Photos by Asia Morris.
A small group composed mostly of renters gathered last Friday morning in front of a downtown Long Beach apartment building to protest what they claimed were the unfair evictions of its tenants.
Organized by Housing Long Beach, which works to improve, preserve and increase affordable housing in the city, and housing advocate Ken Roth, who is also one of the building’s tenants, participants stood in front of 425 West 4th Street where they held signs and shouted chants in support of renters’ rights.
Four units were given notice in November to vacate their apartments by December 19, said Roth, in order to remodel the building.
Roth and other community members say that some building owners in this 4th Street neighborhood where many of the structures are quite old, are not responsive to the amount of maintenance required to upkeep their properties. Roth claimed that 425 West 4th Street is one of several buildings up and down the street that have been vacated due to landlords forcing out their tenants to make major repairs or to remodel, following the neglect of smaller fixes.
Last winter, rainfall had caused damage to ceilings and floors in several of the apartments at 425, which took weeks to be repaired. A woman in her 80s was forced to move out because of said repairs, according to Roth who said it took five months for the landlord to fix his broken door lock. A washer that had flooded the apartment below him took four months before anyone was sent out, he added. After several phone calls, “the only way that I got them to fix both of those things was to withhold rent,” Roth said.
“The lady that used to live here was in her 80s,” Roth pointed to one of the downstairs units. “She lived here as long as anybody could remember and she had to move out and ended up sleeping in the basement of her sister in North Long Beach, she’s since landed on her feet.”
“Why wasn’t this stuff taken care of?” Roth continued. “They’re saying it’s [the remodeling] all about meeting the needs [of tenants] and bringing everything up to code, but how was it that it was allowed to stay out of code for so long and to sell. This building sold twice without the city doing anything about it, with faulty electric, with faulty plumbing, with ceilings falling down, with asbestos ceiling falling down, so it’s a health hazard to everyone in the neighborhood and yet they collect rents.”
According to Roth, the city had apparently come out to see the units, which is what he’s assuming prompted the landlord’s action to force tenants out. If that’s the case, Josh Butler of Housing Long Beach interjected, the tenants should be getting relocation assistance.
“Housing Long Beach thinks that in these situations when you’re being pushed out and you’re being forced out for no fault of your own that relocation assistance should be mandatory in those situations,” Butler said.
Multiple requests for comment were made by the Post to the landlord and property manager who declined to respond to these allegations.
David Webb, a resident of 425 West 4th Street of nearly 30 years, said he’s having to sell off his nearly-10,000-piece vinyl collection in order to afford to move to another area in Long Beach after receiving two months notice to vacate. He was able to borrow funds from a couple friends for his first and last month’s rent. With a background in fine art and the music industry, the retiree is “just surviving on social security at this point.”
However, the most difficult part of having to leave will be figuring out transportation. The 70-year-old doesn’t drive a car anymore and has set up a walking routine that takes him to the main library where he volunteers with the film program, among other stops along his route. Having to move will take him away from this routine.
Building tenant David Webb.
Webb has lived in this building through three different landlords, saying the current ones “are slow, but I do believe they’re several cuts above the ones that were before them.”
“And the apartments are so old, these are from the 20s, so they have old electrical wiring,” Webb continued. “I know some of the other renters here have had physical catch-on-fire sort of problems, I’ve not had that, but I certainly can’t run a microwave and a television at the same time.”
The most recent code enforcement referral/case on the property was in May 2017 for deteriorated paint, according to Jacqueline Medina, spokesperson for Long Beach Development Services. The case was closed in September after the owners brought the property into compliance. No other cases have been opened regarding the 425 property since.
Brenda Hagen, a 27-year resident of a building across the street at 448 West 4th Street, said that her building is also being remodeled, and thanks to a good friend of hers she’ll have a place to stay. Hagen’s complaint is with the city, voicing that these buildings are bought and sold despite their age and disrepair, and that the building owners procrastinate taking care of them.
“The city won’t make these landlords keep these properties up like they’re supposed to, because if they kept up what they’re supposed to we wouldn’t have the problems we got now,” Hagen told the Post. “It’s too run down. They keep kicking the can down the road. One landlord gets it, he kicks it down the road, one landlord gets it, he kicks it down the road, and they keep kicking it down the road and now it really needs repair.”
Butler said that both the properties have been sold, and there was no discussion about the current tenants being able to return.
“We’re talking about someone who’s lived there for 27 years, a senior citizen, is forced out into a market now where rents are thirty, forty, fifty percent higher than what she’s paying right now,” Butler said. “What does that mean, where is she going to go, what’s going to happen? And the whole building, the whole neighborhoods dealing with that right now.”
Butler sent the Post a list of other “recent whole building rental terminations” which included over 10 addresses in the 400 block of West 4th Street. Medina confirmed that the disposition of those properties are not city-inspection related, with no current or open code enforcement referrals or active cases listed.
Roth told the Post he had had even worse problems living in a building just around the corner about two years ago. He’d refused to pay rent due to an unaddressed rodent infestation and was taken to court, only to have the building owner decide to settle at the last minute before the judge could see Roth’s photos of the mice.
Brenda Hagen, a resident of 448 West 4th Street.
“I’m still in the same neighborhood having the same problems with a deaf city council that has been asked by Housing Long Beach and other interested individuals to take a look at just enforcing the state health code,” Roth said. “If you enforce the state health code none of this would happen, nobody would be getting displaced and you could probably generate a great deal of money from fines from landlords who are not taking care of their property per California state law.”
Under the Proactive Rental Housing Inspection Program, the city can conduct periodic inspections of residential rental properties to make sure they are compliant. It is unclear whether it was one of these periodic inspections that led city officials to 4th Street recently.
Housing Long Beach is currently in the signature-gathering phase to get a rent control ordinance on next year’s ballot. If passed, it would set what maximum allowable rent increases would be as well as establish a just cause for eviction.