Westchester YMCA Evicts Benefactors

Is it a case of biting off the hand that fed you--or simply a case of getting rid of an outstretched palm?

That’s the question Westchester residents are wrestling with over the eviction of their homeowners association from its tiny office at the back of the community’s YMCA.

The homeowners say that 44 years ago they gave the YMCA the Sepulveda Boulevard land it uses for its activity center in exchange for a promise that they would forever have office space there for their 3,400-house association.

But now the Y says it has grown and needs the space for itself, and it has ordered what it considers its freeloading guests out.

“There’s no forever,” explains the Westchester Y’s executive director, Patricia de Felice.

Residents counter that the Y has grown arrogant and is turning its back on those who helped create it.

“They have a moral obligation to the community that gave them a home,” contends Michael Shultz, president of the Kentwood Park Estates association--called Kentwood Home Guardians.

The dispute has turned nasty, with both sides flooding the community north of Los Angeles International Airport with letters accusing the other of improprieties.

In August, the Y secretly changed the locks to the Kentwood office and ordered Kentwood’s lone employee not to walk through the recreation center’s front door.

The Y quickly rescinded that action. But late last month it took the homeowners to court to legally oust them.

A West Los Angeles Municipal Court judge ruled that the Y had the right to decide how its space is used but stopped short of deciding whether the purported 1955 use agreement was valid.

Homeowners say that pact spelled out provisions for the land to revert back to Kentwood if the Y was to quit using it. The agreement called for the Y to install a plaque stating that the site was provided by the Kentwood association and specified that the Y would provide office space “for the exclusive use of Kentwood Home Guardians only” for the next 25 years.

Kentwood leaders say that provision was modified three years later with a second signed agreement that included a handwritten notation making the office space “permanent.”

The YMCA disagrees.

Larry Rosen, president of the 24-branch Los Angeles YMCA system, said his organization never saw the second agreement until the homeowners were asked to leave. He suspects it is a phony.

“The men who signed that are deceased,” de Felice said.

According to de Felice, the Y has offered to no avail to help the homeowners find new office space.

“Kentwood Home Guardians is not being evicted. We’re not renewing their lease. They chose not to accept the non-renewal of their lease,” de Felice said.

The homeowners insist there was never a real lease, however. They claim the $110 a month that they pay the Y is a fee for electricity, janitorial service and maintenance, although one recent fee document erroneously referred to it as “rent.”

Tina Hakanen, who for 19 years has been Kentwood’s office manager and only employee, said the group is financed by mandatory homeowner assessments averaging about $12 per year.

The fees cover the costs of such things as graffiti cleanup, community newsletters and the association’s coordinating work with Los Angeles city officials.

Hakanen said the substitute office spaces suggested by the Y were unacceptable. All are outside the boundaries of Kentwood Park Estates.

According to Shultz, as homeowners wait for the sheriff to formally kick them out they are readying a lawsuit they hope will force the Y to supply them with another office.

Shultz, a deputy public defender for Los Angeles County, said he has canceled his YMCA membership over the dispute. So have some of his neighbors.

“You may view this as a trivial dispute over a small office space. It is not,” warned homeowner Stephen Turk.

“The issue is whether donors can trust the YMCA to keep promises. It goes to the heart of the moral and ethical values of the YMCA.”