LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The LATU Hollywood Local chapter and several tenants evicted or being pressured to move out will host a PRESS CONFERENCE this Friday, December 13, to announce the filing of a lawsuit in Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles – Central District (case # TBD) against the two limited liability corporations (LLC) involved in the Harridge Development Group’s planned $1 billion luxury development project in Hollywood known as Crossroads.
WHAT:
|
PRESS CONFERENCE: L.A. Tenants Union files LAWSUIT over unlawful evictions in Hollywood to make way for Crossroads luxury development |
|
|
|
|
WHEN: |
Friday, Dec. 13, 2019 - 1:00 p.m. |
|
|
|
|
WHERE: |
Steps of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse |
|
|
111 N Hill St., Los Angeles 90012 |
|
|
(Grand Park side, near the fountain) |
|
WHO: |
Evicted & displaced renters, L.A. Tenants Union advocates and lawyer(s) |
|
|
|
|
CONTACT: |
Susan Hunter LATU: Hollywood Local +1.949.295.0206 cell |
|
|
The legal action seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against the luxury property developer and its agents asserting claims of Negligence, Per Se; Violation of Business and Professions Code §§ 17200 et seq.; and Violation of L.A.M.C. § 151.31, a provision of the 1978 Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO). Harridge has failed to create a plan for the tenants to utilize their right of return as was mandated under a condition of approval for the project.
“This is a case about a mega-developer’s attempt to skirt the requirements imposed by the City of Los Angeles to protect tenants residing in rent-stabilized properties set for demolition and redevelopment,” said Susan Hunter, caseworker for the LATU Hollywood Local. “Harridge and its agents ran roughshod over tenants in these rent-stabilized units with high pressure—and illegal—‘cash for keys’ buyout offers, extreme lowball Ellis Act relocation fees and coercive pressure on tenants to waive their ‘right to return’ at their same rents to the new affordable apartments set aside in the new Crossroad development. And while many of the tenants caved to pressure and vacated their apartments, approximately 50 tenants remain. This lawsuit seeks to preserve their rights under Los Angeles’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance and restore rights that we assert were illegally wrestled away from those tenants already forced or pressured out of their homes.”
The lawsuit asserts: “Although this campaign to pressure tenants to vacate the Property was ongoing, it was not until 2019 that Harridge informed the tenants at the Property that they would have a right to return to the Property after the completion of the Project. No one from Harridge ever informed the approximately 40 units of tenants who had already vacated the Property as a result of DRA’s (Del Richardson Associates) buyout campaign.”
One tenant party to the lawsuit is Daniel Hernandez, who according to the pleadings, “… at all times material hereto, he was a tenant of 6712 Selma Avenue. Mr. Hernandez’s rent is $1,135 a month, including a parking space. If Mr. Hernandez is displaced from the Property, he will be unable to afford rent and forced out of Hollywood where he has lived all his life.”
L.A. Tenants Union member Dont Rhine explains the union’s interest in filing their lawsuit: "The tenants named in the suit are part of a larger group of tenants of the Crossroads Apartments who are dues-paying members in good standing with the LATU Hollywood Local. LATU sees it as its duty to demand that the Harridge Development Group abide by the conditions set forth by the city. Those conditions are necessary to ensure that LATU members do not become homeless and can remain residents of Hollywood. The purpose of the conditions set forth by the city was to ensure that the community stays intact despite dramatic changes to the environment. Without a clear plan for relocation during the time of construction, LATU members will suffer great harm without any support in the present market where Hollywood's inventory of affordable rent-stabilized housing is losing more and more units due to development projects for hotels and luxury accommodations."
Harridge Development Group’s Crossroads project was approved by the City Council in a unanimous 13-to-0 vote on Tuesday, January 22, 2019. Both City Councilmember Curren Price and Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell—in whose district Crossroads is located—were notably absent from the meeting and did NOT cast votes on the project. Curren’s wife, Del Richardson—through her eponymous Del Richardson Associates (DRA)—is the hired agent working on behalf of Crossroads’ developer Harridge Development Group to vacate and relocate residents from the more than 80 rent-stabilized apartments on the development site.
Crossroads will include 905 new apartments and condos in three high-rise buildings, 308 hotel rooms, 190,000 square feet of retail space, and has been granted 22 liquor licenses (one each for every new affordable apartment created). While at face value Crossroads appears to include 105 ‘new’ affordable apartments, to do so it is displacing scores of long-term, low-income Hollywood tenants and demolishing 84 rent-stabilized apartments—and in fact, only creating 21 new affordable apartments in the $1 billion luxury project.
LATU's lawsuit demands a jury trial, a declaration that the Defendants’ conduct violates the law, and actual, punitive and exemplary damages, statutory penalties, and lawyers’ fees.
