Forced to Move : Housing: Women living in a Brentwood home for military veterans and widows are unhappy about being pushed out by the impending sale of the property.

Seventy years ago, an acre in Brentwood with five duplex bungalows was sold for $10 in gold coin to a husband and wife with a dream.

The land and the housing, they decided, would be set aside for older, low-income women who were veterans or the widows of veterans. It would be a haven where they could live out their days in peace and with some security.

Today, with the land worth $4 million, the nonprofit California Soldiers’ Widows Home Assn. and a handful of women living at the site are caught in the cross hairs of good intentions and financial gain.

On one side are the eight women who last year were given notice of plans by the association to sell the property--at Gorham and Westgate avenues--to make way for 40 luxury condominiums.

On the other side is the association, which is determined to move ahead with the project but has offered to relocate the women and compensate them for moving--an offer deemed unacceptable by the tenants.

Last September, the eight residents--the youngest of whom is age 62--were notified that the property was going to be sold. They were asked to prepare to leave their tiny bungalows and move to an association-owned site in Long Beach. One resident, Marge Kohler, 74, died a month after the notification. Another, June Thomas, 71, moved to Glendale to be near her daughter. A third, Helga Feast, 74, accepted the offer to relocate.

Later, Feast was frustrated. “I was railroaded,” she said. “I was forced to move thinking I was going to be evicted before Christmas. I’m not happy here, and I’d like to know why I’m here and they’re still in Brentwood.”

The reason is Joan Gordon, 62, a member of the Women’s Army Corps during the Korean War and today a part-time legal secretary, who mobilized the remaining tenants to take a stand.

After deciding that she would not leave her home, Gordon rounded up the four other remaining residents of the property and persuaded the Coalition for Economic Survival--a tenants-rights organization--and the Legal Aid Foundation to take up their cause.

“We would prefer this place not be sold,” said Gordon, who like the other residents has a monthly income of less than $700. “This is a facility for widows and veterans and the facility in Long Beach is not.”

At first, Legal Aid attorney Ronald Kaye argued that the association’s lease termination notice was invalid because it did not give the reason for eviction. But after the association acknowledged the mistake, Kaye realized that the women again would be served with evictions, and she set out on a new strategy.

This time, the attorney proposed that the association pay each woman $20,000 to find their own housing in the area. Earlier, they had been offered the $5,000 relocation fee required under state law.

“I think there is a moral conviction here to preserve the quality of life for these ladies,” Kaye said.

But the proposal was rejected by association President Patricia DeMond.

“We don’t enjoy being blackmailed. We have offered relocation services and the same financial arrangement of $150-a-month rent,” DeMond said. “I have great empathy for them, but if we have no money to support them, where does that leave anyone?”

As for the $4-million value of the property, DeMond said, there are no plans on how the profits will be spent.

Although the women feel betrayed by the association, they focus their wrath on executive director and Glendale attorney Robert Long.

He has, they charge, been insensitive not only to their relocation but to their feelings.

The women noted, for example, that when resident Kohler died, they were expected by Long to deal with the authorities and handle all the arrangements.

“He said, ‘Just take care of it,’ ” Gordon recalled.

“When you have limited resources, you have limited choices. But you don’t have to be treated badly,” she said.

Long acknowledges that he asked the women to handle the arrangements after Kohler’s death.

But he denies that this incident or others are proof that he is insensitive.

“We provide housing on a month-to-month basis . . . and we have done that consistently for over 60 years,” Long said. “There has never been a guarantee as to where they would live, just that we would provide housing.”

Noting that the association has already made an offer of relocation assistance, Long added: “As far as I’m concerned, the ball is in Mr. Kaye’s court.”

The Coalition for Economic Survival contends that to force these women to relocate to Long Beach is like forcing them to move to another state.

But housing experts point out that the waiting list for low-cost housing--or Section 8 housing as it is commonly known--is five years.

Although there are preferential lists for the elderly, even those lists have an average wait of one year.

And the prospect for finding a $150 rental in the area around Brentwood is slight.

In the meantime, housing experts note that the association is not legally bound to compensate the women except for their moving expenses.

But Long said that the Long Beach offer is still open.

And if it is rejected, he said, the residents again will be served with eviction.

“There’s a need for a place like this,” said tenant Elizabeth Jerucha. “People like us need a home, but we also need care and consideration.”