Tenants of the Barrington Plaza Apartments in West Los Angeles, who were protesting their eviction, won a major victory Thursday when a judge issued a tentative ruling that the building’s owners wrongfully evicted the tenants without ever intending to “permanently” remove the units from the rental market.
“We held on,” resident Miki Goral said. “We still have about 90 to 100 residents here.”
The three-building complex, owned by Douglas Emmett Co. and Barrington Pacific LLC, is rent controlled. The owners argued the evictions were necessary to install sprinklers and other fire protection systems in the complexes, which have a history of dangerous fires. But the eviction-threatened tenants sued last year, arguing the owners were illegally using the 1985 Ellis Act to evict everyone, a law actually designed to allow independent landlords to get out of the rental business and remove their properties from the rental market.
“We were definitely expecting a win,” resident Andrew Learn said, “because Douglas Emmett claims we have too little power.”
In a 19-page tentative ruling, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jay Ford III found that the building’s owners, Barrington Pacific Co. and Douglas Emmett Co., violated the requirements of the Ellis Act and the city’s rent stabilization ordinance because they always anticipated returning the units to the rental market once renovations were completed, even if the renovations took years.
“Based on a preponderance of the evidence, the Court finds that on May 8, 2023, when Barrington Pacific filed its notice of intent to remove the units from rental housing with the City and sent termination notices to the tenants, Barrington Pacific did not intend to permanently remove those apartments from the rental market under the RSO, nor did it intend to ‘go out of business’ as contemplated by the Ellis Act,” Ford wrote. “Rather, Barrington Pacific intended to ‘temporarily’ remove the Barrington Plaza apartments from rental with the express intent to re-rent those apartments upon completion of all planned renovations to the apartments, including fire and safety measures, sprinkler installation, and other modernization upgrades, all of which Barrington Pacific planned and expected would take three to five years to complete.”
If the ruling goes ahead, evictions for the remaining tenants will be halted. About 100 units are believed to still be rented at the complex. When the renovations and evictions were announced last year, there were 577 units occupied.
The building’s owners said last year they expected the renovations to cost more than $300 million, and their lawyers argued in court that the work could mean a major rebuild of the building’s interior and apartments, effectively demolishing the existing units.
Barrington Plaza was built in 1961, before a 1974 ordinance was enacted requiring new high-rises to have sprinklers.
Eight floors of one of the complex’s three buildings, located at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Barrington Avenue in West Los Angeles, have been red-tagged and out of use since a fire in 2020. Renovation plans were submitted to the city later that year, according to the building’s owner, but city approval was contingent on installing sprinklers and other “life safety devices” in all three buildings.
More from CBS News
KCAL News Staff