Speaker 1: Hey, dear listener, it's Maria no Hossam. So today we're
Speaker 1: going to bring you a story about people who live
Speaker 1: together and how they organize together. This is from a
Speaker 1: series called The Tenant Association, produced by Los Angeles Public Press.
Speaker 1: It tells the story of a group of neighbors, many
Speaker 1: of them Latinos and Latinas, living in an apartment complex
Speaker 1: in LA's Chinatown. It's called Hillside Villa. The series follows
Speaker 1: these working class neighbors in their fight against their landlord,
Speaker 1: who dramatically raises their rent in what looks like a
Speaker 1: strategy to evict them. It's a fight that extended over
Speaker 1: six long years. Here's the first episode of The Tenant Association.
Speaker 2: We're in the courtyard of an apartment building on a
Speaker 2: hill at the top of Chinatown.
Speaker 1: We have one more thing we need to do.
Speaker 3: Can we have every buddy who's gotten a three day
Speaker 3: notice come up?
Speaker 2: The courtyard is full of people from all over LA.
Speaker 2: People walk up to a small stone picnic table in
Speaker 2: the middle of the crowd. They're young and old, Latino
Speaker 2: and Chinese, and then one by one they light their
Speaker 2: eviction notices on fire.
Speaker 1: You may be wondering why We have a picture of
Speaker 1: this guy over here.
Speaker 4: Why he has an.
Speaker 5: Orange in front of him, and why there's a little
Speaker 5: kettle here. Jenny's gonna let you know.
Speaker 2: There's a red stool set up with a close up
Speaker 2: photo of this man who looks like he's in pain.
Speaker 2: It's like he's trying to smile but doesn't know how.
Speaker 2: It looks more like a grimace. That's Tom Bots, the landlord.
Speaker 2: The people burning their notices are his tenants. The tenants
Speaker 2: have set up this whole little ceremony for Bots as
Speaker 2: though he's dead, even though he's not. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: the tenants aren't saying they want him dead. This is
Speaker 2: a symbolic thing.
Speaker 6: Here's Jenny explaining, in Chinese tradition, when people pass away,
Speaker 6: we burn paper money, and since if Tom wants his money,
Speaker 6: if Tom wants his money, he can have.
Speaker 7: That's why.
Speaker 2: It's funny, because usually you burn money to give it
Speaker 2: to your ancestors in the afterlife, and the orange on
Speaker 2: the stool is also for good fortune. So doing a
Speaker 2: ceremony like this it's supposed to be an act of love.
Speaker 2: So the tenants drop their burning eviction notices into a
Speaker 2: red metal can basically saying, we're not afraid of you.
Speaker 2: You can get our money in the afterlife.
Speaker 4: But what's that we're playing now?
Speaker 8: We're going to fight, fight, fight fight.
Speaker 2: It feels like you have no, no, no power when
Speaker 2: you're a tenant in LA. Doing anything that might piss
Speaker 2: off your landlord feels really scary because they can just
Speaker 2: decide to evict you for basically no reason. But this
Speaker 2: group of tenants rejected that. They realized how much power
Speaker 2: they had together. They weren't season activists or public figures.
Speaker 2: They were just neighbors. But together they built a movement
Speaker 2: that changed what we think is possible for tenants in LA.
Speaker 2: They shined a light on a crisis affecting over a
Speaker 2: million tenants just like them all across the country. The
Speaker 2: Hillside Bill Attendants have been fighting their landlord for six
Speaker 2: years and they're not done. I'm here to tell you
Speaker 2: about a landlord who raised the rents on his tenants
Speaker 2: by hundreds, even thousands of dollars as soon as he
Speaker 2: thought he could get away with it. I'm here to
Speaker 2: tell you about the progressive politicians who promised to help
Speaker 2: the tenants but turn their on them instead. I'm here
Speaker 2: to tell you about the Hillside Villa Tenant Association. Over
Speaker 2: the next four episodes, I'm going to tell you how
Speaker 2: the Hillside Villa tenants are organized to save their homes
Speaker 2: and how they showed La what a powerful tenant movement
Speaker 2: looks like. This is the Tenant Association The Story of
Speaker 2: Hillside Villa, a Los Angeles Public Press podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Phoenix Though, and this is episode one, a ticking time Bomb.
Speaker 2: The first thing you hear when you walk up to
Speaker 2: Hillside Villa are little chirpy birds. I think they're parakeets.
Speaker 2: They're on someone's balcony facing hill Place, in a couple
Speaker 2: big cages. They're colorful and loud. And then if you
Speaker 2: walk through the lobby and out towards the courtyard, you'll
Speaker 2: probably hear this. The courtyard of Hillside Villa has been
Speaker 2: a lot of things, a community garden, a gathering place,
Speaker 2: a communal backyard, and for many years, a makeshift playground.
