EAST LOS ANGELES : Evicted Clinic Finds 6th Street Quarters

After losing a court battle, the East Los Angeles Health Task Force has vacated the offices it occupied for 17 years at 4716 E. Brooklyn Ave. The task force, which offers free health screenings for mostly senior citizens, has moved to 2120 E. 6th St.

The task force’s move came after months of legal wrangling brought on by a lawsuit filed by the county, which owns Centro Maravilla, where the task force had been operating.

County officials wanted to move three other organizations into the task force’s space after it determined that the space wasn’t being used to its capacity. The task force, headed by director Susan Arellano, refused and the county responded with eviction efforts.

The disagreement ended up in East Los Angeles Municipal Court, where Judge Henry Barela agreed that the county had the right to evict tenants.

“We never intended for this to happen,” said Geraldo Rodriguez, director of Centro Maravilla. “We simply wanted them to share the space they had.”

The adversaries will be back in court Dec. 29 for a hearing on claims filed by 14 task force employees--including its director--alleging damages related to the county’s attempted eviction April 1. The employees say they were locked out of their offices and unable to retrieve personal items.

County health officials had said during the Municipal Court trial that they would drop eviction efforts if the clinic’s employees dropped their claims.

The clinic’s recent exit was not without incident.

“The county asked one of my staff to sign a paper saying we agreed to the move,” Arellano said, “but we had to do some more education and say: ‘No, we were forced out and evicted by a court order.’ ”

She said the county would not allow the clinic to keep nine desks that had been given to it by a former manager. “They kept the desks. It’s just the sort of trivial thing they’ve been doing all along.”

Lynn Bayer, assistant director of the county Department of Community and Senior Citizen Services, said the county is waiting for the clinic to be licensed before reinstating the service contract it has had with it for 17 years.