Tenants to Spend Yule in Search for Housing After Eviction by Film Studio

A few weeks ago, life seemed pretty normal at the Valentino Place Apartments in Hollywood where, legend has it, the famed actor Rudolph Valentino once lived and ghosts of old performers now walk the halls at night.

The tenants put a red ribbon around the lion sculpture in the courtyard, as they do every year, and hung Christmas decorations in the lobby.

But the festive holiday atmosphere at 716 Valentino Place was shattered by an eviction notice that arrived early in December, telling tenants the property had been sold to a real estate subsidiary of Paramount Pictures Corp. and they had a month to move.

“The whole thing has come as quite a shock to all of us,” Kelly McLeod, a young woman who has lived there 10 years, said Thursday, as she stood with other tenants in the courtyard filled with huge palms, banana trees and monkey ferns.

Paramount Studios, located across the street, will be converting the Tudor-style, 1920s-era building into office space, removing its 40 units from the Los Angeles rental market, officials say.

The evictions are perfectly legal, according to Barbara Zeidman, head of the city’s Rent Stabilization Division.

But she added that, according to city law, owners who remove their units from rental rolls have to pay $2,000 in relocation assistance to single-adult tenants and $5,000 to elderly or disabled tenants.

But relocation money does not take away the shock and pain of having to leave longstanding friendships, find new homes during the Christmas season and face rents about double what they are paying now, the tenants said.

“There’s a feeling of community here,” said McLeod, who manages a shop on Melrose Avenue that features rubber stamps, “because most of us have been here for years.”

While once Clara Bow and Marilyn Monroe were among the earlier residents, tenants now include performers, many studio employees, artists and retirees.

Suzanna Kim, a frail, elderly woman tottering on high heeled shoes, said she had been a “professional dancer, you know,” and had lived there for 35 years.

“I’m very sad,” she said, her voice fading away. “I love this place.”

About 30 tenants staged an orderly candlelight protest outside Paramount on Thursday evening to let studio officials know they had “Scrooged” their Christmas.

After years of living in a rent-controlled building, many said they were shocked at the higher rents they encountered in looking for new homes.

“I’ve probably looked at 30 apartments,” said Michael Hickey, an artist who pays $360 a month for a single at Valentino Place. “And the market out there is double what I’m paying.”

The closure brings to 259 the number of apartment buildings in Los Angeles that have been removed from the rental market or demolished so far this year, Zeidman said. While she described the 1,114 apartments in those buildings as a “modest” number, compared to more than 670,000 units citywide, the figure is “disturbing” because about two-thirds of them had rents under $500 a month.

Two-thirds of the Valentino Place apartments have rents under $500 a month as well, according to city records.

“What is disturbing is that yes, we’re going to replace those 1,114 units with new construction, but not at those rent levels,” Zeidman said. “We’re losing a particular type of housing and not replacing it.”

Larry Gross, director of the tenants’ rights group, Coalition for Economic Survival, which has been trying to help the Valentino Place tenants, said the city should step in and try to preserve the building as an apartment house.

“There should be some attempt to stop affordable housing from being taken off the market,” he said.

Deborah Rosen, Paramount senior vice president for corporate communications, said the building was needed for offices because “we don’t have enough space.”

“The tenants have known of our purchase since the end of November,” she said, adding that “a relocation specialist has been hired to make sure each tenant finds an affordable place to live, no matter how long it takes.”

William T. Baird, general partner of Valentino Place Ltd., said he liked the building and the tenants and did not want to sell it. But the $2.5-million purchase price was too good to pass up, he explained.

“It’s heart-wrenching,” he said. “But it’s strictly a business deal.”