Luck worsens for renters

WEST BURBANK — A frustrated group of renters say they are without recourse after property managers issued notifications that rents are to more than double beginning May 1.

Longtime tenants of the Hollywood Way Apartments at 1207 N. Cordova St., some of them seniors on fixed incomes and others out of work, have sought guidance from organizations across the city, but to no avail. The increase is legal, but the tenants don’t think it’s fair.

The issue of raising rents after a change of ownership, especially when tenants are paying well below market rates, is nothing new. But residents here, citing a sour job market and down economy, argued that the mandatory increases will have catastrophic consequences.

Among the tenants are women in their 80s and 90s, a young professional, an out-of-work aerospace mechanics inspector and a middle-aged man struggling to save $10,000 for surgery to stave off blindness.

Steven Pinto has lived at the complex for more than 30 years and points to the original carpeting as proof. Now, he said, his two-bedroom apartment is scheduled to jump from $600 a month to $1,350, a hike that will likely drive him out of the area.

All of this has made him an unlikely advocate for rent control, he said.

“People who have spent their lives in this city are being forced to uproot and leave against their will because of the financial obligations of others,” said Pinto, 53, who worked in video production and has spent the last year unemployed and blowing through his savings.

Compounding the heartache are planned surgeries for complications stemming from corneal dystrophy that are expected to cost between $10,000 and $12,000, he said.

“I know they have the legal right to raise our rents,” said Pinto, contemplating a move out of state. “But they don’t have to do this.”

Representatives for Sierra Investment Properties, the firm brought in to manage the complex under new ownership, requested media inquiries be e-mailed to a local office. The answers to questions submitted Wednesday were not returned.

But Sierra did send a March 20 letter to tenants responding to their concerns, reminding tenants that their rents have been “well under market for many years.”

“You were given a gift of unusually low rent from the previous owners for many years,” Lily McDyer-Sierra, president of the company, wrote. “The current owners have given you the gift for nine months. [It] is not financially feasible for the current owners to continue with the same income and meet their financial obligations.”

What’s more, McDyer-Sierra wrote, the new landlords remodeled vacant units and common areas to increase income and allow for “the lowest feasible increase to the original tenants.”

Still, the correspondence gave little comfort to widower Emmet Quinn, who has lived at the complex for 33 years.

An out-of-work mechanical inspector in the aerospace industry, Quinn moved to Southern California decades ago. At 69, he receives about $1,500 monthly in Social Security and last month began collecting unemployment. Rent for his one-bedroom apartment is set to increase from $500 a month to $1,050.

When he approached management, “there didn’t seem to be any room for negotiation,” Quinn said. He argued that aside from disagreeing with his rent increase, it wasn’t fair to charge similar rents for remodeled and untouched units, which the group of protesting tenants occupy.

Pinto said the explanation is simple: “We’re being priced out,” he said. “Burbank is touted as a bedroom community. You look at this and it makes you wonder how much it cares about its poor and its elderly.”