo on Tuesday nights at Temple Beth-El, next door to the apartment building. She has been such a steady fixture there over the past decade, a special place is reserved for her.

“It isn’t the game so much as the people. Everyone knows me there. When it’s my birthday, there’s an announcement and people come around congratulating me. Every week when they see me, they hug and kiss me,” she said.

At home, she clings to the past.

The furnishings in her apartment reflect her years as a songwriter, including a baby grand piano that she has lugged across the country “three or four times” in moves between New York and Los Angeles. Part of a child singing duo after winning a Denver talent show at the age of 6, Petkere began her songwriting career in 1931 when she scribbled on the back of a menu the notes to a tune she was humming in a Manhattan jazz bar.

The song, “Starlight,” was the first of dozens of her songs to be recorded by well-known artists, including Kate Smith, Tony Bennett and Nancy Wilson.

Covers of the sheet music of her published songs fill a wall in her study, including one from the 1939 film “Ice Follies,” starring James Stewart, in which a young Joan Crawford sang two of her numbers.

A scrapbook bulges with other musical memories. There’s a get-well card from Irving Berlin. (“It came with dozens of red roses,” she recalls.) Among a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings there’s an article by a New York columnist who, in 1935, dubbed her “the Queen of Tin Pan Alley.”

Scattered about on the piano are music sheets containing a smattering of unpublished tunes.

Several years ago, at the urging of a friend, she got an appointment with an executive at RCA to show the songs but never followed through.

“I got as far as the waiting room, and this long-haired rock ‘n’ roll type snatched the music from my hand and said to his friends, ‘Let’s see what grandma wrote.’ I grabbed it back and walked out.

“It’s enough for me just to be left alone.”