Manager of Apartments Who Fought Gangs Fired : North Hollywood: The owner says the mother of seven made ‘negative comments’ to prospective tenants about the neighborhood.

North Hollywood apartment manager Viviana Guerra, a single mother of seven, has been hailed as a heroine for helping put five gang members behind bars despite harassment and death threats. But her boss says she’s bad for business.

Exactly one year after Guerra began her widely praised one-woman cleanup of the area around the London Manor Apartments a block from the North Hollywood Police Station, she received a terse letter Thursday informing her “that effective immediately you are being relieved of your position as apartment manager. . . . Your full cooperation on a change-over to a new manager will be greatly appreciated.”

In losing the job, Guerra also could lose the apartment that went with it.

Larry Jordan, owner of Park Place Management of Northridge, which bought the apartment complex’s previous management company a month ago, acknowledges that Guerra “did a good job cleaning out the building of drugs and gang activity.” But he said Guerra had not been renting out enough apartments. Of the 20 units in the building, seven are vacant. And, he said, she’d been “making negative comments” to prospective tenants about the neighborhood’s troubles.

“Any time she talked to somebody, it seemed to be very negative,” Jordan said. “I’m just trying to put some fresh blood into the building and see if someone else can do a better job.”

A police detective, a prosecutor and a fellow tenant who know Guerra say they are amazed by Jordan’s logic. They say many buildings in the neighborhood have vacant apartments because gangs that infest the area frighten away tenants.

If Guerra talked about gangs to prospective renters, they say, it is because the gangs are a way of life on Tiara Street.

“Because of the gangs, no one wants to live here,” Jorge Armenta, a detective with the North Hollywood Division gang unit, said. “She put herself on the line, trying to keep her neighborhood peaceful.”

Earlier, Guerra won a commendation from the state attorney general’s office for her courage in aiding police and prosecutors, and for testifying in court against gang members, despite gang threats to injure her children.

By firing Guerra, Armenta added, “they’re going to send out a message to the gang members that, ‘hey, you can do whatever you want and get away with it.’ It’s a shame for somebody who takes a stand against gang members that her boss is going to do this. But that’s between her and her boss.”

“I don’t know these people from Adam,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Franco A. Baratta said. “But they’re certainly creating a suspicion that they don’t want conflict with gang members. I really feel bad for this lady. All of this grows from a desire not to be involved.”

“It’s like giving her a giant kick in the butt,” said Pat Russell, who has lived in the apartment complex for 18 years. “Just what does it take to hold down a management job on Tiara Street? She went to court. She fought the gangs. She cleaned up the area more than anyone I know. I guess maybe she has to learn to walk on water, because that’s the only thing she hasn’t done yet.”

Unlike other residents in the neighborhood who, Baratta said, are intimidated by the gangs, Guerra reported the criminal activity she saw to police. She testified in court.

In early July, at the same time Jordan’s company was assuming management of the complex, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge John Fisher called Guerra a “true hero” and sent gang member Maximilliano Guerrero, 20, to state prison for six years for threatening her.

For standing up to the gangs, Guerra has received death threats against her children, her windows have been broken several times and her car was destroyed. Throughout the neighborhood, she sees her name painted on walls, along with the Spanish word for “whore.” Young wanna-be gang members talk about scoring points with the homeboys by killing her.

And now, the pink slip.

“I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back,” Guerra said. “I’ve been through so much hell with the gangsters. I did a lot of work. I had my windows broken, got beat up, got my kids shot at, and for what?”

Jordan said he has decided to let Guerra stay in her apartment, rent-free, for an undetermined length of time to keep a lid on neighborhood gang activity. “I surely don’t want anybody to say I’m pushing her out on the street, because I’m not. Why don’t we say for the time being, her job description has changed? Her compensation hasn’t changed. She still stays in the apartment.”

He would not say how long that arrangement might last. “My instructions now are, I’m going to leave her alone.”

Baratta, the prosecutor, said the damage already has been done. By firing Guerra, he said, the new management company has shown that it won’t back her up if she confronts the gangs again.

Things are quiet now on Tiara Street, but those who know how easily trouble can start wonder for how long.

“I’m looking out my front door, and I no longer see those gang members out there. I see older people taking walks around he block,” Russell said. “The street terrorists have been removed from Tiara Street. She hung in there then. She’s hanging in there now.”