Sally A. Juarez has lived in her rent-stabilized unit on Toland Way in Eagle Rock for 49 years. It is among several that could be taken down to build an affordable housing complex with 141 units.
Juarez, a retiree from LAUSD, and more than 40 neighbors including one of her daughters, a senior care worker, and at least two people battling cancer would lose their current homes.
“I've worked hard and I just wanted to retire not with tons of money just to be comfortable and feel safe,” the 71-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother explained.
A spokesperson for JZA Architecture tells NBC4 it cannot comment on the status of the project.
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents Juarez’s community, says the situation is an unintended consequence of a city initiative to create much-needed housing.
“What's happening here is that we're building a middle, a missing middle, at the cost of our most vulnerable tenants,” she added.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed Executive Directive 1 in 2022 to help streamline and accelerate the development of affordable housing in Los Angeles.
Local
Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.
“With this new executive directive, because we do need to build and build quickly, I imagine that more cases like these will be popping up throughout the city of Los Angeles,” Hernandez said.
In response to the situation, Hernandez has now pushed forward a new ordinance for her district to create additional reviews of rent-stabilized units or RSO there, including smaller buildings, before any changes can happen.
"My ordinance calls for a certain number of RSO units, not being able to be torn down in order to build affordable housing,” she said.
In total, the Los Angeles Housing Department shows there are 51,531 RSO in Council District 1, which covers neighborhoods from Highland Park to Chinatown. There are nearly 661,231 RSO citywide.
The Mayor’s office recently revised its executive directive, in part implementing a threshold on projects and restrictions about locations with 12 or more rent-stabilized units.
Hernandez explains these new changes are not retroactive, so they won't help the tenants at Toland Way.
"So there are still additional changes that need to be made when these situations occur, such as increasing the rental assistance relocation fee,” Hernandez added.
The Mayor’s office tells NBC4 in a statement:
"Since enacted, the Mayor has taken action to implement new guardrails on ED 1 with more protections for tenants. Mayor Bass is working to keep Angelenos housed as we build more housing – for the first time in years, homelessness has decreased and a record number of people were assisted with tenant protections to keep their housing."
The Mayor’s office adds that program-wide, for every 1 rent-stabilized unit that’s impacted, more than 40 100% affordable housing units are being built.
The Mayor’s office also explains that eligible tenants will be offered the opportunity to live in the new building if they would like and that per state and local laws, tenants will receive financial relocation assistance up to $24,650 per household. The exact amount will depend on the specific characteristics of each household and their tenancy.
Juarez believes that payment will not be enough to cover moving costs and rents, which will be much more than what they are paying now.
"We're hard workers all we want to do is live comfortably and now you're uprooting us to live where? Where do we live,” she said.
Tenants vow to continue fighting to stay in their homes.
