LA Tenants Expropriate their Landlord

make bad things happen to them instead. And with me to talk about how this has been done and also can be done, is Janet you who is a tenant organizer with the Chinatown Community for Equitable Development in l A and A. Here's another tenant organizer and leader at Northside Villa um A. Janis, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Yeah, and that's health Side VideA Healthside via. Sorry, So this is what happens when I

have m R I brand. I guess okay, So the first thing I want to sort of walk through is basically can can can you describe the win you all had a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, I can go ahead and start and then and I if you want to fill in at all. Um So, a couple of weeks ago we were able to successfully push our city council to approve alone to acquire hills Iddea from slum lord tom Bots, and so just to make it clear,

this isn't the end of the fight. We have not fully appropriated tom Bots at the moment, but this is a huge victory and commitment from the city to take the building from him. So it was really really exciting for all of us, you know. I guess one thing I want to clarify from the outset is that a lot of the reporting about it seemed like a lot of the reporting about it was saying that the city had had voted to use them in the domain and

they have not done that, which is my understanding. Yeah. Yeah, So to clarify that part two the motion that was past it does include that eminent domain will be used if the landlord does not willingly sell, which he most likely will not of course, Yeah, exactly, so he's not gonna will if you sell his building. It does include that it will be used in as part of the pathway, um, but it does not specifically past the eminental main piece, so that will be something that we will probably have

to organize around. Um. Yeah, and if I'm understanding correctly, then understand that that requires a second vote, right, yeah, But I guess okay, for first off, also congratulations, this rules us really exciting. UM. Yeah, And I guess the second thing I wanted to ask about was how how this organizing process started and how are you able to do this because this is a this is a rare

massive w yeah mm hmm. Yeah, so this has been a three year struggle, UM, and I can give a little bit of context around how how it got started and then maybe Ana you can take it from there. UM. So basically, Hillside Via is part of a massive amount of buildings that were built in the eighties, UM using

different kinds of federal and state subsidies. UM. And basically, yeah, it was UM subsidies that were used to fund private developers to keep buildings affordable for a temporary period of time, so using affordable housing covenants and so Hillsides covenant expired in twenty nineteen after thirty years of being kept affordable for the tenants. And as soon as that happened, UM, the landlord of course tried to increase the rent to market rate, so folks were receiving up to two rent

increases mm hmm. Yeah. So you know, to actually like talk about what those numbers are people who are paying eight hundred dollars for rent were now being asked to pay liked, so that's a de facto eviction, right, and um, as soon as that happened, there's actually this like origin story that I really love is that one of our tenant leaders, Leslie, who's uh bilingual like Spanish and English speaker, she came up to a tenant who is a monolingual

Cantonese speaker, held up one of the rent increases, ripped it to shreds, and the Benson, our Cantonese tenant leader, just said okay. And that's like one of the origin stories that really just shows like how um, yeah, like

oppositional our tenants were from the beginning. Um. And then what happened was that another tenant leader, Luisa, who actually has since passed away due to COVID, she actually called all the news stations in l A just blew this the funk up and um yeah, and then that's how organizers kind of got involved and maybe a I you can share your personal experience of going through all of this, yeah for sure. UM. So about right, a little before the association was started at Hillside Villa, Um, we had

been living here for about seven years and at that time. UM. So I was working with my mom at the time, and we went out um in the morning for work. We came back around the afternoon, UM to find that we couldn't get into our apartment. Our keys were actually um, they weren't going into the locks. So we went to the manager's office and asked them, like why our key

wasn't working. So they sent management up to our our floor and UM, they told us that we had been evicted and that we couldn't like go back and yeah, that we couldn't go back into our apartment. UM. So it's just just within that one MM that one morning, you know, our whole pretty much our whole life was like flipped upside down. UM. They told us that they actually worked unfortunately with them, and I think this is a very common UM thing is that UM landlords UM

