An illegal eviction during a pandemic?
You never think these things will happen to you personally - until they do.
Yasha Levine
Aug 22
Earlier this week, Evgenia and I found out that our landlord in Los Angeles
is trying to illegally boot us from our apartment - even as an unchecked
pandemic still rages through the city.
We've been paying rent on time and have been good tenants. And we just found
out last month that Evgenia's pregnant. The landlord even congratulated us
on our "future baby," only to threaten us and to scheme to push us out on
the street very next day. And the nice and caring guy that he is, he's given
us less than two weeks to collect our shit and get out. Kicking out a
pregnant woman during a pandemic - what a pal!
We can't read his thoughts, but a far as we can tell he's doing this out of
pure greed. We live in a rent-controlled apartment, and it's very likely
that he wants us out so that he can massively jack up the rent.
We're in the middle of a pandemic with record unemployment and a housing
catastrophe. Huge swaths of the economy are shut down. People are going
hungry. Millions haven't been able to make rent. By some estimates, 40
percent of renter households nationally haven't paid in full and are at a
risk of eviction. In some states, that number is much higher. Our
governments - from the federal to the local - aren't doing anything to
address the problem. People are abandoning their apartments, and rents are
falling for the first time in decades. Our neighborhood in LA is flooded
with empty rentals, and more "For Rent" signs are going up everyday.
The ship is sinking and yet landlords are still doing their thing.
Yasha Levine @yashalevine
Gotta say @theLAndmagazine is great - and has great art. Thanks to
@EvgeniaKovda for turning me on to it.
August 21st 2020
6 Retweets20 Likes
In LA and all over the country, even with a patchwork of weak eviction
moratoriums in place, landlords are finding ways to harass and push people
out on the street. Just the other day, some asshole landlord in San Antonio
posted a threatening smiley face fake eviction letter, hoping to scare a
mother of two into abandoning her apartment because she's behind on rent -
only to backtrack when the story went viral. This kind of thing is happening
all over the place.
So Evgenia and I are not alone.
What makes our case particularly bizarre is that, even though we've been
hurting financially, we've been paying rent in full and on time all through
the pandemic. I repeat: We've been paying rent on time. And yet this guy is
still trying to boot us out of the apartment - just because he thinks he can
make a bit more money? It's cruel and fucked up. It's also illegal.
America is careening into a massive economic and social disaster. So it's
nice to see that landlords like ours are still living up to their parasitic
reputations. They're doing their part to make the crisis even worse. Are
you?
Anyway, it's been a hectic and stressful few days. I'm angry and outraged at
what's happening. I want to say a lot more - and, as the situation develops,
I will. For now I just want to say thank you for supporting my work. It
means a lot.
-Yasha Levine
PS: Even at the very start the COVID lockdown back in March, it was obvious
that evictions were going to be a serious problem. Evgenia and I even joined
early protests in front of LA's mayor Eric Garcetti's office to push the
city to do something about the mass evictions that were just around the
corner. Little did we know that it was going to touch us personally like
this.
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