Speaker 2: It was part of why Hillside Villa was such a
Speaker 2: nice place to live for so many years, especially if
Speaker 2: you're trying to raise a family there, like Monica.
Speaker 9: Ruivez, Monica Luis. You'll think.
Speaker 2: Hill Sevilla Monica has lived at Hillside Villa for twenty
Speaker 2: five years. She used to throw her kids' birthday parties
Speaker 2: in the courtyard, even her daughter's king signeras they invite
Speaker 2: the neighbors.
Speaker 9: Yes, also.
Speaker 10: Coma de quince patio inmos Alos Besino's Jos Beni.
Speaker 2: Everything was peaceful. We've spoken to a bunch of tenants
Speaker 2: who have similar stories about Hillside Villa in its early days.
Speaker 2: Back then the building was new and clean and the
Speaker 2: neighborhood was quiet. Because of the courtyard and the way
Speaker 2: the building was built, Hillside Villa was ideal for families.
Speaker 2: Annie Shaw, who organizes with the tenants, pointed that out
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 5: And you can see that even with the way it's designed,
Speaker 5: you know. And if you see the architecture of the building,
Speaker 5: the balconies face out word and in word in a courtyard,
Speaker 5: and the balconies are social spaces, you know. There used
Speaker 5: to be even playground toys and like I think, a
Speaker 5: barbecue pit.
Speaker 2: These days it's hard to find an apartment that's big
Speaker 2: enough for a family and that isn't expensive. But Hillside
Speaker 2: Villa has a lot of these tenants have raised their
Speaker 2: children and grandchildren in these apartments cared for their elderly parents.
Speaker 2: Here they work as cleaners, construction workers, and food vendors.
Speaker 2: Hillside Villa was built in nineteen eighty nine, when Chinatown
Speaker 2: was mostly home to Latino and Asian immigrants, but the
Speaker 2: neighborhood has changed a lot since then. New luxury apartments
Speaker 2: have sprung up, and hip restaurants and galleries have moved
Speaker 2: into empty storefronts or pushed out longtime businesses. Rents have skyrocketed,
Speaker 2: and a lot of low income families have been forced
Speaker 2: to leave. But it's different for Hillside Villa tenants. As
Speaker 2: Chinatown became more and more expensive, their rents stayed relatively low,
Speaker 2: which wasn't because their landlord was a good guy. It's
Speaker 2: because he had to because the original owner built Hillside
Speaker 2: Villa using public money. We'll explain more about that a
Speaker 2: bit later in this episode. For now, what you need
Speaker 2: to know is that for years the rent at Hillside
Speaker 2: Villa was cheap until it wasn't.
Speaker 9: This Hopefully you don't see me.
Speaker 2: That's a good thing about audio. This is Mary Ramos.
Speaker 2: She's lived at Hillside Villa for fifteen years. She lives
Speaker 2: with her son in a two bedroom apartment. It was
Speaker 2: really cold in the day. I met up with Mary
Speaker 2: for an interview. We met in the courtyard and as
Speaker 2: I set up the recording, she handed me some Filipino
Speaker 2: and banadas wrapped in a napkin.
Speaker 7: I'm here with Mary Ramos.
Speaker 2: She made banadas so sweet. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: can tell from the recording, but when I said that
Speaker 2: into the mic that Mary had brought and banadas, she
Speaker 2: smiled kind of sheepishly, like, Oh, it's no big deal,
Speaker 2: like I'd put her in a spotlight. She wasn't expecting.
Speaker 2: It was a small thing. But it kind of shows
Speaker 2: what Mary's like. She's really warm and generous. Her instinct
Speaker 2: is to feed people and make them feel welcome. Mary
Speaker 2: isn't the type a person to take up a lot
Speaker 2: of space.
Speaker 8: I never I never, even when I was young, I
Speaker 8: never speak. I'm quiet. That's the teaching of my mom.
Speaker 8: And my mother said, you don't answer back to parents
Speaker 8: or answer back to older people, and the most important
Speaker 8: is respect respectful. So me, even I know my mom
Speaker 8: is wrong, I just cry and go to my room.
Speaker 8: That's it, because I cannot answer her back.
Speaker 2: But there's another side to Mary that you might not
Speaker 2: see right away quiet rage.
Speaker 8: My attitude is the more I'm mad, the more I
Speaker 8: don't talk. I will just keep quiet. That's why you
Speaker 8: will get mad at me, because I'm not answering you back.