work directly with the Sheriff's department. So the sheriff department came and switched out our lock. UM. So we were pretty much uprooted. UM that day. UM, we had to figure out like what to do. UM. We were all separated like that day, we all, you know, my sister went to her friend's house, my mom had to go rent a hotel to stay with her husband, and then I went to my partner's house. So that lasted about two to three days. And in those two to three

days we were personally. I started looking up tenant law as tenant rights, and we found thanks to to a friend UM, she recommended the Eviction Defense Network, who provides UM free lawyers for UM tenants facing UM eviction in l A. So they heard us up with a lawyer and UM they found that UM the eviction had actually been an illegal eviction. And then we all we also had like the paperwork to show that that it was

an illegal eviction. So UM we threatened to suit UM the landlord and because of that, he dropped the case and led us back in to our apartment after like three or four days or something like that from what I can remember, UM, but in those days it was it was UM really enraging obviously, like who wouldn't be like super piste off at this, like it would boil

your blood, you know, and and it did UM. And that's one of the things that like UM kind of made me UM very much so more involved in like tenant rights and and UM organizing UM and then also like just to throw this in a little more detail. Um, when we were locked out, um, they actually locked our animals in in CD apartment so we couldn't even get our dogs right away. Oh my god, did they like were they okay? Like did you were able to like was anyone feeding them? Like? They weren't there all the

three days I think we were. We had to like really like push for them to open up the apartment so that we can get them like the day of um. But then like we couldn't just like grab all our things, um, including like medication that was like for my mom's husband who has a diabete ease and whatnot. So I think that was like the first time we acted as a family to like not let um someone pretty much bully and harass us into a forced eviction that was completely

illegal um. And that's within that time. It was also happening to all the tenants around us. I mean there was the word was going all over the apartment. I mean you you could see management was doing a cash for keys um, which is also an illegal tactic for um landlords to do. And um they were trying Yeah, um,

so cash for keys um. It's probably going to be like a rough definition of what it is, but it's when UM, when a landlord offers a certain amount of money in order for you to give up your apartment UM. And this could be a couple of thousand UM, ten thousand,

twenty thousand, sometimes way less than that UM. So that was a tactic that he was trying to use to evict people from our apartment so that he could remodel and then UM move it up to like market rate and get pretty much all of our community out of this apartment, which was an affordable apartment. UM. It worked for a lot of some tenants did end up doing that. A lot of people didn't want to fight back UM, but the ones that did UM started the association UM.

And there's also a lot of like language barriers with the tenants UM, some that only spoke Spanish and didn't understand what was happening. They were trying to get people to sign contracts UM for for the increase of the rent UM. Yeah. So that was my experience here to begin with UM and and why we decided to fight back and not allow this to to happen to our family, but also like our community here who were also experiencing the same thing. You know, it wasn't just an ice.

I say this all the time. It felt like an isolated situation at the time, but it on the broader perspective, it was not an isolated thing, and that's what brought

our community together. That's a really powerful, be incredibly enraging, And yeah, there's a lot of really interesting things they're like, I mean, one, obviously, the cops doing like the sheriff's like helping them do the illegal eviction is just incredibly on the nose and the wather thing I think is really interesting about the way that like I mean, okay, the way the law only exists for rich people if you can like throw it into their faces and make

it embarrassing enough that like the state has to enforce it.

So I read a lot of media coverage of this, and not a single person who who covered the story that that that I saw from these articles mentioned that the that cash per keys is illegal a lot because a lot of the articles mentioned it, but they don't they don't they don't mention that, like you legally can't do this, And so yeah, I think that's a that that that's I don't know, I guess it goes to show that like even among the press, like whose job it is to do this, there's there's such like little

there's such a little knowledge of what what what practices aren't and are and aren't allowed and that. Yeah, I mean, I think as you're talking about like that, that that that's one of the they're they're relying like in order to do this with landlords are like, yeah, that they're they're relying on people not knowing their rights to relying on

