Hotel’s Low-Income Tenants Win Round in Fight to Avoid Eviction

Twenty-eight low-income tenants of a Van Nuys residential hotel, many who were formerly homeless, cannot be forced out of their units at least until a civil case over an eviction threat is settled, an Encino judge ruled Wednesday.

Municipal Judge Jerold A. Krieger issued an injunction preventing the owners of La Casita Hotel, 14303 Sylvan St., from evicting the residents during hotel repairs. However, if a tenant fails to pay rent, the owners may begin eviction proceedings under unlawful detainer laws, Krieger said.

“We got what we came for,” said the tenants’ attorney, Michael F. Duran of the nonprofit Bet Tzedek Legal Services in North Hollywood. “What we have won is protection for tenants while this case is being settled.”

David Seror, an attorney for the hotel owners, told the judge that “no one will be removed” from the building unless they fail to pay rent.

Duran filed a $25,000 civil suit on behalf of the tenants in August, alleging that a three-day eviction notice posted in the lobby caused “severe mental anguish and physical distress” to residents, many of whom have lived on the streets or suffer from mental illnesses.

Renovation Planned

La Casita owners John Busby and Ronald Bentley posted the notice because the 40-room hotel was going to “close for renovation and repair.”

The notices alarmed residents, who have lived at the aging building for periods ranging from months to years.

In issuing the injunction, Krieger also extended to the longtime tenants the same rights that apartment dwellers have under city rent stabilization laws. Those laws generally provide apartment dwellers with more legal protection against evictions than hotel guests.

Duran said his clients are entitled to monetary damages because they are more susceptible to grief brought on by the threat of eviction due to the “thin margin” of existence they live with.

“Many of them are single parents living on welfare, disabled people with mental problems; many had been recently homeless,” Duran said. “A safety net does not exist for people like this.”

Sandra Bowlus, 36, who attended the hearing and has lived at La Casita for three years, supporting herself on a monthly government check for a mental disability, said her single room is “the only place I’ve got.”

Bowlus said that notices were taped on room and bathroom doors, a claim that Seror later denied.

“All they did was post a sign that the hotel was to be cleared,” Seror said in court.

He later said he does “not accept the premise that this is not a hotel.”