Judge Grants Reprieve for 8 Families Threatened With Eviction at Anaheim Motel

Eight families who were evicted or about to lose their rooms at an Anaheim motel for allegedly falling behind on their weekly rents have been given a temporary reprieve by a Superior Court judge, a lawyer for the families said Monday.

“I think it’s disgusting,” resident Marva Morgan, 34, said.

Morgan, her husband and four daughters ranging in age from 5 to 13 have lived in a two-bedroom unit at the Ha’Penny Inn on West Lincoln Avenue since March.

She complained about the motel’s management after a brief hearing Monday before Judge Ronald L. Bauer in Santa Ana.

“We are all under stress,” Morgan said.

While admitting that their last rent payment almost two weeks ago was less than requested, Morgan said she and other families believe that the attempted evictions are part of the new management’s efforts to remove longtime tenants, including one family that has stayed there for about 18 months.

“The new management came in and they started throwing everybody out,” Morgan said.

Frank Babbas, who took over the management of the motel last week, said he was not notified of Monday’s hearing.

The hearing resulted in the issuance of a temporary restraining order that allowed the families back into the motel.

“Our case has not been heard,” Babbas said. “We are trying to get them out because we had a bad manager who had not collected the rent for a month.”

The next hearing in the lawsuit, filed on behalf of eight families, has been scheduled for Aug. 14.

Attorney Richard L. Spix, who became involved in the case after the residents contacted the Fair Housing Council of Orange County, said the management called the police and evicted 12 families on July 21. Five more families were ordered off the premises a day later, he said.

On Sunday, Spix said, he thwarted the management’s attempts to evict three additional families, including the Morgans, by pointing out that proper eviction procedures must be followed because the residents claim to be legal tenants.

“You don’t just boot them out unless you go through eviction procedures,” Spix said.

Morgan said her husband, Sammy, and two others were issued a trespassing citation by police. They had decided to refuse the manager’s warning to leave the motel by Saturday evening.

Some who were evicted last week received their orders in the middle of the night, Morgan claimed, prompting the residents to seek help from the Fair Housing Council.

Spix also said some families may not owe back rent, since the management has been charging them a room tax that by law cannot be assessed if the tenant occupies the room for more than 30 days. Once the families became tenants and not guests, he added, the management was required to give them proper notice before attempting to evict them.

But Babbas argued that the business is operated as a motel, not a residential facility.

He admitted that the rooms had been advertised as “apartments,” but said it was inadvertent, and the wording was meant to suggest that the rooms were apartment-style.

“I am claiming that they are not tenants under the hotel-motel laws that we operate,” Babbas said, adding that the tax was justified.

The Morgans said they began disputing their $189 per week rent several weeks ago when the new management raised the motel occupancy tax from 11.6% to over 13% and then gave them various estimates of how much money they actually owed.

The disagreement, coupled with her husband’s losing his job in recent weeks, has compounded their problems, Marva Morgan said.

She said she believes that the families also are being punished for calling in city code enforcement officers.

“We are infested with roaches and have several plumbing problems,” she said. “They figured out who the ringleaders were, as such, and they gradually worked their way down to us.”

Babbas downplayed that claim.

“They can call anonymously,” Babbas said. “And to the best of my knowledge, we have no major code violations in this place.”