being able to trick people. They're relying on just straight up handing people stuff they can't read and forcing them to sign it, which, m I don't know that my brain is weird, but like the thing that reminds me of is like that the Spanish conquistadors showing up and then really like ask asking people to convert to Christianity in Spanish language they didn't speak, and then shooting them when they didn't do it. It's like, yeah, that's a

fitting analogy, honestly. Yeah, it's a new form of colonization yea, and one that we're you know, resisting, Yeah, yea. That that that was one of the other things I wanted to talk about in terms of resisting this kind of stuff is Yeah, what what was it like dealing with the kind of language barriers that you get here when you have I don't know, Like I mean, you've mentioned like

at least three languages that people are speaking. There's probably more because that's just that's how working class communities work. Mm hmm. Yeah. I feel like that's been such a central part of our fight, is language justice and the tenant meetings that we've had every single week for the past three years. Um, so that's like about a hundred and fifteen meetings. Every single one of them has included

some form of translation. Um. So yeah, we've had a lot of support from folks from Union davcos organizers there have gear where we can do like simultaneous translation. Yeah. So if you go to one of our meetings, it's folks who, um, if they're monolingual Spanish or English speakers, they're having a headset on where we then have someone who's offering simultaneous translation um. And then since we have fewer Cantonese or Mandarin speakers, will also have organizers on

the side doing um, consecutive translation for them. So our meetings are run and like usually three if not more languages M and I guess, I guess it leads into you another question that I had, which was, so, how how did I think from unders staying this One of the parts of the story is like, is people who people who have been doing established tenant organizing like getting getting involved with the struggle, and I wanted to, I guess, talk about how that happens and yeah, yeah, yeah, So

I think because that original tenant, Louisa like really blew this story up, UM, different orgs heard about it, and eventually UM a lot too, So the l A Tenants Union and then c c D UM, the organ that I'm in, we heard about it and got involved long term. And even with that, like I'm a relatively new organizer, I only started volunteering with c c D a couple of years ago, so it's really been like one of my first UM site fights we like to call them.

But there are other folks who have had more a bit more experience with different buildings in l A as well. But I think what's important to emphasize is that this fight has really been tenant lead UM, and even though we have like these kind of yeah, outside organizers, it's always been the tenants demands and the tenants interests first. Yeah, it seems I mean, you know, from from your descriptions,

like people showing up a translation equipment. Yeah, it seems like a really good way to do this kind of stuff, which is you show up and you give help to people, but it's it's you know, it's it's them doing the organizing, which I don't know. It reminds me a lot of like my experiences between union organizing stuff, which is like, yeah, I know, it's it's some Yeah, like you have people who have experience with stuff and they come in and their job is to help the people who are actually

trying to organize the place. Mm hmm, yeah, exactly exactly, the people who are like actually directly impacted. UM. Yeah. I feel like our role has really just been facilitating, offering like the technical support UM more of that stuff. But I think you can really talk about how so much of this fight has really been building the tenant's power and becoming more and more like militant UM and radical and just the tenants like yeah, just definitely feeling

their own fire. Yeah. So we are like super duper grateful for the UM organizers that have come out for the last three years or however long UM they've decided to or have joined the association to help. UM and a lot of the tenants always always like gives things and they're super appreciative or the organizers, but sometimes they

don't give themselves the credit either. They think it's only like they think the organizers, which is like super important and we're super grateful, but they don't realize that they're a huge part of of the fight. UM. For example, UM, actually my mom UH has been a part of the association for longer than I have. UM. I've only been organizing for about UM well not only UM a year and a half, but she's actually been in the organization

for three years. UM because not only because she needed the support and the organizers really helped to UM to guide her to like learn to use her voice for UM for the outcome that we all want to see. UM. And a lot of the tenants are UM are women, their elders, you know, their generation elders, so UM, they're very strong people. They UM a lot of like the elder like UM. Like I guess Latina, I don't know

how I feel about that term, but UM. You know, women UM are our natural leaders and with the help of the organizers. Um, they really just helped to to help them too, you know, use their voice and to empower them to to do what they can naturally do,

