Landlord Stephen T. Copen was arrested and booked last Monday by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office after forcefully evicting a tenant from his 611 Gayley Avenue property. He was charged with misdemeanor vandalism for tossing his tenant’s property out of the unit and allegedly causing $2k in damage. Not only was this eviction illegal (there was no court order), but it occurred despite the City of LA’s eviction moratorium.
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If you’ve received a Bosse-Gold mailer you will be forgiven for thinking these city council candidates are running as a slate. They appear side-by-side. They celebrate endorsements in common. They even stand together as cartoon likenesses. But these candidates do not share much in style and they make an unlikely slate. The Bosse-Gold mailers are the product of a political action committee (PAC) called ‘Beverly Hills United to Support Bosse and Gold.’ Why are they jamming our mailboxes and who’s behind them?
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Beverly Hills landlord Stephen Copen’s properties are often an object lesson to fellow landlords: When we neglect to repair our residential rental property the inevitable result will be deterioration, decay, and ultimately, a hazard we visit upon our community. That’s the lesson we can all take from 156 South Reeves today. Just take a look at that overhead garage door that fronts on Charleville. It has deteriorated so significantly that it now sags and menaces passersby with exposed, rusty nails. How did it come to this?
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When you wake to the sound of a Sunday-morning demolition you might wonder whether the landlord has a permit for that work. But when your landlord is Dr. Stephen Copen you can rest assured: of course he has no permit! We remembered this lesson when the sledgehammer-and-pickaxe demolition commenced at 8 a.m. That must mean another Copen low-budget, under-the-radar job should meet an untimely end with a stop-work order.
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Here is the message that SoCalGas has for Dr. Stephen Copen’s tenants at 152 South Reeves: pay up the $1,359 your landlord owes or we’ll shut off your gas. It should come as no real surprise to any resident in his 12-unit apartment building. Helpfully this NOTICE TO TENANTS lets residents know that they could take this burden off the landlord by assuming “individual or joint responsibility” for the account and be on the hook for money and then deduct it from the rent.
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Landlord Stephen Copen served tenant David Berke and his his two sons with a 60-day, no-just-cause notice to evict after they had lived for 29 years in this apartment. The Berkes will join his upstairs neighbor whom Copen evicted after 30 years in her home. This is why
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Beverly Hills residents take well-kept properties for granted. High-and-rising values generate resources for maintenance and, in turn, maintenance keeps property values up. But maintenance is not part of the business model for some owners of residential rental property. Instead their priority is cash flow. But scrimping on maintenance not only affects tenants; it also augurs an overall decline in the city’s rental housing stock. Let’s take an example!
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