Speaker 8: I don't. I just look at you and just that's it.
Speaker 2: I don't think Mary ever expected to become an activist.
Speaker 2: I don't think she ever expected to be making a
Speaker 2: speech outside the mayor's house or physically blocking a city
Speaker 2: official from driving away from a protest. But then Tom
Speaker 2: Botts tried to raise her rent. This is what we
Speaker 2: know about Tom Botts, the landlord of Hillside Villa. He's
Speaker 2: in his late sixties and has previously worked as a lawyer.
Speaker 2: He was married to a woman named Renee Norikoman. They
Speaker 2: have three adult children, Peter, Nolan and Chloe. I've interviewed
Speaker 2: Tom Botts twice over the past couple years. Once he
Speaker 2: called me back while I was getting lunch. That time
Speaker 2: he was friendly, but it felt forced.
Speaker 11: I'm all their favorite of the government subsidizing tenants who
Speaker 11: legitimately need it. That's why we have all these Section
Speaker 11: eight tenants. But what these tenants need to do is
Speaker 11: they need to mobilize to say to get.
Speaker 4: Get that substance, get those subsidies. We are not their enemies.
Speaker 4: The city needs to step up.
Speaker 2: The next time we spoke, he wasn't so friendly. He
Speaker 2: seemed mad at me for the previous article i'd written.
Speaker 2: I had interviewed a Section eight tenant who said a
Speaker 2: majority of Bots's tenants can't afford his rent increases.
Speaker 4: All I can do is point out the irony that
Speaker 4: the CD is determining that she can't pay. And then
Speaker 4: she says, well, but I can't. I think she's not paying,
Speaker 4: So I think that ship be pointed out.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what Tom Botts is like in my experience.
Speaker 2: It seems like in his mind, he's the victim. By
Speaker 2: the way, Tom Botts never responded to her repeated requests
Speaker 2: for comment for this series. Anyway, if you look up
Speaker 2: Thomas Botts and his various companies on the LA Superior
Speaker 2: Court website, you'll find more than seventy eviction lawsuits that
Speaker 2: he filed against his tenants. The evidence suggests that tom
Speaker 2: Bo loves to file eviction lawsuits. Bots lives in a
Speaker 2: mansion in Malibu, about thirty miles west of Hillside Villa,
Speaker 2: and his former property manager Sonya Rodriguez used to go there.
Speaker 7: She remembers the.
Speaker 2: House being very big, two floors, a pool, a water fountain,
Speaker 2: maybe a vienna. Sonya and her now ex husband managed
Speaker 2: an apartment building that Bots owned in North Hollywood on
Speaker 2: the edge of the San Fernando Valley. Bots would have
Speaker 2: Sonya drive all the way to Malibu to drop off
Speaker 2: rent checks. Here's my colleague Martine Massius translating go.
Speaker 12: There because she would have to leave cash from the
Speaker 12: tenants from the rent or if it was paiding checks.
Speaker 12: You know, they would leave the checks. They would say,
Speaker 12: who hasn't paid.
Speaker 2: Sonya mainly did cleaning jobs for Bots the North Hollywood property,
Speaker 2: even though she worked for him and was driving to
Speaker 2: his house all the time. Sonya said Bots barely ever
Speaker 2: spoke to her, except for sometimes he'd tell her she
Speaker 2: did a good job cleaning the building. But Sonya also
Speaker 2: stood up to Bots, like one day when Bots raised
Speaker 2: rents on the North Hollywood tenants by seventy five dollars
Speaker 2: instead of the usual twenty.
Speaker 9: Five does.
Speaker 13: Loss personas local persona.
Speaker 11: Para.
Speaker 2: Sonya worked for Bots, but she had a lot more
Speaker 2: in common with the tenants of the building than she
Speaker 2: did with him, she felt loyal to them. At the time.
Speaker 2: Sonya also worked a night shift for a cleaning company.
Speaker 2: She knew the tenants of the building had similar jobs
Speaker 2: and that some were earning even less than she was.
Speaker 2: She knew they couldn't afford the increase.
Speaker 13: Pisa and Lance Yosa persona ra Mucco a ton said
Speaker 13: persons persona.
Speaker 2: The so Sonya told Bots she wouldn't hand out those notices.
Speaker 2: She just couldn't.
Speaker 7: Yes, Tarvej, here's Martine again translating, so you know.
Speaker 12: That day where you know she confronted him. She said, like,
Speaker 12: you know, I'm not gonna agree to giving this rent
Speaker 12: increase out to people because you know, I have reason
Speaker 12: to think that this is not right. But he said,
Speaker 12: this is your job, like you have to do it.
