LOS ANGELES — They call themselves "The Holdouts."
A group of more than 180 residents are still living in Brentwood’s Barrington Plaza, despite the eviction notices that were posted on their doors last year.
Among the residents is 71-year-old Mark Wood, who has lived at the Plaza for nearly 20 years.
“The first seven and a half years were very good,” said Wood, who was at Barrington when the first fire broke out in 2013 and then again in 2020.
“How can I put it: Things were not very good after that fire,” Wood said.
The January 2020 blaze left a 19-year-old foreign exchange student dead. After that fire, Douglas Emmett, the property owners, pledged to install a fire sprinkler system, something the 1962-era buildings don’t have but are required to under city code.
Douglas Emmett says in order to do the construction work, all tenants must be out. In May 2023, they filed a historic mass eviction under California’s Ellis Act, ordering 577 tenants to vacate the buildings.
The Ellis Act was first established to help mom-and-pop landlords go out of the rental business if they wanted to retire or move. It requires landlords to remove units from the rental market and offer relocation payments up to $22,000 to tenants who will be displaced.
Hundreds of tenants at Barrington Plaza have taken those payouts and moved elsewhere. About 183 remain, mostly comprised of seniors and residents on a fixed disability income. Wood calls the prospect of moving “intimidating.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t lift things the way I used to," he said. "And finding housing here is difficult, no matter what.”
The tenants hired a lawyer and took their case to court, claiming that Douglas Emmett is unlawfully invoking the Ellis Act to kick out rent-controlled tenants and bring their units back on the market later on, at a higher rate of rent.
Douglas Emmett’s attorneys repeatedly argued in court that those claims are false. Their attorney, Mr. Gibson, told Judge Ford that these evictions are not a “sham removal” and that Douglas Emmett has the “unfettered right” to return to the rental market whenever they see fit.
Larry Gross, with the Coalition for Economic Survival, has been involved in the case since day one. He said the renovations can be done without evicting tenants. He also says that if the judge rules in Douglas Emmett’s favor, it can have a dangerous ripple effect on Los Angeles' affordable housing crisis.
“If they get away with this, and they prevail, it will open the door to every landlord in the state who has property in rent-controlled jurisdictions to evict tenants under the Ellis Act for mere renovations, Gross said. “And thus, it puts a target on the back of every tenant living in rent-controlled housing in California.”
In April, the LA City Council passed a motion to give the LA Housing Department to ability to establish safeguards against landlords who are using the Ellis Act in a way that doesn’t align with the law’s original intention.
“What we’ve seen in the use of the Ellis Act is that some landlords are using it in 'bad faith,'" Councilmember Nithya Raman said. "And that has contributed to significant losses of affordable housing and displacement of vulnerable tenants.”
During the trial, the attorney representing the Barrington Plaza tenants questioned Douglas Emmett’s Jordan Kaplan about the money they’ve spent on city elections. According to LA city’s ethics commission website, Douglas Emmett has funneled $1,042,849.30 to Councilmember Traci Park’s 2022 election campaign, in both direct support and through committee support.
Park denied multiple requests for comment about Barrington Plaza and the campaign contributions.
In the meantime, Wood said these evictions are almost like a catastrophic weather event or an earthquake because he and other tenants have done nothing wrong but are being asked to leave their homes anyway.
“For someone who is closer to the end than the beginning of life, I never thought that decades later, at the age of 71, they would kick me out, even though I’ve been paying my rent.”
Ford is expected to make a decision within the week.