which is speak up and ask for what they want. So, yeah, my mom is you know, learned over the last three years how to talk in front of politicians, how to um communicate the process and the struggle that we've all been enduring, but to also demand what we rightfully deserve, which is housing, safe housing, and for politicians to do their job, which is to represent as they should be the community that they are working for and not and you know, not to beg them to do things, but

to demand that um, they take action in the way that we have taken action. Um, much more then than any politician has in the last three years. Um, it was up to the tenants and it still is and thanks to them we have gotten as far as we have. That That was those Yeah, really well said. I want to I guess shift a little bit into talking about like what specifically y'all were doing, because I guess I guess both that is like what how how how how did you actually do this? And then how can other

people sort like how can other people replicate it. Mm hmm, yeah, I don't know that we necessarily have like a model UM that other people can apply, because I think reflecting about this whole fight, it was such a like just dynamic campaign where at first when it started, UM folks war kind of using more you know, like legal tactics, just like looking for errors in UM the rent increases that bots would hand out and this would you know, lead to UM being able to stall the rent hikes

for months at a time. UM. But then that obviously wasn't enough, so then people started escalating and UM eventually like putting pressure to get this on the radar of our districts, like city council person guil cdeo, And eventually, through that, UM they were able to get CDEO to make a deal with the landlord to extend the covenant

UM and have his loaned speed his debtbat forgiven. UM. But the landlord just like reneged on that deal, right So yeah yeah, So then UM, I think it's through those experiences that the tenants really learned like Okay, it's like the this politician is not going to save us. UM. So then I think our fight became like more and more militant, so just directly going to the landlords Malibu Villa and shouting like fuck you, and you know, just

like yeah, just like those direct confrontations. And then even Sidio himself, U has not been you know, this friendly relationship where we're thanking him for putting our putting our story into city council. It's been extremely confrontational and oppositional

the entire time. And I think thinking about what got us this recent when it was um as it has been this whole fight direct action, because we ended up the first day that city Council opened up to the public again, a group of us went in kind of like slid our way through security and went to his office and surprisingly he opened the door, um, and it was him and not a staffer, and of course he

saw it was us. He us. He immediately tried to close the door, and one of our amazing tenant leaders, Rosario, who's yeah, this elder Latino woman, she stuck her foot in the door and refused to let him close it. Yeah, And because of that we were able to just like directly confront him like, where the funk have you been.

It's been three years, um and you haven't seen this through like you said you were going to, and we got all that you know, recorded video evidence of him UM just yeah, fumbling around, and he sent the cops on us, of course. UM. And yeah, I think that was such a great action because all of the we call them, like the Mohas, so the Latino women who have been leading the fight, they were just so defiant

towards the cops. UM, not scared at all, and just you know, standing their gown and that they're just defending you know, they're human right to housing. UM. And a week after that confrontational action, we got this UM this

city council motion passed. So you know, I think it from our experience trying to go through the nice way and like you know, doing traditional lobbying, trying to schedule meetings and like texting, calling all of that, things didn't happen for years, and then once we did more and

more militant actions, things happened really quickly. Yeah. Another thing I'd like to add on to that, UM that I actually heard was something that not a lot of UM, other associations UM that are fighting for their housing UM do often was UM to bring the community together. UM. And like I mean, really coming together. I mean, we're meeting every week for the last three years, and even during the pandemic, UM we weren't in person. We actually

were on zoom for a really long time. UM. And that's one of the biggest things was UM the consistency that we all pushed through even during the pandemic. UM from the beginning was meeting every single week, and some other UM organizers also meet more than once a week. You know, we're meeting multiple times a week too, kind of talk over like the fine detail of of you know, the next steps UM. But definitely consistency has been one of the biggest things in the last three years that

has gotten us where we are today. Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. It's I know, I keep going back to this because this is the sort of I mean, I guess I did some tendant organizing, but UM, this is the thing that I know now. Was like, Yeah, it reminds me a lot of just like the way the way that Union get pagins that like work run of just you have to keep you have you have to keep getting people together to do the thing. Yeah,

