We are deeply concerned about the sweetheart deal that has been offered to Tom Botz, the landlord of Hillside Villa. As we understand it, this deal would give the Malibu slumlord a total of approximately $20M in cash and loan consideration in return for extending the affordability covenant of the building until 2034. While we support the city’s efforts to keep long-term tenants in their homes, details of this deal set dangerous precedents by removing basic tenant rights that organizations like ours have fought long and hard for.  

• The deal allows the landlord to keep his eviction cases open against 35 families in this building over the course of six years!  It also requires the tenants to waive their right to a jury trial, while it allows Botz to evict a tenant without serving any further notice. Tenants will also be required to pay their millionaire slumlord’s legal fees.

• Not only are tenants required to pay rent debt with interest, the low-income working class families can be evicted immediately if they miss a single payment by one day.

• The deal includes “behavioral conditions” from playing the radio, using a bullhorn, to “slandering” the landlord. Violation of these can be cause for immediate removal. Botz has a history of tenant harassment, including destroying tenants’ 20 year old community garden and hiring armed security guards, one of whom threatened to assault multiple women in the tenant union. We fought too hard for TAHO to see the City offer carve-outs from it as part of a multi-million dollar deal with a landlord.

We supported HSVTA in their fight to have the City acquire their building using eminent domain to keep it permanently affordable.Eminent domain would have been a historic victory for social housing in this city. Instead, tenants are being offered a historically bad covenant extension deal. There is still time to change its course and the time is NOW.

In solidarity,

651 N Broadway Tenants Association

Baldwin Leimert Crenshaw Local (LA Tenants Union)

Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED)

Democratic Socialists of America - Los Angeles (DSA-LA)

Housing Justice 4 Los Angeles

Keep LA Housed Coalition 

Los Angeles Council District 11 Coalition for Human Rights

Los Angeles for All, a project of Solidarity Research Center

Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU)

Nikkei Progressives

Park La Brea Residents Association

Public Counsel

Statements of Support

"As an organization that works closely with Los Angeles housing justice movements to defend evictions, strengthen tenant protections, and develop affordable housing preservation policies throughout the region, Public Counsel believes this agreement represents a harmful step backwards in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable tenants in the City. 

We believe this agreement needs to be renegotiated with full transparency and meaningful tenant involvement, and urge the City to work with the tenants to prepare a more just stipulation. Our team supports any forthcoming counterproposals or redlines to the stipulation from the tenants’ defense attorneys. We hope the City will take action to rebuild trust and engagement with organizers, tenants, and their attorneys as this process continues."

- Public Counsel

"This has been a long battle for Hillside Villas, no owner or management company should be given a pass in circumventing the laws that were meant to protect tenants from harassment, and breaches of habitability by failing to make timely repairs, and breaches of warranty, and intentionally creating situations of emotional distress. Tenants that have been subject to conditions contrary to their lease agreement for years should not be obligated to waive any rights for restitution, and bear an interest-bearing debt. All applicable laws need to be enforced to protect tenants rights."

- Housing Jusice 4 Los Angeles

"The rights of tenants should be preserved at all costs. Habitability and the removal of services constitutes a deduction in rent. We are all trying to recover from the pandemic. Trying to gain it advantage by charging interest on debt is not the answer especially when habitability causes such a great hardship in itself both mentally, physically, and economically."

- Baldwin Leimert Crenshaw, local LA Tenants Union

"Nikkei Progressives attended the City Council meeting, when the Council voted its intent to use eminent domain to either take possession or gain commitments from the owner to keep rents reasonable. The proposed arrangement where the City's taxpayers subsidize the huge profits by the Hillside Villa landlord is bad policy. Nikkei Progressives supports the Hillside Villa tenants to have a permanent commitment that rents will remain affordable for the residents."

- Nikkei Progressives

As an organization representing approximately 12,000 residents at Park La Brea, we firmly believe this proposed agreement is utterly unacceptable. The City can and must do better for the residents of Hillside Vista, and that process must include inclusion of tenants' representatives in the negotiation process.

- Park La Brea Residents Association

DSA-LA is deeply concerned about this proposed agreement and the precedent that it would set for tenants’ rights in LA. Landlords hold incredible power over tenants in typical circumstances, and this agreement includes many provisions which dangerously exacerbate this power imbalance. The Hillside Villa Tenants Association has bravely stood together to assert their right to stay in their homes against all odds and during a historic pandemic. In return, this retaliatory agreement shackles them with unprecedented financial and behavioral stipulations, under the hair-trigger threat of evictions, and under a landlord with an established history of pursuing their eviction at all costs. Even with the temporary extension of affordability covenants, the City has not yet ensured that these tenants will live in peace and security during that short time. We urge the City to recognize that this is not a tenable solution for our housing crisis, and to do everything to come to a more fair agreement with these tenants and their landlord.

- Democratic Socialists of America (DSA-LA)