Apartment Conversion Angers Tenants : Housing: Units were leased barely two weeks before eviction notices were posted because of a planned change to condominiums.
Tenants of a Van Nuys apartment building are angry over a sudden decision by their landlord to move them out and auction off their 49 units as condominiums.
Some of the tenants of the Cabrito Park Condominiums, which have been rented for the past six years as apartments despite the building’s name, live paycheck to paycheck and have little money for security deposits and other expenses. Others are elderly or physically disabled and some say they were allowed to move in by the building’s management only weeks before eviction notices were posted without warning March 16.
Brian Lardner, the building’s manager who is also a part owner of the property, said he and his partner have given the tenants more advance notice of the evictions than is required by law and have assured tenants in writing that they will get their security deposits back.
But tenants such as Mary Ann Emmons, 26, say such explanations are little comfort. Emmons, who is six months pregnant, said she moved into the building in February so she could relax when her baby came.
“We can’t afford anything more than $800 a month for rent,” she said, adding that she has made several unsuccessful inquiries about other similarly priced apartments since the eviction postings. “That’s why this place was so appealing.”
Lois Sotello, who helped organize two tenant meetings this past week to discuss the 45-day eviction notices, said the group wants the building’s owners to give them more time to move, to pay their relocation expenses and to return security deposits to tenants before they move out.
More than 60 of the tenants met for a second time on Wednesday in an effort to resolve their problems.
“We are willing to move out, but they have to work with us,” said Sotello, referring to the owners of the building in the 8000 block of Langdon Avenue.
Lardner said the building has been losing more than $100,000 annually, while the owners tried to sell the whole building. He said he decided only earlier this month to auction the units off as condominiums.
“I have told them that we will work with them in any way possible,” Lardner said. “I don’t know what these people want.”
E. H. Schultz, a co-owner of the building, acknowledged that new tenants should not have been allowed to move in as late as early March. But he blamed a miscommunication between Lardner and the on-site manager for the mistake.
“If she rented some apartments on March 1, then that was a mistake,” Schultz said, referring to the on-site manager. “Those units should not have been rented.”
Pamela L. Brown, an attorney with San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services, said the building’s owners have complied with the law by giving the tenants at least 30 days notice of an eviction and by promising to return security deposits within 14 days after they are forced to move.
Even so, the need to quickly find an apartment has been unsettling for the tenants.
Blanche Johnston, 87, who only moved to Cabrito Park in January, barely scrapes by financially and is unable to move to a new apartment without assistance. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I get Social Security and a small pension . . . but I have expensive medication, insurance and I’m disabled. I don’t have the money to move on.”
Christopher Steele, a tenant who also helped organize Wednesday’s meeting, said the evictions are part of a larger problem.
“I understand where homeless people come from now,” he said. “This guy might be within his legal rights, but I don’t think he handled the situation very well.”