most definitely. Yeah, I don't know have you all seen like like how how did that change, like your relationship with just like the other people in the building. I'll give you an example from like my mom. I think for her it's been changed a little more drastically than it has for me because a lot of the tenants here a little older. UM. So before the association was started, she she's kind of like a person that keeps to

herself a lot, you know. UM. But since that, UM, since the association, she's actually made like so many friends here now, like and she's actually made like a best friend here, um, one of our neighbors. And they like, yes, and they've become like really good friends. UM. They even go, you know, have breakfast together, um like almost multiple times

a week. UM. The other day I saw them, Like I saw my mom's best friend Adelita or Adela, um giving her some sugar, and I was like, I should have gotten a picture of that, Like that's you know, that's so cute, like posted it on like Instagram so that you know, like everyone knows like what it looks like when community comes together. It's it's the small things

like that. UM. But I think it has um made some you know who made us gain like trust with um the neighbors that have been consistent UM and see the same UM kind of vision that we have to keep this building affordable. UM. And yeah, not everyone, not all the tenants here have been supportive of our fight. Some you know, participated for a few months and then

immediately gave up. UM. But one of the things that UM that my family has done is to keep fighting UM, even for the ones that don't want to show up or don't want to do the work, which is hard work. UM. That we're not just doing it for ourselves, but we're doing it for for everyone, whether they're supportive or not. You know, this is going to benefit them, and it's going to benefit the whole community and hopefully the city,

the whole city in the future. I don't know, It's something I've definitely seen with organizing, is that like, yeah, just living in this world can be really isolating and I don't know, like I've lived in a lot of places where it's just like, yeah, like I have no idea who any like literally who anyone who lives around me is like like there's still they'll they'll be like the one person you see at three in the boarding coming back to their apartment and it's like, oh, I

vaguely remember this person, but like, yeah, like I think, I don't know, just this this being something that just on a broad level, not just about like I mean, you know, is it like this is something that's a solution to both like an immediate fight and then also is sort of like broader just I don't know, like Nightmarror's isolation that everyone's not everyone is a huge part of a lot of our lives. Now, I don't know. That just struck me. I guess, yeah, yeah, I feel

like this just makes me think of UM. To celebrate the recent win, we had this party at Hillside UM just last week, and you know, it was like Pollock style. Everyone brought their own food. UM. Someone had a connection with like a mariachi van, so we bind mariachi playing. UM. One of the tenants owns a food truck and just wanted to cook for the community, so she was whipping up these like amazing tacos and bacon up hot dogs. And then someone had brought this piniata of the landlord

and people were just like talking destroying it. Like one of the tennants was just like fistfighting it and having it open. The kids were just like grabbing as much candy as they could from this broken Tom Botts Panada, and and like, I feel like that was just like exemplifies the sense of community that there is now Hillside.

And I think, as Anna was talking about, those personal connections have been so key to keeping this fight going for three years because it's hard, it's so hard to keep showing up, and it's those personal connections that keep

you coming. Yeah, most definitely, it's almost like a support system that um, like my mom and like some of the neighbors have created, like Adlita or one of our second generation tenants, Leslie, you know, She's they can confide with one another, they can vent with one another, and um yeah yeah, Um, They've definitely like created strong bonds, and I think that's one of the reasons why they

keep showing up. You know, it's it's women supporting women, and um, you know, they're the protectors of the family, they're the nurturers. And that's what my mom taught me. So that's why definitely one of the reasons why I continue to fight, um for Hillside to keep the housing, not only for my mom because I'm like her protector and she's mine but we're also like here to protect the community from from harassment or from literal bowling. Yeah.

So I guess looking forward, Um, I think at the beginning interview you said, yeah, it looks like there's going to be another fight over sort of forcing the forcing the city to actually use eminent domain. Um yeah, do you have well okay, I don't know if you can talk about your plants for that. Yeah. I guess two things. One if if if people want to support what y'all are doing and you know, put pressure on the city, what are the best ways for them to do that?

