April 5, 2006

Contact:
Sheila Bernard (310) 871-6368
Jan Book (310) 392-1426
Clare Sassoon (310) 403-0941

LINCOLN PLACE AT YET ANOTHER CROSSROADS

Mediation Begins Between Rental Giant AIMCO, Tenants, Venice Community, Preservationists, and City of L.A.; Tenancies of Senior and Disabled Residents Hang in the Balance; Ellis Act Used as a Bargaining Chip by AIMCO

WHERE: Pepperdine University, West Los Angeles location

WHEN: April 13

WHY: To ensure the rights of the tenants at Lincoln Place Apartments in Venice, California, and the rights of the community to preserve the character of their neighborhood

Councilmember Rosendahl set an April 15 target date for completion of negotiations between Lincoln Place tenants and AIMCO, owner of the 38-acre Lincoln Place Garden Apartments in Venice, California. AIMCO finally returned to the negotiating table with tenants to try to reach an agreement about the future of both the tenants and the roughly 700 units of affordable housing at the Lincoln Place complex. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen. Lincoln Place tenants, Venice community members, Los Angeles preservationists, and City officials are participating in the negotiations with the largest landlord in the United States.

History:

At the L.A. City Council meeting on December 13, 2005, Councilmember Bill Rosendhal called for a resolution to bring AIMCO back to the negotiating table. This was backed unanimously by the City Council.

On March 7, 2006, in a PLUM meeting (Planning and Land Use Management), Rosendahl went further and set a target date of April 15 for the conclusion of the negotiations. He has introduced a motion to record the conditions of approval of AIMCO'S development plan for Lincoln Place. The plan prohibits the eviction of tenants, but AIMCO has evicted 81 households in violation of the conditions. Rosendahl's motion is intended to prevent further evictions, and in doing so challenges the legality of the prior evictions.

Rosendahl agreed to hold off on further discussion of his motion after AIMCO returned to the negotiating table and agreed to hold off on evicting the remaining tenants of Lincoln Place, comprised entirely of senior and disabled tenants. The motion is being held in the PLUM Committee. AIMCO has committed in writing not to file eviction papers prior to June 1, 2006.

AIMCO negotiated a plan with the City for the redevelopment of Lincoln Place in 2002. The conditions of approval of the plan included the rights of the tenants to remain at Lincoln Place and to relocate within the complex if they so desired during the redevelopment. But AIMCO declined to record the plan and had the L.A. sheriff lock out 52 households in one morning on December 6, 2005 and 6 more households the following week. The tenants are looking to Rosendahl to record the plan if negotiations with AIMCO fail to permanently cancel the evictions or fail to restore the tenancies that were terminated in violation of the conditions.

The City Attorney's advice that the City was not required to enforce other conditions of the redevelopment plan resulted in an $185,000 fine awarded against the City by Judge David Yaffe in February of this year for illegally allowing buildings to be demolished in 2002 in violation of the conditions. Should the recording of the conditions not produce enforcement of tenant protections, tenants are poised to return to court to request that Yaffe make an analogous ruling relative to the conditions which protect the tenants.

Subsequent to the March 7 PLUM meeting, Peter Robinson, Managing Director of the Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution and Associate Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, donated 15 hours of his time to convene the negotiation process. He was subsequently chosen by all parties as the actual mediator for the process. There have been several meetings with all the various parties, and all parties have expressed hopefulness that there will be a resolution.

Tenants at Valley Village and Chase Knolls in the San Fernando Valley are watching the Lincoln Place situation closely, as they too are facing the same threat of evictions under the Ellis Act, which is considered by housing advocates statewide to be the scourge of tenants and of affordable housing. Los Angeles faces an epidemic of evictions, destroying communities of both low-income and middle-class citizens. Mayor Villaraigosa's stated goal of having more affordable housing along transit corridors has been, for Lincoln Place, a reality for 50 years. Lincoln Place was designed by African-American architect Ralph Vaughn in his trademark Hollywood-stylized version of modern architecture, rooted in the English Garden City Movement. The success of that design put Lincoln Place on the California Register of Historic Resources in November 2005.

Lincoln Place tenants are looking for a FAIR PROCESS with a FAIR, LEGAL, and ENFORCEABLE RESULT.

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© Lincoln Place Tenants Association
Email: info@lincolnplace.net