Dennis Hathaway - The Battle of Lincoln Place: An Epic Fight by Tenants to Save Their Homes

The Battle of Lincoln Place

An Epic Fight by Tenants to Save Their Homes

Copyright 2022 by Dennis Hathaway

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

ISBNs:
978-1-7324762-3-3 (paperback)
978-1-7324762-2-6 (hardcover)
978-1-7324762-4-0 (eBook)

Published by Crania Press
Venice, California
www.crania.com.

To the memory of Carol Beck,
Lincoln Place activist and free spirit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have written this book without the generous help and support of many people. Sheila Bernard, Jan Book, Ingrid Mueller, and Laura Burns provided invaluable memories of their time as Lincoln Place tenants, along with notes, documents, transcripts, and recordings that helped recreate the long tenant struggle against the corporate landlords who wanted to get rid of them. Tenants Barbara Eisenberg and Sara Sakuma shared their memories of dramatic moments in that struggle and helped me flesh out those scenes. Im deeply grateful to them.

I owe a debt of gratitude to others who didnt live at Lincoln Place, but played important parts in its story. Amanda Sewards memories and insights were a crucial help in sorting out the complicated elements of the fight for historic recognition of Lincoln Place and its architect. Karen Brodkins audio and video recordings, made with the help of Mary Hardy, were critical when it came to describing meetings, demonstrations, and other tenant activities. Other community members involved in facets of the Lincoln Place story who provided important memories and insights were David and Sandy Moring, Anne Murphy, David Ewing, Suzanne Thompson, Jataun Valentine, and Ken Medlock. And I want to thank Bill Megalos, Lydia Ponce, Margaret Molloy, Hans Adamson, and Jim Smith for technical help and photographs that were key to visualizing important events.

I want to give a special thanks to Marcia Scully, Elena Popp, and John Murdock, the attorneys who represented the tenants at different phases of their struggle. The book would not be complete without their generosity in talking to me and freely sharing facts and insights. Also to Gail Sansbury, an early supporter of the tenant struggle who generously shared her masters thesis on the history of Lincoln Place.

Finally, I want to thank my wife, Laura Silagi, who was not only involved in the tenant movement, but whose support and critical eye were crucial to me in undertaking this project. Without her steadfast love and belief in my efforts, it would not have been possible.

CONTENTS

LOCKED OUT

ON A COOL DECEMBER morning in 2005, Laura Burns was sitting at the dining table in her Venice, California, apartment drinking coffee when she glanced out the window and saw a line of black-and-white patrol cars pulling up in front of the building. With a distinct sense of unease, she got up and stood at the window and watched a dozen deputies get out of the cars and gather on the sidewalk. She called to her husband, Bernard Perroud, who was in their bedroom getting dressed.

Come look, she said. Theyre here, She knew that he would understand what she was talking about. Theyre here. She turned away from the window, started up her computer, and typed this message into an email to a friend who lived in another building in the garden apartment complex, then picked up the phone and started dialing numbers and delivering the same message to whomever answered.

But it wasnt long before she heard a thud of feet and muffled voices on the landing outside the apartment, and after a moment that seemed like an eternity, a sharp staccato of raps on the door followed by a loud, authoritarian voice.

Sheriffs department, were here for eviction! Open the door! Before Burns could hang up the phone, there was another series of heavy raps that chilled her like some horror-film contrivance. The voice echoed through the apartment. Occupants of apartment two, come to the door!

Burns, a freelance film editor who had lived in the 795-unit complex for nine years, opened the door to see the uniformed sheriffs deputies along with a man she recognized as one of the propertys maintenance workers. Two of the deputies were standing off to either side of the door as if to block any attempt at escape, while a third was filming the scene with a camcorder. One of the deputies asked Burns and Perroud if there was anyone else in their apartment, then told them to stay where they were while another looked into the rooms and even the closets to confirm that they had told them the truth. The first deputy then told Burns and Perroud that they had five minutes to leave the apartment. If they wanted to take anything with them, they should get it right now.

Fifteen years later, some details have faded in Burnss memory. What she was wearing. Whether she had eaten breakfast. What she had planned to do that day. How many people she had called. But her emotions at that moment are deeply etched into her psyche.

I felt like a criminal, she says, the southern lilt in her voice a remnant of her Texas childhood. I felt like we were pieces of garbage being thrown out with the trash.

Not knowing where she and Perroud would be staying the next few days, she decided to use their five minutes to gather some items of underwear. Even if they had to live on the street, she wouldnt be forced to wear dirty underthings. The five minutes went by like seconds, and once they were out of the apartment, the maintenance man set about changing the lock on the door and then screwing the windows shut. Perroud was visibly angrythey werent being evicted because they were behind on their rent or had hosted too many loud parties or had dealt drugs from their apartment. They hadnt violated any provisions in their rental agreement. In almost anyones eyes, they had been model tenants, and now they no longer had a place to call home.

Theyre here. On the far side of the leafy, expansive complex called Lincoln Place, Sara Sakuma was at her computer checking messages when the email from Burns popped up. She didnt know how long it would take the deputies to reach her apartment, so she hurriedly packed a suitcase with items of clothing and other essentials she would need for the next few days. At that moment, her mind was busy with the question of where she would go, who would take her in, and she didnt have time to reflect upon the lamentable echoes of her family history, the day sixty-five years before when her parents, her grandparents, and a great-grandmother were all forced to pack the belongings they could carry and climb onto trucks to be transported to an internment camp. To leave the places they had long called home without knowing if they would ever come back.

Sakuma managed to fill the suitcase and a couple of boxes before she heard noises on the landing and then the sharp rap of knuckles on the door.

They werent nasty or anything, just really businesslike, she says. But I was in a state of shock. I had lived there twelve years, I had paid my rent and not caused any trouble, and I was being told I had five minutes to get out.

Burns and Perroud, an Italian-born Frenchman and sculptor who had been working on an environmental installation in the Mojave Desert, walked down Elkgrove Avenue, the main street that curved through the center of the thirty-eight-acre complex. It seemed that patrol cars were everywhere, and helicopters noisily thrashed the air overhead. Other people were outside, gathered in clusters on the sidewalks, often next to suitcases and boxes of belongings. There were single people, couples, families with children. One woman hadnt had time to dress and was still in her bathrobe. Another was trying to find someone to let her back into her apartment because she had forgotten her insulin. A woman hadnt been able to find her cat before the lock was changed on her apartment, and she was afraid the pet was still inside. A mother with a young daughter was distraught because she feared that she might have to return to her abusive husband. A man who had moved to Lincoln Place from the inner city after his brother-in-law was killed in a gang shooting was afraid he would have to move back to that neighborhood. Some people were crying. Others were angry, cursing the landlord, the sheriffs deputies, the city, anyone or anything seen as part of a conspiracy to throw them out of their homes.