Santa Monica Files Suit on Evictions

Santa Monica officials, firing the latest volley in the fight over rent control, sued two groups of apartment owners Wednesday for allegedly misusing a state law to evict tenants so that the owners could move into the vacated apartments themselves.

Members of the Santa Monica Rent Control Board, which filed the lawsuits in Superior Court, said the apartment owners were using the 2-year-old Ellis Act as a ruse to bypass the city’s rent control laws and to intimidate tenants into moving.

The Ellis Act, written by Sen. Jim Ellis (R-San Diego) and sponsored by the California Assn. of Realtors, allows a landlord to evict tenants in order to go out of the residential-rental business.

Its supporters say it was intended to release landlords from having to continue to rent their property. However, Santa Monica officials maintain that the law does not allow such evictions so that the owners can reoccupy the building unless additional permits are obtained from the city.

Board members said abuse of the law has become a growing practice in a city where tough rent control has been in place for nine years. The law, they contended, was not meant to “usurp” local ordinances governing the conversion of rental property into condominiums or other uses.

“You have a group of investors, yuppies, who are coming in and getting a condo through the back door,” board member Wayne Bauer said.

Building Bought

In one suit, the board names nine people who bought a 10-unit building at 808 5th St. and allegedly told the tenants they would have to leave. The suit seeks a permanent injunction to prevent the tenants--most of whom have already left--from being evicted.

Herbert and Marsha Byron, who have a 20-month-old daughter, said they had been harassed and pressured through phone calls to leave the apartment, but plan to stay.

“We are fighting to save our home,” said Herbert Byron, a lawyer. “If this abuse continues, the ranks of homeless will swell and we will be among them.”

Attorney Gordon P. Gitlen, who represents the owners, denied that there had been any harassment and said his clients followed all the rules, including payment of relocation money to tenants who left.

He pointed to a California Court of Appeal decision last week upholding the law’s constitutionality. The court ruled that the Ellis Act preempts some local ordinances that govern evictions and the removal of property from the rental market.

In the second suit, the board accuses ABM Investment Co. and 10 general partners who own a seven-unit building at 832 19th St. of evicting the tenants and then moving in less than a year later. The board seeks $31,788 in damages. A lawyer for this group could not be reached for comment.

Landlord advocates, meanwhile, accused Santa Monica officials of trying to intimidate landlords and to prevent them from using the law. “The city of Santa Monica, being radical and holier than thou, is trying to block the landlord’s right to use his property as he sees fit. . . .”

Carl Lambert, president of Action, a Santa Monica landlord advocacy group, said, “They are saying the city doesn’t have to bend to state law, that Santa Monica is a country unto itself.”

According to the Rent Control Board, notices for withdrawal under the Ellis Act have been filed for 53 properties, or 334 units, in Santa Monica. Eleven of those have been bought by groups of owners, many of whom eventually moved in.