A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge ruled on Thursday against a corporate landlord’s attempt to evict more than 100 tenants by invoking the Ellis Act. It marks a victory, for now, for the tenants living in rent-stabilized apartments at the Barrington Plaza towers on LA’s Westside.
Judge H. Jay Ford ruled that their landlord had improperly invoked the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords to exit the rental business — typically to demolish a building or convert rental units into condominiums. The case, which has been viewed as potentially affecting how the law is used by other landlords, is also tied to dozens of eviction cases.
Monique Gomez, a tenant at Barrington Plaza, said she is “overjoyed” by the decision.
“We have been fighting these bogus evictions for over a year now,” she said. “Tenants here have faced harassment, intimidation and uncertainty [with] little to no help from the city. It shows when we stick together we can win.”
Larry Gross, with the tenant advocacy group Coalition for Economic Survival, called this ruling “one of the most important tenants’ rights legal victories in state history.”
“This victory shows when tenants unite and organize they can win,” he said in a statement. “They did it without support from their city council member or the LA city attorney who refused to take any legal action on behalf of the tenants. Both these officials were recipients of large amounts of donations [from the landlord] to their election campaigns, which may be the reason,” Gross said.
The landlords, Douglas Emmett, Inc., and its subsidiary company Barrington Pacific, LLC, issued eviction notices to hundreds of tenants last May, saying they needed to do so in order to install a fire sprinkler system.
The real estate investment firm donated to the campaigns of the current city council member, Traci Park, and to the campaign of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto.
Following the eviction notices, Barrington tenants banded together and sued their landlord. They argued their landlord was misusing the Ellis Act because they intended only to leave the rental business temporarily with the intention of returning at a later point.
By contrast, the landlord argued that the Ellis Act allows them to evict tenants and exit the rental business with the intent to do so temporarily. They argued state law allows them to invoke the Ellis Act even when they intend to return to rent out apartments again after the renovations have been performed.
In his ruling, Judge Ford wrote that the Ellis Act requires the landlord to leave the rental business “with no present intent to relet those units in the future,” going against what Barrington Pacific, LLC and Douglas Emmett, Inc. had contended in the case.
Judge Ford also wrote that “Barrington Pacific had the intent to temporarily withdraw the apartments in Barrington Plaza from rental use with the specific intent to relet those apartments as soon as it completed its planned renovations to all the apartments including installing fire and safety improvements, fire sprinklers, and other modernization upgrades, all which Barrington Pacific planned for and expected would take three to five years to complete.”
Ford wrote that he was ruling “in favor” of the tenants who sued as Barrington Plaza Tenant Association. He also ruled against the landlord’s requested action on evicting the tenants.
Fran Campbell, the tenant association’s attorney, said the judge agreed with the tenants that “a landlord who is evicting its tenants under the Ellis Act to make repairs is not ‘going out of business.’ It is improving its property so it can increase its rents in the future, which is part of the business of landlording.”
There had also been worries that if the judge ruled in the landlord’s favor, it would inspire other landlords to evict tenants on the premise that they planned to do major renovations.
A representative for an advocacy group that has been watching the case said they are “thrilled” by the decision.
“It’s a win for the Barrington tenants and for tenants all over Los Angeles who are at risk of being evicted because of corporate landlords trying to exploit the Ellis Act to make more money for themselves,” said Chelsea Kirk, a policy director with Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), which pushes for environmental measures, such as reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, that are equitable to low-income communities.
The decision also “keeps needed affordable housing units on the market in a city that desperately needs them. We could not be happier about the judge’s ruling! We also hope the Barrington tenants who were evicted illegally are able to come back,” said Kirk.
Eric Rose, a representative for the landlord, did not immediately have a response from the building owners, including on whether they planned to challenge the ruling.
Read the ruling for yourself: