Ellis Act
Open Door Legal
TT Midsummer 2018 News Roundup: Stories, Struggles, and Strategies
It's been an exciting and challenging summer for California tenants. The good news: through our collective power, we are fighting back. Here's just a slice of the work Tenants Together and our members, partners, and allies are doing this summer!
Bloom Aims To Tighten Restrictions on Ellis Act Evictions as Landlords Continue To Cheat
After 29 years in a rent-controlled apartment three blocks west of Sawtelle Boulevard, by no fault of her own, Renee Akana received an eviction notice.
The building’s owner was clearing all tenants from his eight-unit complex on Butler Avenue so he could retire the property from the rental market, invoking a 1986 state law called the Ellis Act that allows such evictions.
But that wasn’t really his plan. Weeks later, he sought a permit to build 15 rental units on the same lot that wouldn’t be subject to rent control.
Condo Plans Rejected for Former Home of Evicted 100-Year-Old
The home at the center of a controversial eviction battle has been denied condo conversion plans by the San Francisco Planning Commission. The eviction and subsequent death of 100-year-old Iris Canada last year became the poster for displacement in San Francisco at the hand of real estate whims. Though the building owners of Canada’s decades-long home at 670 Page St. pressed on with condo conversion plans, the San Francisco Planning Commission unanimously voted Thursday to deny the application after public testimony.
'People Will Sign Anything': How Legal Odds Are Stacked Against the Evicted
Since being evicted from her apartment in New York’s Bronx neighborhood in September, Areletha McLain and her six young children have crammed into a two-bedroom apartment with five relatives. Their belongings are piled up in a corner and the kids sleep doubled-up in bunks scattered throughout the unit.
It is not her first eviction, and they have taken a toll on her children. “When they get comfortable [with a school] and start liking it, that’s when they get taken from it,” she said.
Noe Valley Woman 1st to Beat Ellis Act Eviction Through Trial
A San Francisco woman appears to have made history as the first person to successfully fend off an Ellis Act eviction through a jury trial.
On Thursday, a jury found that Betty Rose Allen would not have to vacate her Noe Valley apartment, where she’s lived for nearly 40 years, after a lengthy and acrimonious legal battle with the building’s owners.
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Grandma Beats Techie Speculator in Court
As I wrote in the Spring of 2016, grounded for 35 years in the Sunset District, Mariella Morales is braced with Pachamama beliefs from her childhood in Peru, that humans are bound to live in a manner that supports a sustainable future that works for all. Mariella says she will not let the newly-rich displace her from the wooden floors and the backyard earth she and her children have walked on for more than three decades
L.A. Overrules Tenant Activists, Allows Beverly Grove Apartments to Become Condos
Los Angeles lawmakers voted Friday to allow a pair of Beverly Grove apartment buildings to be converted into condominiums, overriding the objections of tenant activists who argue that flawed data is fueling the elimination of sorely needed rental units.
The furor over the buildings comes as activists and lawmakers have raised concerns about how the city gauges the vacancy rate — a crucial figure for deciding whether apartments can be converted into condos.