Lincoln Place Struggle Escalates

Residents To Protest Removal Of Landscaping, Other Harassment

Before

After

A tree at Fifth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard is removed to make way for the Downtown Transit Mall (photos in top boxes). Distinctive landscaping at Lincoln Place is torn out as the struggle between longtime tenants and developer-owner continues (bottom photos). See other story on the Editorials Page. 
    
    Top photos by Jeff Cohen, Bottom photos by Ingrid Mei

Clara Sturak
Associate editor

   Tenants of Lincoln Place in Venice thought they’d seen it all. In the last decade, building owner Robert Bisno of TransAction Corporation had attempted not once, but countless times, to remove the mostly low- and moderate-income residents from their courtyard apartments in order to convert them into luxury townhomes and upscale rentals. 
   Noted architect Heath Wharton built Lincoln Place Apartments, eight square blocks of courtyard-style buildings, in 1947. The complex is located just off Lincoln Boulevard, nestled between Lake Street and Palms Boulevard, with Penmar Park to the east.
   The Venice Community Plan, in addition to several legal rulings, had prevented Bisno from razing and rebuilding the complex, but in October of 2000, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs ruled that, under the state Ellis Act, the City had violated state law by prohibiting development based only on the fact that a number of affordable rental units would be lost forever in the process. Bisno has since changed his game plan, choosing to renovate the apartments one by one, in order to rent them at market rates, with one-bedroom units beginning at $2,000.
   Lincoln Place Tenants Association (LPTA) members allege that Bisno is engaging in a pattern of tenant harassment meant to forcibly displace the current residents so that he may begin renovations in the first six of the buildings – 88 units out of the total 795 that make up the complex – without having to offer legally-required low-income rentals to 25% of the current tenants. (The fewer remaining tenants, they argue, the less people he must take into account when figuring the 25%.) Renovations have begun on one building, at the corner of Frederick Street and Lake.
   LPTA president Sheila Bernard further alleges that “strategies employed against long-term residents…include reduction in services, failure to maintain the landmark-worthy buildings and grounds, frequent threats of eviction, disruptive construction work, and refusal to renew Section 8 [government subsidies], some for residents in their ‘90s.”
   The developer’s latest move, one that has battle-weary residents reeling, is the destruction the landscaping and vegetation in front of the Lincoln Place buildings lining Lake Street. (see photos, above left.)
   A rarity among large apartment complexes, Lincoln Place was designed with significant open space between buildings, space that was landscaped in Birds of Paradise, Jade plants, Cannas, Banana Trees, and other California plants with a tropical flare. 
   Over the decades, tenants have added their own landscaping touches to the mix, so that some buildings are surrounded by roses, others cacti, and most with wild mixes of succulents, vines, sunflowers and even the occasional tomato or zucchini plant.
   Many of the plants on Lake Street were originals, around since 1949, having survived many generations of renters. Over the years, residents have worked with the landscaping staff of Lincoln Place to keep their quirky “yards” healthy. Now, says LPTA member Ingrid Mei, “the back hoe and bulldozer are slowly uprooting 50-year-old trees and shrubs…it’s disgusting, criminal.” 
   In response to a citizen complaint, Los Angeles City Council member Ruth Galanter has asked her staff to investigate the legality of the landscape removal.
   It is unknown whether TransAction intends to replace the landscaping during renovations, or if tenants will have to live in buildings surrounded by dirt moats until renovations are complete. (The Mirror made several attempts to contact Robert Bisno for this story. He is currently out of the country.) In either case, tenants feel this is only the latest in a series of blows meant to demoralize and intimidate them. 
   They also say they are not alone. With the weakening of rent controls by the Costa-Hawkins Act, affordable housing is becoming less and less available on the westside of Los Angeles. Lincoln Place, they contend, is one of the few remaining enclaves of affordable housing in the area. Says Bernard, “Los Angeles cannot afford the luxury of more luxury housing. Lincoln Place is a battleground where it will be decided which is more important: affordable housing for thousands or a few millions in the pocket of the landlord.”
   To protest what the LPTA characterizes as Bisno’s “end run around the law,” residents and neighbors will hold a demonstration at noon on Saturday, July 14, Bastille Day in France, in front of Lincoln Place Apartment’s rental office, 1042 Frederick Street (one block east of Lincoln Boulevard, between Lake Street and California Avenue).
   Meanwhile, Mei and fellow residents are busy attempting to intercept plants as they are uprooted, hoping to transplant them in yards where they won’t be the in crossfire as the battle to save Lincoln Place escalates once again.
   Ed. Note: For a Lincoln Place tenant’s point of view, see Sad Story Unfolding the Editorials Page.