Save Lincoln Place Apartments! Venice, California

The Struggle to Save Lincoln Place

Lincoln Place Apartments has been under threat of demolition by property developers since the 1980s. Lincoln Place is located in Venice, California, a desirable community located about a mile from the Pacific Ocean between Santa Monica and Marina del Rey. Because Lincoln Place is a large complex built on 35 acres of land near the beach, it is vulnerable to developers who want to turn a quick profit on rising property values in California.

Rent control at Lincoln Place

Lincoln Place is protected by rent control, under Los Angeles's Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Under the RSO, a new tenant's rent begins at market-rate rent at the time that the lease is signed. Thereafter, the rent increases a certain fixed percentage per year as long as the tenant occupies the unit. According to the Los Angeles Housing Department, the RSO is intended "to protect tenants from excessive rent increases, while at the same time allowing landlords a reasonable return on their investments" (LAHD).

AIMCO, the current owner of Lincoln Place, is frustrated by Lincoln Place's RSO protection. With land value in the Los Angeles area increasing at 20% per year over the last five years, many landlords have been increasing rents; many L.A. rents are now equivalent to what a mortgage cost would cost under normal circumstances. But rents for rent-controlled units are limited to an increase of 3% per year. This causes some landlords to falsely believe that they are "subsidizing" their tenants' rents, but in fact they are simply taking advantage of recent spikes in the Los Angeles housing market which have driven rents up very steeply in a short period of time.

Eviction Abuse: The Ellis Act and the Original Redevelopment Plan

AIMCO (Apartment Investment Management Co.), based in Denver, Colorado, became the owner of Lincoln Place in 2003. According to AIMCO's website, it is "the nation’s largest owner and operator of apartment communities, with nearly 1,425 communities that include approximately 250,000 units" and "engages in the acquisition, ownership, management and redevelopment of apartment communities in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico," collecting rents from "approximately one million residents each year."

Soon after AIMCO acquired full ownership of Lincoln Place, it disingenuously used California's Ellis Act as an excuse to evict Lincoln Place tenants -- disingenuous because the Ellis Act allows no-fault evictions for landlords who want to get out of the rental business, but clearly AIMCO, as the nation's largest apartment owner, had no intention of leaving the rental business. Instead, it set up a subsidiary corporation, "AIMCO Venezia," and claimed that only this corporation owned Lincoln Place and was going out of the rental business -- when in fact AIMCO Venezia is wholly owned by AIMCO. AIMCO's strategy was, in effect, to bypass the laws of California by acting as a small landlord when in fact it is the largest private landlord in the country.

AIMCO also had to get around the fact that their plan to redevelop Lincoln Place had been reluctantly approved by the Los Angeles City Council on certain conditions. Some of those conditions involved limits on demolition, which were important because Lincoln Place had been nominated to the California Register of Historic Resources -- a nomination that was unanimously approved by the state commission on August 5, 2005 and which was reaffirmed by the commission on May 5, 2006. Other conditions involved the treatment of tenants during the redevelopment process, specifying that "no existing tenant would be involuntarily displaced from the site." As the landlord's own attorney said in a letter to the City Council:

"To ensure that existing tenants are not displaced, the applicant has made several unprecedented commitments [including] no existing tenant would be involuntarily displaced from the site....Significantly, all of the Project's tenant protection and affordable housing commitments were made voluntarily."

In other words, AIMCO was able to win the City Council's approval of the project on the condition that they would not forcibly evict any tenants from Lincoln Place.

In addition to AIMCO's abuse of California's Ellis Act and its refusal to abide by the conditions of redevelopment approved by the L.A. City Council, AIMCO also failed to properly maintain Lincoln Place while it was a landlord and served its eviction notices improperly in multiple respects. Among other things, it ignored California's regulations regarding who is considered to be a disabled tenant, and ended up prematurely evicting scores of tenants in December 2005 who should have been given until March 2006 to relocate -- if in fact they were required to relocate at all.

