Obituaries : Dino Hirsch; Helped Poor Latino Tenants

Dino Hirsch, an advocate of tenant rights in Los Angeles, particularly for low-income Latino renters, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 73.

Hirsch, an Italian immigrant who worked as a machinist and union organizer, spent his retirement years as a volunteer, helping frightened tenants living in often unspeakable conditions in slum buildings.

As founder and director of Inquilinos Unidos-- United Renters--he was virtually the only one out of a small number of tenant advocates in the city who specialized in helping Spanish-speaking renters. Over the last several years he became what one fellow tenant activist called “the slumlord’s living nightmare.”

Hirsch spoke Spanish as a result of a childhood spent in Europe, where he became multilingual. Born of German-Jewish parents who fled Nazi Germany, he was raised in Italy and emigrated to the United States in 1940.

Aided Elderly Jews

After he retired in 1979, he became a volunteer with the Coalition for Economic Survival, which was then helping elderly Jewish tenants in the Fairfax area.

He soon became aware that another group seemed even more needy. “There was nothing for Latinos,” Hirsch said, “and I felt they were the largest and most oppressed group of all.”

Often, he said, such tenants were unaware that they had any recourse against eviction or bad conditions which violated city and county building and health codes. A tiny, gray-haired man who chain-smoked, he became a familiar figure in the large old buildings in the downtown, Hollywood and Wilshire areas where impoverished tenants, many earning less than the minimum wage, tend to live.

Reassuring Message

Whether it was tenants showing him leaking roofs, collapsed walls or flooring so rotten that rats came and went at will through gaping holes, his message was the same: There’s no reason to be scared.

Michael Bodaken, a Legal Aid Foundation attorney, said no one did what Hirsch did.

“He was unique, the link between the poor Latino and the powers at City Hall, the courts and the community,” Bodaken said. “ I don’t know how we can replace him.”

On Saturday mornings, he held “open house” in the Central American Refugee Center on South Bonnie Brae Street for those who sought his advice. Payment was voluntary, and tenants left whatever they could afford, usually coins or dollar bills, in a small dish.

Among his most famous cases was the Frostonya Apartment Hotel on Vermont Avenue, where 47 families asked for his help in 1983. They wanted their landlord, Surya Gupta, at that time described by some city officials as the city’s worst slumlord, to take care of rat and cockroach infestation, lack of hot water and broken elevators. Instead, Gupta wanted to evict them.

Rent Strike

With Hirsch’s help, the tenants conducted a rent strike and ran the building themselves. They sued the landlord and won $610,000.

Recently, many of his cases involved landlords who were seeking to evict tenants so that they could demolish their old buildings, rather than do seismic upgrades required by the city, or rehabilitate and “gentrify” the buildings. Invariably tenants who approached Hirsch did not know that landlords must pay relocation assistance, which is $5,000 for senior citizens or families with children.

Asked in a recent interview what he felt he had accomplished, Hirsch said: “What I’m proudest of is having instilled in people their rights.”

Hirsch, who lived in a cooperative apartment in Silver Lake, is survived by his wife of 45 years, Claire; a daughter, Diana, and two granddaughters, ages 7 and 20 months. Plans for a memorial service have not been completed.