Slumlord Pays Former Tenants $4,000 Apiece for Relocation

Three months after he reneged on a promise to pay each of his former tenants $4,000 in relocation fees, convicted slumlord Martin Cantor--facing the threat of a six-month jail term--has paid up in exchange for a lesser sentence.

At a hearing in San Pedro Municipal Court Tuesday, Judge Roy Ferkich told Cantor’s lawyer that if the money was not immediately turned over to the four tenants, he would issue a warrant for Cantor’s arrest.

Lawyer Michael Stephenson, protesting that the tenants are “using this criminal proceeding as a baseball bat over Mr. Cantor’s head,” then handed a $16,000 bank draft to a legal aid lawyer representing the tenants.

Ferkich responded by reducing Cantor’s sentence to 45 days, as he had previously agreed to do if the money were paid.

Slum Conditions

In March, Ferkich ruled that slum conditions at the San Pedro building where the tenants lived constituted a violation of Cantor’s probation on an earlier conviction involving conditions at three houses he owned in Wilmington. Ferkich ordered that Cantor spend a maximum of six months in jail, although he said he would suspend 135 days of the sentence if the landlord sold his San Pedro building and paid relocation assistance.

Although he reduced the sentence on Tuesday, Ferkich had harsh words for Cantor.

“I don’t think it’s the tenants that are using the criminal justice system to their advantage,” Ferkich said. “To the contrary, I think it is Mr. Cantor who is using the system.”

Cantor, who has already spent five months under house arrest in one of his own apartments, was ordered to begin serving his jail term Oct. 2.

After the judge’s ruling, the tenants, accompanied by officials from Toberman Settlement House, a San Pedro social service agency, rushed into the courthouse hallway, where several of them burst into tears.

‘We Finally Did It”

“I’m happy, I’m happy,” cried Josephine Shields. “We finally did it.”

Shields--who recently appeared on television’s Oprah Winfrey Show during a segment about landlord-tenant disputes--has been unable to find a new home and has been staying at Toberman with her three children.

As soon as Cantor’s bank releases the money, she said, “I’m gonna find me an apartment.”

The tenants’ battles with Cantor began last year when they complained to the Los Angeles County Health Department about conditions at their building at 2319 S. Pacific Ave. in San Pedro.

Inspectors checked the building and found cockroaches, rats, a leaky roof, faulty wiring and “a hole the size of a bathtub, filled with sewage water” outside the building, according to one of the city attorneys who prosecuted him.

As a result of the findings, Cantor was charged with violating his probation. He was sentenced in January to spend 120 days under house arrest in one of his San Pedro apartments and told to fix up the building.

But Cantor violated the terms of his house arrest by going to work on a Saturday when he was not supposed to. In March, Judge Ferkich extended the term of the house arrest by 30 days and ruled that Cantor would go to jail for a minimum of 45 days.

The dispute over relocation assistance emerged after Cantor, saying he could not sell the building unless it was unoccupied, asked the tenants to leave on short notice, rather than serving them with the proper eviction papers.

The tenants, represented by the Legal Aid Foundation in Long Beach, agreed to move if Cantor would pay them $4,000 apiece. Both sides agree that Cantor signed documents authorizing his escrow agent to pay the tenants $16,000 from the proceeds on the sale of his building.

Based on their lawyers’ assurances, the tenants moved out, expecting the sale to close the next day. Some moved in with friends and relatives. Shields moved into the Imperial Inn, where she paid $44 a night, borrowing money from friends to pay the bill.

But Cantor has acknowledged that by the time the sale became complete four weeks later, he had changed the escrow instructions so that the money from the sale would go directly to him.

Howard Uller, executive director of Toberman Settlement House, said: “They fully cooperated with that man. They left with no notice at all to help him get out of a jam. . . . So for helping him out of a legal jam, their thanks is to become homeless.”

The tenants ultimately filed a civil suit against Cantor. A hearing on that suit had been set for July 5, but David Salisbury, the tenants’ legal aid lawyer, said the matter will be dropped as soon as the bank draft clears.

Vandalism Dispute

Although Ferkich had ordered payment of the relocation assistance by June 27--Tuesday--Cantor’s lawyer pressed the judge to allow a delay in payment until the civil hearing. Stephenson contended that the tenants should receive less money because they vandalized the building after moving out. But the tenants maintain that it was Cantor who vandalized the building, including some of their belongings that they left behind intending to pick them up later.

Stephenson said the civil courts, not Ferkich, should decide how much money is to be paid. To do otherwise, he said, would be “a miscarriage of justice.”