How Our Councilman Punched a Hole in Our Landlord, Taylor Equities

No matter your problem in LA, every single person, in every single city department, will ask you first: “Did you call your Councilman?”

Los Angeles is set up like some medieval town: On top is the King (Mayor Eric Garcetti), but he doesn’t have as much power as he wishes he does. Most of what gets done in the city is done by the councilman or woman, (barons) who “own” huge swathes of the city and represent their turfs. They control both laws and enforcement. And they can get things done, if they choose to.

We had an urgent problem: Taylor Equities bought our 36 unit building at 2965 Waverly Drive on March 26, and came in with guns blazing, with massive construction and threats about rent. And we didn’t have Rent Control (we are non-RSO.) That means we had no department in the city to help us. (Housing, HCID, only helps tenants with Rent Control. So those tenants get help twice. )

The plight of renters who are non-RSO has been completely ignored by the city for 40 years. And since Housing won’t help, who you gonna call? Your Councilman!

Because we’re not dummies, of course we did call Councilman Ryu, from the very beginning. Luckily, I found a responsive smart rep in the office. But in general, maybe especially, in government, people are better listeners than doers. Good luck on getting a call back, or a followup with city government. It requires a ton of work and persistence to make your Councilman look you in the eye.

Early on, when Taylor Equities (formerly Ness Properties, and now Los Angeles Property Management Group– changing names is Taylor’s forte!) started to seriously scare us, Ryu’s legislative aid wrote to me:

Rachel on our team, who is the field representative for your area, can ensure a building and/or housing inspector drops by to review what they are doing to ensure it is at bare minimum compliant with the law.

Comforting words, but it didn’t really work out that way. Turns out the Housing and the Building & Safety Depts have some serious rivalry going on about multi-family buildings, and renters are the football getting tossed around. Or should I say anti-football, since neither department wants to help?

We also had some back and forth with the Councilman stating a city department is not able to interfere in civil matters – and that landlord-tenants are civil, even if un-civil. At this point, you have to make sure to point out to your Councilmember how your landlord affects other buildings, the community, and/or the city. It takes a city to raze a landlord. It’s not civil, it’s criminal. And far-reaching.

It wasn’t long before Taylor Equities did indeed overstep their bounds and start to

Trees planted to block parking on Waverly

affect the community. On May 27 they planted 175 trees in front of the building. Why is this bad? I mean we need more trees in the city!

Well, they did it on a Sunday, and it’s illegal to do any construction on Sunday, and it was also impossible to reach the city for help. More important, they planted them in the parkway in front, so no one would be able to park there anymore! And that puts a burden on parking for the whole street. And that land belongs to the city.

Here is where Councilman Ryu really stepped up: his field deputy Rachel came out in person to see the situation. (I highly recommend meeting your Council office in person!! You will have to make an appointment – which isn’t easy, in my experience – but as with anything in life, in person counts.) She called in LADOT, who are SERIOUS about parking and a couple of weeks later, all 175 trees were ripped out of the ground and planted elsewhere on the property. It was magical.

Of course we had other ongoing problems – no garbage pick-up, spycams, water turned off, pointless construction, not to mention taking 20 and more units off the rental market by not renting them out, and thus artificially inflating the value! But it wasn’t until we found other letters our councilman had written to property owners that we realized we could get such a letter. In fact, the office promised us one. But nada.

From Beverly Press:

Councilman David Ryu, 4th District, wrote a letter to building management saying he was “extremely alarmed” to learn about the letters and text messages sent to tenants.

And there was at least one more letter from Ryu, but I can’t find the link now.

Workers, workers and more workers. Oh, and no place to park.

So we thought, where’s our letter? We requested one, were promised one, and then nothing. Turns out, we didn’t deserve one. After all, we don’t have Rent Control, so we’re 4th Class Citizens. Seriously, you have NO city laws protecting you without rent control. Rinse, repeat. NO laws.

When we kept reporting egregious habitability issues and suspect construction, Ryu’s office dutifully sent out another inspector or two to trudge around. Still no letter to the landlord on our behalf. And when we were served Unlawful Detainers — UDs are what you get when your landlord sues you and takes you to court, even though you did nothing wrong – we became a little anxious, to say the least. We became very persistent asking Councilman Ryu for that letter.

Sometimes you just want to believe that someone in the city has your back.

We ended up describing this lack of a support letter to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council Committee for Housing and Tenants Rights, and then standing up at another SLNC meeting to present our case. (Hint: your Neighborhood Councils are like family: they HAVE to like you, homeboy! Plus, they are very powerful in this city.) So they joined us in requesting a letter from our Councilman.

Thus, our letter. This is probably the most powerful punch I’ve ever seen ever in this city. Not exactly threatening, but definitely very unfriendly! Don’t you just love it? You can read the whole letter here, but some choice bits:

RE: 2965 Waverly Drive
Dear Mr. Taylor:

This is not the first letter I’ve sent to you on behalf of my constituents who are tenants of one of your buildings, nor is this the first time my office has had to get involved with issues at your properties. My office has been in contact with the tenants of 2965 Waverly Drive for a number of months regarding the continued issues and actions of your company and its employees at their homes.

…I urge you to work with the current tenants at 2965 Waverly Drive to ensure their safety, welfare, and the habitability and quiet enjoyment of their residences, as well as to rescind all the pending evictions.

We are in a crisis of enormous proportions in this City. Over 31,000 Angelenos are currently homeless, and Los Angeles consistently ranks among the least affordable cities. Continued destruction of affordable units, and eviction of long- time tenants is only exacerbating this crisis.

And much more.

Now if this were a romance novel, I would give you that happy ending. But in spite of the strong language and inferences, this letter from the Councilman didn’t have the heart-stopping effect we were hoping for. Destruction continues. Tenants are still leaving. Two of us had to go to court. (more on that later.) And our landlord, Taylor Equities is doing the same junk to his other buildings as we speak.

The takeaway: Ask your Councilman or woman for help. But if you are dealing with a real estate mogul with bad intentions, you’ll need a multi-prong approach. It takes a village to raze a landlord.

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