The Battle of Lincoln Place

An avocado tree arches over a Lincoln Place courtyard, quietly keeping watch over the hallways and doors of a few empty units. Its fruits lie on the ground, half-eaten and decaying. Sharon Shapiro-Snow suspects rodents and security guards have been snacking on them since no one lives in her apartment. More than 20 years ago, she planted the tree with Chuck Snow, a Vietnam veteran whom she would go on to marry. She was first attracted to Lincoln Place by its atmosphere, like most everyone else, and moved there just after her first marriage fell apart. "I liked the idea of community and being around people," she remembers. She could not have foreseen the trauma that would pull that community out from under her; when she finally left in December 2006, she was one of the last holdouts at the massive Venice affordable housing complex.

Lincoln Place was once a bit of paradise. As far as possible from the dilapidated bureaucratic disaster that the words "government housing project" typically summon to mind, the 795 apartments there instead contained the kind of community urban planners dream about. The project, completed with federal funds in 1951 to address the housing crisis that followed World War II, was designed by Ralph A. Vaughn, one of the few star African-American architects recognized in his time. He organized the brightly colored Modernist complex into small groups of units around shared courtyards, fostering frequent contact between neighbors. Tenants were protected by strict rent controls, so they stayed there for decades, fortifying an extremely close community; the place was so welcoming, some residents were joined by their extended families in next-door units, and would-be renters sometimes sat on wait lists for months or longer. Tenants planted gardens along their walls and left lawn furniture in their shared front yards without so much as the protection of a fence. Over time, Lincoln Place came to be a shining example of government's power for positive social change. Many tenants would only have left if they were dragged out and had their doors padlocked behind them.

That's exactly what happened in December 2005 when Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies swept through the complex in what has been called the largest mass lockout in the city's history. At that moment, Lincoln Place changed from a tight-knit community to a case study for the interplay between real estate developers, the L.A. City Council, and the Angelenos who benefit from affordable housing. The lockouts culminated a long battle waged by the complex's latest owner, the Denver-based corporate monolith AIMCO, to tear down the complex and build condos; ballooning land values and a dizzying influx of wealth to Venice were beckoning. At first, the company said they merely planned "renovations" and even signed a contract under the California Environmental Quality Act promising that no Lincoln Place residents would be evicted against their wills. They kicked out the tenants anyway under the auspices of the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict if they plan to go out of the apartment rental business - this despite the fact that, as the nation's largest apartment rental company, AIMCO had no intention of giving up landlording. Still, they posted eviction notices, offered small buyouts, filed ludicrous lawsuits - suing tenants over broken locks, yard sales, and keeping their cars in their garages - and ultimately called in the sheriff. When offered the chance to halt the evictions, the City Council (whose members' campaigns are funded largely by developers) took the advice of the City Attorney's Office and stayed laissez-faire. So much for government's power for positive social change. While AIMCO offered extensions to some elderly and ailing residents, those tenants eventually received eviction notices, too.

The tide changed yet again for Lincoln Place on September 19 of this year, when a group of tenants, evictees, and friends known collectively as the Lincoln Place Tenants Association won a trifecta at a state appellate court: a new ruling stopped the evictions, rejected AIMCO's claim that the Ellis Act trumped its previous displacement mitigation agreement with tenants, and rebuked the city's assertion that it had no grounds to stop the firm from evicting. On October 3, in light of that ruling and at the urging of Councilmember Bill Rosendahl, the City Council reversed its position. Ignoring the advice of the City Attorney's Office, they voted 12-1 in closed session not to stand beside AIMCO when it appeals to the California Supreme Court. That court may not even choose to hear their case - it turns down about 96 percent of appeals it has the choice of hearing, and without the city's support, it's likely that the company's appeal won't be heard. The only councilmember to support the company was the long-time supporter of developers Jack Weiss.

Those who had fought for Lincoln Place have been vindicated, but it might be too little too late. While the court's decision creates the possibility that those who were chased out might someday return, the community will never be the same; only 12 of the 795 units remain occupied, and the evicted tenants had to scurry off to whatever places they could find. In desperation, many moved to apartments beyond their budgets, far from Venice and, needless to say, without the community Lincoln Place offered. Even so, for some, moving back may simply be too burdensome. Meanwhile, the complex that once hummed with the sound of generations of friends and families is now all boarded windows and tagged walls. On a browning lawn, the furniture that Sharon Shapiro-Snow left behind when she abandoned her apartment is only a cut above garbage.

The Snows snub the developer

During the final years of their time at Lincoln Place, Chuck Snow breathed with the help of an oxygen tank, and Sharon was his full-time caretaker. Because of his health, Chuck wasn't working, and with her hands full caring for him, Sharon couldn't work either. She was also in poor health, facing bouts of bronchitis and chronic asthma. The couple received only "a very low income" along with help from their families. The circumstances put Sharon and Chuck among those who benefited most from Lincoln Place's tight community and low rent, and among those who would suffer most when those things disappeared.