Tenants Struggle to Save Lincoln Place

Lincoln Place tenants challenged AIMCO's evictions on all of these grounds. Unfortunately, AIMCO's deep pockets and political influence have allowed it to outspend the tenants -- many of whom are low-income, elderly, and/or disabled -- in the courtroom and to ultimately prevail on the issue of whether or not AIMCO had the right to evict them. AIMCO ordered L.A. sheriffs to lock out the tenants shortly thereafter. L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has as yet refused to do anything to stop the evictions or to make AIMCO account for its renegation on the conditions of approval for its redevelopment plan.

The Settlement "Deal" That Wasn't ... And Lockouts Begin

AIMCO told the media that tenants were offered a "deal" in 2005 which they would be able to stay in a section of the complex and that the tenants refused it. This is false. Tenants were in fact willing to accept an enforceable deal in which they could remain at Lincoln Place.

The fact is, before the eviction cases were brought to court, AIMCO presented a settlement "deal" to the tenants' counsel, but the deal included provisions that allowed AIMCO to easily revoke the deal at will, which made it totally unenforceable. It also included provisions that would have violated various laws and that held tenants hostage to actions by public officials and the community that were totally beyond their control. Tenants rightly refused to agree to a dishonest settlement that required that they sign away their legal rights and support lawbreaking in exchange for a "deal" that in reality promised them nothing -- by a landlord who had consistently acted in bad faith toward them.

Political pressure by L.A. District 11 Councilman and Lincoln Place supporter Bill Rosendahl brought AIMCO to negotiate an amended settlement deal with existing Lincoln Place tenants to come up with a more reasonable plan to preserve their tenancies and at least some portion of the now-historically designated Lincoln Place complex. Most of the deal was completed in the first week of November 2005, and as the details of the deal were being negotiated, AIMCO called off the L.A. sheriffs from locking tenants out.

However, AIMCO continued to stall on the final details while it waited for the State of California to rule on whether or not the historical designation of Lincoln Place would become permanent. The moment that the state ruled that the historic designation was in fact permanent, AIMCO broke off all negotiations and has since refused to come back to the table. AIMCO then asked the sheriffs to continue the evictions. On December 6 -- during a cold spell in Los Angeles -- the sheriffs locked out 52 households of Lincoln Place, which included more than 60 adults and more than 20 children. Six more households were locked out the following week. AIMCO has also said that it will prosecute any evicted tenant who returns to the property.

Another Round of Negotiations -- And AIMCO Backs Out Again

After the first round of lockouts in December, the only Lincoln Place tenants to remain on the property are senior citizens and disabled tenants, who by law were allowed one year from the date of receiving the eviction notice to relocate. But the December lockouts caught the attention of the community, media, and local officials, and in March 2006 the eviction of the last remaining tenants was put on hold while mediation talks began between AIMCO, the tenants, local preservationists, the City of Los Angeles, and the community at large.

In the meantime, AIMCO sued the California State Historical Commission, which had granted Lincoln Place historical status in 2005 and confirmed this status in November 2005, to force the Commission to revoke its decision and rehear the matter. On May 5, 2006, the commission again determined that Lincoln Place indeed deserved its historical status. At that point, AIMCO backed out of the mediation talks, refusing to engage further in a process that had been painstakingly brokered by local officials and the community.

What Will Be the Fate of Lincoln Place?

AIMCO has deceived the public by claiming that tenants have turned down AIMCO's "deals" to remain at Lincoln Place, when in fact it was AIMCO who has walked away from negotiations -- twice -- and who has refused to come back to the negotiating table even though repeatedly requested to do so by the tenants' counsel, the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council, L.A. Councilman Bill Rosendahl, and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. By breaking off negotiations and evicting the tenants of Lincoln Place in total disregard of their initial promise to the City of Los Angeles not to do so, AIMCO is attempting to hold us hostage in order to extract even greater concessions from the City of Los Angeles for its latest redevelopment plans, which it refuses to divulge to this day.

Next: Why AIMCO's evictions are illegal >>>

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