Mm hmmm, Um, yeah, I think just following our our socials and staying updated about the fight and any like action items that we put out is a great way to support and just amplifying the struggle. Um yeah. In terms of our specific strategy for holding the city accountable, Um, we actually haven't haven't gotten super into the weeds of it yet because we are just taking a break for a while to you know, to celebrate sounding this win

and yeah kind of have folks get perspective. I think are our view is that because the city has now approved the funds to make this happen, that um yeah, that there shouldn't be any barriers to them seeing it completely through. UM. Yeah, I think we can. We can maybe UM apprehends some like ideological barriers because actually using eminent domain to expropriate a landlord is not something that's

been done before. UM. But yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, look, if if if they can displace tennants with eminent domain, they can, they can they can use it to keep tenants in their homes, like exactly. I guess the other question I have with that is what is okay? So like, say, like I don't know, a miracle occurs and like your landlord is visited by like three ghosts at night who like show him increasingly horrible features, and he decides to sell it to the city. What

is that? Like? What is the city owning the building look like? Mm hmmm. Yeah. I can start with that, and then and I can chime in. But I think the vision of the tenants has always been collective stewardship and tenant ownership of the building. UM. So the fight definitely does not stop at the city UM taking the building, but there will also be a push for actual tenant stewardship of the building too. Yeah, and I think the exact structures of that um aren't aren't so clear yet.

There's still a lot of like discussions and work to be done around that. UM. But yeah, and the conversations that we've had with folks from the Housing Authority, which is going to be the agency that's actually purchasing the building. UM, they have expressed openness too to us actually um. Yeah, having another nonprofit takeover and eventually building towards like a co op kind of structure, that would be really cool. Yeah.

I know, I know, I've heard a lot of talk among well I know that I think some people have done it in Detroit about things the community land trusts as a UM. Yeah, I have tenants actually like control their buildings. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely been part of the discussion. Yeah, that's that's awesome because yeah, this is a much better solution than the state is now your landlord exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so that's yeah, that's that's the what we hope for

in the future. UM. Like Jannas said, we still have a lot to work through, and this isn't um done obviously. We wouldn't, like you said, want the state to be landlords here they wouldn't be the best landlord. But yeah, um yeah, we we are, like Janna said, taking a pause and we will reconvene UM two plan out feature steps to take. But this was a really really great win. Um. It was such a relief off of so many people.

Um back and something we've been fighting for over three three and a half years now, UM, so it's good to finally get somewhat of positive news. And it's been such an emotional journey for the last three years. Um. I mean that doesn't even justify how how much of an emotional roller coaster it has been for a lot of these tenants or for a lot of our families here. Um, when we got the news, um, everyone broke out in tears and joy and and and everyone was so surprised.

I mean I couldn't help myself but to like cry and smile and ugly cry some more for like the whole day. Just yeah. Um yeah, we're hoping for um, for the process to be um somewhat smoother, um now that that we've done a a large portion of the fight. UM. But yeah, we st we're still at the tail end things. Yeah. So where where where can people find find deals? Organizations and groups and stuff to go follow them or help

them in places. Um. For CCD, which does post a lot of Hillside UM content, I think all of our socials are just at c C D, l A. And then for Hillside I think, um there's different handles for all the different different platforms unfortunately, but if folks just look up hill SIDEVA or Hillside Tenants, they should be able to find it. And if you just send me the social media handles, you can put them in the description. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, thank thank you both so much

for so much for talking to us. This was this was awesome. I'm so happy for great Thank you. Yeah, thanks for thanks for listening. Yeah, this has been huge. Yeah, and I guess for everyone out there, you too can take can start taking back your cities. And yeah, with with with with with any luck and with a lot of struggle. This is this is gonna this is gonna be the first of Betty and Yeah, fuck landlords, we can beat them. Hell yeah fo yeah we got this

communities first. Landlord Ing is not a job. We're here to take it back. Oh yeah, it could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.