Speaker 2: Six months later, Bot sold the building. Sonya thinks this
Speaker 2: was already in the works when he raised everyone's rent.
Speaker 13: It's gone, is como ke non import lcentimiento de la persona.
Speaker 2: Sonya's seen how Bots treats people over the years. She says,
Speaker 2: it's like he doesn't know how to be grateful for
Speaker 2: what he has. When Bots sold the North Hollywood apartment building,
Speaker 2: Sonya suddenly had to look for new housing, and she
Speaker 2: found it a two bedroom apartment at Hillside Villa. She
Speaker 2: was safe for almost a decade. And then remember how
Speaker 2: rents at Hillside Villa stayed low while the rest of
Speaker 2: Chinatown gentrified. That was because when the original landlord constructed
Speaker 2: the building, he signed a contract or covenant, agreeing to
Speaker 2: keep rents low for the next thirty years because the
Speaker 2: city gave him money to help build Hillside Villa. Lots
Speaker 2: of cities signed deals like this with developers around this time.
Speaker 2: It was the eighties and Reagan had decided that public
Speaker 2: housing was bad and that the government shouldn't invest in
Speaker 2: it anymore. So they came up with a very eighties idea,
Speaker 2: give money to landlords to build affordable housing. They wanted
Speaker 2: the market to take care of it. But thirty years
Speaker 2: goes by fast, and by the way, we found that
Speaker 2: there are close to a million apartments like this across
Speaker 2: the country. We're going to get way more into that
Speaker 2: in episode three. But this is a national crisis because
Speaker 2: of course, as soon as these covenants expire, landlords are
Speaker 2: trying to raise people's rents by as much as they
Speaker 2: possibly can, which is how the system was designed to work.
Speaker 2: Tom Boss was doing exactly what he was incentivized and
Speaker 2: legally empowered to do, raising people's rents by over one
Speaker 2: hundred percent, basically overnight. This is the problem with the
Speaker 2: market providing affordable housing is that the market doesn't actually
Speaker 2: want to provide affordable housing. The market wants housing to
Speaker 2: make as much money as it possibly can. So what
Speaker 2: Sonya and our neighbors didn't know is that there are
Speaker 2: four rents were only temporary. The covenant protecting them would
Speaker 2: one day expire. It was a taking time bomb. And
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen that bomb went off. Can you tell me, like,
Speaker 2: what was it like, you know, getting informed of this
Speaker 2: like covenant expiring and the rent increase.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, because the manager, the owner sent us a letter.
Speaker 2: At first Mary said she got a letter that our
Speaker 2: apartment wasn't low income anymore. And then she got another letter, but.
Speaker 8: He didn't say how many percent, so usually we know
Speaker 8: the percent is like five percent, likefty dollars or twenty dollars,
Speaker 8: so we were not worried about it. And then he
Speaker 8: sent another letter, and then the third letter was the
Speaker 8: amount was there, which is at that time I was
Speaker 8: already paying one thousand and four for the two bedrooms,
Speaker 8: so he wants the rent to be two thousand, six
Speaker 8: hundred and fifty. Oh God, so we are like, am
Speaker 8: I paying two thousand, six hundred and fifty for a
Speaker 8: two bedroom which is an old building and there's no amenities.
Speaker 2: Mary later found the rent increased notice and sent it
Speaker 2: to us. It was actually two thousand, four hundred and fifty,
Speaker 2: not two thousand, six hundred and fifty, but still a
Speaker 2: ton of money. Monica Luiz remembers a paper notice attached
Speaker 2: to her door. Monica is a tenant who threw her
Speaker 2: daughter's kinsens in the courtyard, and when she got that
Speaker 2: rent increased notice, her first thought was her kids and
Speaker 2: what would happen to them if they had to move.
Speaker 9: So, you see.
Speaker 10: Missijs vuela meaninga sai messia. I know you Knowue castellar Us,
Speaker 10: Brendo mandarins a king Mandarin, Yes, Brenda josa pena la
Speaker 10: mas pegna.
Speaker 2: Anica didn't know where she'd go, especially with children who
Speaker 2: are still in school. Her fifteen year old daughter was distraught.
Speaker 2: She'd been taking Mandarin classes at Castellar Elementary in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood since kindergarten. She didn't want to leave because she
Speaker 2: was afraid she'd have to.
Speaker 9: Stop mesia no no, no, pero pero si fu momento.
Speaker 2: Monica reassured her daughter that they weren't going to have
Speaker 2: to move, but she didn't know if that was true.
