Tenants Face Eviction Over Rent Strike : Lawsuit Says New Apartments Unlivable

Tenants of a Panorama City apartment complex who have refused to pay rent for two months said in a lawsuit Friday that their 7-month-old building is unfit for human habitation.

The residents of the Sundance Park apartment building complain in the suit, filed in Van Nuys Municipal Court, that their units are overrun with ants and that their central heating systems, dishwashers, garbage disposals and smoke alarms have never worked or do not work properly. In one apartment, no smoke alarm has been installed, a resident said.

“This is a nightmare,” said Kathy Denton, who pays $635 for her one-bedroom apartment. “This is the worst I’ve ever lived in my life.”

Denton said she and her family decided to move into the 52-unit complex in the 9200 block of Van Nuys Boulevard in September, two months after it opened. The building was new, she said, and the $350 move-in fee was too good to pass up.

“But then after we moved in,” Denton said, “everything went haywire.”

Since November, Denton and 23 other tenants have refused to pay rent, saying that the building’s owner, the Kenneth S. Hayashi Corp., has failed to make repairs.

But Reid Slovis, vice president of Hayashi, blamed tenants for problems at the building and said those who have not paid rent will be evicted.

“They’re tearing up the place,” Slovis said. “There’s nothing wrong with the building. It’s just a bunch of people who don’t want to pay rent. And Hayashi is doing everything it can in a legal way to get them out.”

The tenants, who pitched in and hired a lawyer, are asking for $200,000 in damages in the suit. They are also asking that the complex be put in good working order.

“These are not extras that we want,” said Maria Garcia, another tenant. “These are the necessities that we have to have, and we don’t have them.”

Claudia Thomas, who pays $825 for a two-bedroom unit, said she is unable to use her stove because heat from it burns surrounding cabinets. “If I use it, the whole place will burn down,” Thomas said, adding that a smoke alarm has never been installed in her apartment.

In addition, Thomas said, plumbing in only one of her apartment’s two bathrooms has worked since she and her four children moved into the building in September.

Although several tenants have received eviction notices, Slovis said no one has been locked out of the building, where rental rates range from $575 to $825 a month. Slovis refused to answer further questions.

Denton said she and several other tenants contacted City Councilman Ernani Bernardi’s office this week. Marcos Castaneda, an aide to the councilman, said inspectors are checking to see if there are building- or health-code violations at the complex.

Some tenants, including Denton, said they want to move and Hayashi should pay to relocate them. “I think they owe us something for all this suffering,” Denton said.

But Garcia said she is tired of moving and wants to stay, as long as her heater and the leak in her bedroom are fixed.

“It’s a shame,” she said about the problems. “It’s such a beautiful building.”