Evictions began in March 2005, but Chuck and Sharon tried to ignore them. Like many other residents, they only realized the gravity of their situation when the sheriff locked out 80 people nine months later, on December 6. An apartment hunt proved virtually impossible. "We wanted to stay close to his doctor in Santa Monica and his hospitals where he would have to go," Sharon says, which limited the places where they could move. "There were relocation people that were trying to get us into relocating and pressuring us ... to take money to relocate. It wasn't the money. My husband was too sick to move. He couldn't walk around and look for an apartment. I had to do all the searching, and I couldn't find an apartment." Their income sealed the deal. "That was the bottom line," she says. "We did not have any place to go, and we couldn't afford the rents that people were asking for in this area."

Chuck and Sharon decided to evade AIMCO's relocation offers, stay put, and fight eviction. Chuck assured Sharon, "They're not going to make me move out of here. They're going to have to drag me out of here with my oxygen tanks because I have no place to go." They became regulars at the weekly tent city the Lincoln Place Tenants Association organized to bring attention to tenants' plight - the adversity facing Lincoln Place residents had turned little old ladies, disabled vets, and many others from troubled tenants to unlikely activists. A born-again Christian, Chuck would quote from the Bible to tent city attendees: "This is not AIMCO's land. This is God's land, and God's not going to let anything happen that's going to hurt you. He's watching over all of us." Chuck was as much firebrand as pastor, though; an L.A. Weekly report from early September 2006 notes a resident at the complex yelling Chuck's mantra, "They'll have to drag me out with my oxygen tank. I ain't leaving!"

That same month, AIMCO put its last round of evictions on the doors of the 40 units still occupied, including Chuck and Sharon's. Immediately after that, Chuck landed in the intensive care unit at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. "He got sicker and sicker from the emotional stress that he was under constantly, being apprehensive about the forthcoming evictions," Sharon recalls. But, drifting in and out of consciousness at the ICU, "Are you still in the apartment?" remained Chuck's most pressing concern. "That's the main thing that was on his mind," she says.

With Chuck in the hospital and nearly everyone else evicted, Sharon was the last person left in her building. The community that had once made Lincoln Place a sanctuary was gone. "One day, I was in my apartment and somebody kicked down my door. I don't know who it was; I never found out who it was. I don't know why they did it. I did call the police and report it, but I never got any satisfaction from that," she says. "I was scared. Terrified."

By December 2006, Sharon became desperate. Chuck was in his fourth month in the ICU. Lincoln Place wasn't safe, AIMCO was still planning to evict, and less than half of the last 40 apartments were still occupied. "I was very scared about [a lockout]. Very apprehensive that it was going to happen to us again," she says. "I was worried that I wouldn't have a place for him to go home to if we were literally evicted by the sheriff like had happened the year before in December." As the year came to a close, a friend came up with a new place Sharon could live. She moved out just after Christmas.

Chuck Snow wouldn't come home to the new apartment. He died January 20, 2007.

Eyeing a mass return to Lincoln Place

Such was the massive reach of AIMCO's battle to bulldoze that some 450 households may be legally eligible to sue the company. But despite the fact that she places the blame mostly on the landlord, Sharon isn't sure if she would consider filing a lawsuit; all she says on the subject is, "I'd have to think about that." She doubts whether she could handle a return to Lincoln Place, despite the possibility that she could go back. "It took a lot out of me to move, and I don't know if I could withstand another move, going back there where there's so many memories," she says. "It depends on what happens down the road." The possibility of someday facing the same experience again is daunting as well. "I wouldn't want to go back and then be evicted. I wouldn't want to take the risk of going back and getting kicked out. I'd be afraid."

Not all tenants are reticent to return, though. Rose Murphy, who had lived at Lincoln Place since 1963, left in late 2006 and delights at the thought of returning. She's since moved to Loma Linda to be near her family, but says her rent is too high there. Likewise for Gloria Morales, who lived at Lincoln Place from 1974 until October 2006. In her 70s and on Social Security, she's now living in a tiny apartment that she can barely afford. "Everything is piled up in my living room," she says, since it's the only room big enough to hold her furniture. "I have to take a chair from my living room to sit in my dining room." Morales would welcome a return to Lincoln Place; she says that moving back would mean she could "pay less money in rent and be happy, too."

It's impossible to say how many former tenants are eager to return like Morales, and how many are wary of moving back like Shapiro-Snow, since the whereabouts of many are unknown. "We had one woman who had moved in back in 1951," the year Lincoln Place first opened, says Laura Burns, the de facto spokesperson for the Lincoln Place Tenants Association. "She was in her 90s. I don't know where she went." Herself a former tenant of 10 years, Burns was locked out in December of 2005 by the sheriff's department. "No one was expecting that to happen overnight, so quickly, all in one day," she notes. "It scared the people who had gotten the extensions." That included Morales, Murphy, and Shapiro-Snow, who all stayed through the dramatic lockouts but eventually left under AIMCO's continued pressure.