Speaker 2: When the tenants of Hillside Villa talk about this day,
Speaker 2: I always think about how isolating it feels to get
Speaker 2: that kind of letter on your door. I once got
Speaker 2: a sixty day notice and remember feeling so ashamed, like
Speaker 2: how could I have let this happen? And where am
Speaker 2: I supposed to live now? Even though as a housing
Speaker 2: reporter I know that getting that kind of notice is
Speaker 2: one of the most universal experiences in Los Angeles.
Speaker 9: Soon after the.
Speaker 2: Notices went out, Bots started pressuring the tenants to leave.
Speaker 2: The pressure came from Madardo via Toro, the property manager,
Speaker 2: and Chloe Bot's Tom's daughter. They came to the tenants
Speaker 2: stores with cash for keys, offers money in exchange for
Speaker 2: the tenants voluntarily moving out. By the way, we also
Speaker 2: reached out to Madardo and Chloe for comment on the
Speaker 2: cash for keys process, and neither got back to us
Speaker 2: on that point. Anyway, these kinds of offers are often
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes as my which is
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars, because it's so lucrative for the
Speaker 2: landlords to get rid of low income tenants and replace
Speaker 2: them with people who can pay market rate. But Bots
Speaker 2: offered his tenants just around five thousand dollars to leave,
Speaker 2: and they say, you put a clock on it. Tenants
Speaker 2: say they were told that the cash amounts would decrease
Speaker 2: by one thousand dollars for each month they continued to stay.
Speaker 2: Thousands of tenants across LA are targeted by similar rent increases,
Speaker 2: faced with landlords who look at their homes with nothing
Speaker 2: but dollar signs in their eyes and harrassed tenants into leaving.
Speaker 2: And it's easy to do because the power is on
Speaker 2: the landlord's side. There are a low to squeeze as
Speaker 2: much money as they can from their tenants. Housing them
Speaker 2: is beside the point.
Speaker 8: Like either welieve or restay.
Speaker 2: Once Mary realized how much her rent would go up,
Speaker 2: she felt like she had no choice but to move out.
Speaker 8: Because I was planning to leave already because I don't
Speaker 8: like to be here because the rent is too high.
Speaker 8: I cannot avoid that yeah, and it's my son who's paying.
Speaker 9: You spend some neo some star look save and susechus.
Speaker 2: Monica says, Bats and the others were like, these tenants
Speaker 2: are poor, they don't know their rights. They'll just accept whatever.
Speaker 3: She said.
Speaker 2: They figured they could just scare people out of their homes.
Speaker 10: Stan inrentees no saving jeose o keosi.
Speaker 9: Yes, moi diferente in porto quarto.
Speaker 2: Luperomero is another long time tenant of Hillside Villa. Everyone
Speaker 2: calls her Lupita. She runs a food truck called Lupita's
Speaker 2: hot Dogs. She has a similar memory of that.
Speaker 14: Time almanni la yea re are cossa.
Speaker 3: Lo benziero, Oh no, yeah, what is.
Speaker 2: Being Lupito said that Madaro and the others would aggressively
Speaker 2: push the cash for keys offers, saying they had to
Speaker 2: accept them. Some tenants left. Lupita says they must have
Speaker 2: felt defeated, but not everyone did. And this is the
Speaker 2: moment where the story of the Hillside Villa tenants really begins,
Speaker 2: because this is when they decided to fight. On the
Speaker 2: next episode, how the tenants of Hillside Villa organized to
Speaker 2: save their home.
Speaker 8: You know what you got Now the whole world has
Speaker 8: to know what kind of asshole we have in the building.
Speaker 2: That's next time on the Tenant Association. The Tenant Association
Speaker 2: is hosted and recorded by me Phoenixell. Carla Green is
Speaker 2: our editor and executive producer. Translation, production and additional reporting
Speaker 2: from Martine Macias Junior. Our fact checker is Marina Penya.
Speaker 2: Sound engineering by Philip Kimp, Legal review by Professor Susan E.
Speaker 2: Seger and the uc Irvine Press Freedom Project. Art direction
Speaker 2: and illustrations by Alison Yet Our theme song is by
Speaker 2: Eduardo Arenas. Editing help and other support from our publisher
Speaker 2: Matthew Tinoko and our audience director Maria Castanetta. Thanks to
Speaker 2: the rest of the LAPP staff Engagement reporter Amanda Delsa,
Speaker 2: Luco reporters Ashley Rona and Elizabe joe An, Engagement editor
Speaker 2: Brolli Dave Special thanks to Gabe Schneider, Nolan Downs, and
Speaker 2: all the tenants and organizers who spoke to us for
Speaker 2: this series. And to Boyle Heidspeed, where we recorded this podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week.