First off, read this: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...028-story.html
Then read this, and scroll down to the second letter: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/reade...030-story.html
If you hit a paywall, just open these links in incognito mode.
Cliffs:
- A couple moved into a cheap 1-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles in 1970. The landlord didn't care much about money, and kept their rent super low over the years.
- Due to the extremely low rents, the couple eschewed traditional jobs, and worked as "artists", managing to scrape by enough to support themselves.
- They saved enough over the years to buy a summer home in Idaho.
- Recently, the original landlord died at the age of 96. The building was sold by his estate, and the new landlord told them he would be increasing their rent, but LA rent control laws forbid an increase of more than 3% per year on buildings older than 1977.
- Landlord supposedly pretended not to have received their rent in July 2018, and gave them a 3-day pay or quit notice. Then he refused to take any rent they attempted to give him, and filed for eviction.
- They hired a lawyer, but somehow they still found a notice on their door in September stating that they've been evicted. They decided to just give up on defending themselves and took a $20k type cash settlement to leave.
On the surface, some might feel sorry for this elderly couple, as it appeared the landlord might have pulled dirty "we didn't get your rent payment" tricks to skirt rent control laws and evict elderly rent controlled tenants.
However, there are various inconsistencies in their story which leave me believing these people aren't the victims they claim to be.
1) Even if the landlord lied about not having received their rent, they could have again paid him during that 3-day period, and he would have had to accept it. If he didn't, they could have attempted to give him a cashier's check to mostly prove they were attempting to pay and he wouldn't accept it.
2) They claim to have gotten a lawyer to defend the situation, but do not explain how an eviction notice was suddenly posted on their door in late September. That's not how it works. They would have had to lost the eviction case in court in order to be evicted, but somehow they claim this took them by surprise. Huh???
3) They saved so much money on super-low rent for decades that they were able to use that money to buy a home in Idaho. That's totally against the spirit of rent control, which is meant to protect poor people from rents they can't afford. It's not meant to suppress rents so low that people can save up for their own homes. Furthermore, how bad can we feel for someone evicted from their apartment when they have a house they own in Idaho?
4) They concede that they gave up on the court case at some point. Why? They were very likely to win. A jury would never kick out elderly people with a stellar 48-year history of on-time rent payments, due to one claimed late payment by the new landlord. Los Angeles judges and juries are constantly suspicious of landlords who attempt to evict longtime rent controlled tenants, given the intense financial benefit from successfully doing so. In absence of smoking gun evidence of major wrongdoing on the part of the tenant, these cases usually fail.
Master Scalir's letter to the editor mentions a law firm called BASTA, which successfully defended him in 2017 when his landlord tried to evict him. I found BASTA for him. The courts attempted to lead him to another low-cost law firm called EDN (Eviction Defense Network), which has a terrible reputation (I'm assuming some bribery was involved). BASTA is a far better version of EDN, and they are almost always successful in these types of cases. They get funding from elsewhere, so they only charged him $800, despite doing a mountain of legal work which normally would have cost well into the 5 figures.