Apartment Tenants Win Settlement : Housing: Eight will share $100,000 after claiming owner undertook loud renovation in an attempt to force them out and raise rents.

Eight tenants who claimed that the owner of their rent-controlled apartment started a noisy, dusty renovation project in an attempt to drive them out and raise the rent reached a $100,000 out-of-court settlement Tuesday.

The tenants had filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the owners of the Lafayette Wilshire apartment building and the building’s management company alleging negligence, breach of the warranty of habitability, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Attorneys on both sides of the case confirmed Tuesday that the matter had been settled and said that half of the $100,000 will be paid by the building owner and half by the management company.

The payment will be divided evenly among the eight tenants who filed suit.

Robert Hodes, lawyer for the tenants, said the conflict began in 1987 when Lafayette Wilshire Ltd. purchased the building at 2424 Wilshire Blvd.

During the nine months of renovation, Hodes said, the water in the building was frequently turned off, elevators broke down and tenants were forced to live with loud noise, dirt and debris.

“The whole point of this was to drive the people out, because if the tenants moved out the landlord could raise the rent to anything the market can bear,” Hodes said.

Some of those in the building were elderly people of modest incomes who had lived there for years and paid relatively low rent, Hodes said.

An attorney for the the building’s owners had no comment.

Robert Donahue, attorney for Realty Investors Property Management, the building’s management company, said the renovation was meant to make the building livable, not to drive tenants out.

“The owner of the building put in over $2 million worth of renovation. The place was almost a dump when they bought it,” Donahue said.

He said the renovation did not cause a great inconvenience and made the building “200% better.”

“They wound up getting a tremendously improved building with security doors and everything,” he said.

Donahue said the settlement was not an admission of guilt.

Dana Gabbard, who has lived in the building for nearly three years, said most of his neighbors moved during the renovation, many out of fear.

Gabbard said that during the renovation there was no security in the building. Before the renovation, the building had a desk clerk who monitored those entering the building 24 hours, he said.

“They knowingly tried to scare us out,” he said.