A moving tribute

On October 7 at Venice's Penmar Park Recreation Center, just around the corner from Lincoln Place, the Lincoln Place Tenants Association celebrated the appeals court's decision to halt the evictions. Former tenants who once filled some 30 apartments wandered in with dogs, with children, in walkers. A couple of current tenants found their way to Penmar Park as well. Still riding the high of their bittersweet victory, the association leaders offered entrants neon green forms stating: "We are currently working with an attorney about the possibility of filing a new lawsuit against AIMCO for the unlawful evictions of the tenants. If you are interested in pursuing a claim for damages against AIMCO, please complete this form and you will be contacted. Time is of the essence." Though they won't discuss any details of the suit until it's filed, it appears some Lincoln Place tenants may seek to right wrongs.

The celebration recognized a small army of the tenants' current and former lawyers, who have worked on the tenants' behalf. They recounted stories of scraping together donations to make double-sided photocopies of briefs at Kinko's. The association also recognized Lincoln Place's former City Council member, Ruth Galanter, who'd been on the council when plans to redevelop Lincoln Place first materialized in the 1990s. Galanter bemoaned the fact that many of those who had seen the beginning of the battle over Lincoln Place had not lived to see the end of it. "A lot of people have passed away," she said. "This has taken a really long time." When Galanter represented Lincoln Place, the complex was part of Council District 6; it's now part of District 11, Bill Rosendahl's district.

The gathering's guest of honor - and hero - was Rosendahl. He paid numerous visits to the tent city, gaining the admiration of the Lincoln Place tenants, and has been in frequent contact both with association leaders and with evicted residents. "Rosendahl really is for the people," Gloria Morales remarked. But his contribution to the cause goes beyond appearances at protests and comforting phone calls; he's advocated for the embattled tenants in policy as well. At first, he was one of the only councilmembers who spoke out against the evictions, saying the city should act to stop them. This was against the advice of the City Attorney's Office, which chided, "Councilman, you just don't listen."

Rosendahl stood up for Lincoln Place tenants one more time in a closed City Council session on October 3, as the council considered whether to join AIMCO's appeal to the State Supreme Court. When he was asked to address the crowd, Rosendahl moved to the front of the hall slowly, hugging current and evicted tenants and association leaders along the way. He took the microphone to a standing ovation and recounted the closed session for the crowd. "When I walked into the room, I didn't have the votes," Rosendahl said. He would have to convince eight of the 13 councilmembers present; Eric Garcetti and Bernard Parks were absent. The City Attorney's Office had advised the council to support AIMCO's appeal; it was the same office that had been hostile to Rosendahl since he'd first said in council, "You just can't throw [the Lincoln Place tenants] out," he recalled.

"The lawyers, who are the bureaucrats, are always right," Rosendahl said bitterly, noting that some of those lawyers have been entrenched in office upwards of 20 years and that the council is extremely reluctant to go against their advice. But Rosendahl went to closed session armed with the appellate court's 29-page decision in favor of the tenants. The damning ruling said that AIMCO's claim it could evict tenants despite its previous displacement mitigation agreement was "unsupported by any authority," and that the city's claims stating it lacked authority to stop the evictions "find no basis ... in the law."

"One of my colleagues wasn't quite where I wanted him," Rosendahl said, but after this councilmember had heard the appeals court ruling explained several times, "he looked at me ... and said, 'I get it, I get it, I get it.'" Eventually, Rosendahl persuaded 12 councilmembers to vote against appealing the decision. "The city is no longer joined at the hip with the developers," he said of the 12-1 vote. AIMCO is "going to fight like crazy" in the appeals process, he continued, "but they won't have the city's support." The 200 or so in attendance roared their approval.

Once the crowd quieted, Rosendahl changed gears. He told the crowd that as he prays in the morning, he remembers people who've inspired him that have passed away. It was no different on the Wednesday morning he took the fight over Lincoln Place to the closed council session.

"The last time I saw Chuck Snow, he was on the corner," Rosendahl recalled. Chuck had a Bible in one hand and oxygen tank in the other. "I prayed to Chuck this morning: You're my hero." Sharon Shapiro-Snow sobbed in the crowd. "Chuck ... has always stayed with me," Rosendahl finished. He found Sharon and embraced her, thanked the attendees, and handed off the microphone. As the presentations drew to a close, Sharon jotted down some details of more than 20 years at Lincoln Place on the neon green form and turned it in. She had decided that, for her at least, the fight for Lincoln Place was not quite over.