Help Us Fight an Unlawful Mass Eviction

Tenants living in the Los Angeles 712-unit rent controlled affordable housing Barrington Plaza Apartments face eviction. Some tenants have lived here for over 30 years. The evictions appear to be illegal. The only person who may able to stop this mass displacement is a Superior Court Judge. That is why tenants need your financial support NOW, in order to hire a tenants’ right law firm. They need to retain these attorneys in order to prevent seniors, disabled, parents with children, pets – low income and working renters from losing their homes and community. PLEASE DONATE NOW!

The locals call her "Auntie Linda" aka "The Fairy Dogmother of Barrington Plaza.” But after living for 38 years in the largest, rent-stabilized apartment complex on the West Side of Los Angeles, she, along with over 1,500 of her fellow tenants (and their pets!), are being unlawfully evicted.

This is the largest, mass eviction since Chavez Ravine in 1959, when Los Angeles officials used eminent domain and other political machinations to bulldoze the homes of that vibrant and historic Mexican-American community to make way for Dodger Stadium.

Constructed in 1961, the landmark three buildings comprise 712 units of which 577 are currently occupied. All of us are being forced out of our homes, the first "safe spaces" many of us have ever known, including Noor, who was born here in 1999, and is now facing an uncertain future.

Our wonderfully diverse, intergenerational, international, LGBTQIA community represents the best of L.A. Many of us are working-class people like Chuck, who drives for Door Dash; Lucy, a waitress at Pollo Loco; Alexa, a professional dog walker; Perry, a Beverly Hills hairstylist; and others, who service our more affluent West Side neighbors. Many of us, like myself, who is a currently unemployed writer, are on some form of government assistance. Others, even more vulnerable, are still financially recovering from the Covid pandemic and struggling with child-care costs.

Already served with our eviction papers, we are either facing imminent relocation to a distant more affordable part of the city, a premature residence in an extended care facility or even homelessness. Many of us, like Linda, are also elderly, disabled or financially challenged. Some of us are food-insecure, don’t drive, and depend upon nearby loved ones to take us grocery shopping or to medical appointments.

Douglas Emmett, our multi-billion dollar corporate landlord, is illegally employing the Ellis Act as justification for the mass eviction. Passed in 1985, this California state law was created to allow mom-and-pop landlords who are planning to “go out of business” to evict tenants from rent-controlled units to take them off the rental market.

But the Ellis Act has been routinely used by developers to circumvent local eviction protections in order to oust low-income renters like ourselves and transform our homes into luxury hotels and condominiums. This has led to the removal of tens of thousands of rent-controlled units in Los Angeles, exacerbating the city’s affordable housing crisis and displacing blue-collar communities like ours. The relocation fees and services provided by the city do not begin to make up for the cost and catastrophic consequences of forcing us out of our rent-stabilized apartments.

If Douglas Emmett intends to retrofit the sprinkler system and make other repairs needed to bring Barrington Plaza up to code, then it is possible to do so without evicting hundreds of us and flooding the neighborhood with new tenants where greedy landlords are ruthlessly raising their buildings' already exorbitant rents.

Douglas Emmett has already admitted that it has no intention of removing Barrington Plaza from the rental market when the renovations are complete, as the Ellis Act requires. Nor are our politicians doing anything to protect rent-stabilized tenants from harm or displacement due to city-mandated building renovations.

This tragedy is not just about us. At stake is the fate of the entire city. Two million people rent in Los Angeles, and a 2019 USC study found that more than 70% of households are severely rent-burdened. If Douglas Emmett’s mass eviction is allowed to stand, the implications for these households will be devastating and a catastrophic burden on our already strained social service resources.

It is unfair, unjust, and even cruel to throw us under the bus in the name of gentrification, which is Douglas Emmett’s ultimate agenda should they be permitted to proceed with their mass eviction.

Our Barrington Plaza Tenants Association is working with the Coalition for Economic Survival and one of the top tenant’s rights law firms in Los Angeles to fight our eviction.

We have created this GoFundMe page to solicit any donation you can make to help us retain them to fight Douglas Emmet's unlawful use of the Ellis Act. The alternative is distant relocation or even homelessness. Today it is the residents of Barrington Plaza. Tomorrow it could be you. Please help our close-knit Barrington Plaza Family, Linda and her "fairy dog-children” save our homes!