Posts Tagged ‘ rent ’

Commentary: Beverly Hills Needs a Relocation Ordinance to Protect Tenants

February 14, 2012

Beverly Hills Patch accepts and publishes emails to the editor regarding any relevant local issue. The views expressed in the following commentary do not reflect the opinion of the publication, its editor and/or its writers. Emails may be edited for length and clarity. Have an opinion? Write to the site editor at mariec@patch.com. C ommentary submitted by   Beverly Hills resident Jennifer Brugger. I am currently a Beverly Hills resident and have proudly been so for the past two years. I moved to the area from Thousand Oaks to be closer to my job and to give my son a great education in the Beverly Hills Unified School District, which I must say I am overjoyed at the progress he has made since moving to this community. However, being a single parent and the sole provider for my son, it has been an uphill battle to be able to afford the rent in such a pricey neighborhood. We did it though, on time and in full every month. But one and a half years into our residential bliss in Beverly Hills, I found out the sad reality of the lack of protection for renters in Beverly Hills. I was very happy to be living month to month in what I thought was a beautiful, two-bedroom apartment on South Elm Drive for only $1,800 a month. Then I came home from work one day and saw a notice on my door. The notice said we had 60 days to vacate the property and that they would be demolishing our building, plus four others in a row, to build a ginormous condo building. I had no extra money for this; we lived paycheck to paycheck as it was. My fear of shaking up my child’s life, moving schools and jobs right after what felt like a very recent move to the area was all too much to handle. I could barely sleep that night. The next day I spoke with a friend whose parents buy properties and rent them out in Glendale, and he had some very reassuring words for me: relocation fees. I asked what this meant. He said, “Relocation fees are monies paid to renters to assist them in moving within the allocated time frame. Los Angeles County requires landlords to pay these fees to tenants asked to vacate for condo conversions.” I got all excited. I thought, “OK, if they have to pay me even just a little to move, it will help with moving our things and paying a new deposit, and all of the expenses that go along with a move.” Not long after the good news hit my ears I heard the dreaded word “but.” He said, “But…you need to check with the city of Beverly Hills and make sure the same ordinances apply to BH residents as do to Los Angeles County residents because Beverly Hills sometimes has their own set of rules.” I figured Beverly Hills must have something in place similar to Los Angeles County to protect the little guys like me. So I placed a call to the city. I left a voicemail for Terence May, senior code enforcement officer of Beverly Hills. It was not an hour later when I received a return phone call from Mr. May with some very bad news. He said Beverly Hills does not have an ordinance in place requiring landlords to pay tenants’ relocation fees and that they were abiding the law in Beverly Hills by giving us 60 days to vacate.  Soon after I was hunting Craigslist and buying a membership to Westside Rentals in desperate search for a home within walking distance from my son’s school. Very little within our price range was available and what was available was too far away or just outside the city limits, which meant I would have to change my son’s school. I ended up moving to a place nearby for $400 more a month. I had to sell my car for a lesser one and liquidate some of the items we owned to be able to afford it. But getting rid of my things wasn’t the saddest part of the experience. There were four other single parents living in my two-building complex and an elderly couple who had lived there 25 years. And the saddest yet… I was awoken one night by screaming and crying from what sounded like the front of the building at 3:30 a.m. I got scared that someone was being hurt and called the police. I stood on my balcony and watched the police arrive. I pointed to where I thought the noise was coming from. They banged on the door of the apartment and it was one of my son’s friends that lived there. I heard the police ask a crying young women to come out and talk to them.  “My father left us and took our business. It’s just me and my mom, my younger sister and my younger brother living here, and I am in college with a part-time job taking care of my whole family,” the woman said through sobs. “They are kicking us out and we will have no place to live and it’s very stressful. I’m sorry we were fighting so loudly so late.” This is a one-bedroom apartment mind you. My heart sank. My position was awful but my neighbor’s position was much worse. I couldn’t believe such a wonderful city with such a sense of community and family would have no protection for us—the little renters—who also pay our taxes and spend our paychecks within city limits supporting small business, chains and overall being upstanding, hardworking citizens.  Please protect us with a relocation fee ordinance. It promotes slow growth and protects us from overseas tycoons who come in, buy a block and kick the tenants to the curb. Also, say goodbye to the nostalgic 300 block of South Elm Drive with its early 1950s charm-filled buildings early this year. I know I will as the wrecking ball wakes me up at 7 a.m. daily to tear our old home down. Jennifer Brugger Beverly Hills Resident  Be sure to follow Beverly Hills Patch on  Twitter  and “Like” us on  Facebook . Read the original post: Commentary: Beverly Hills Needs a Relocation Ordinance to Protect Tenants

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Your Mama Hears Britney Spears…

December 8, 2011
Your Mama Hears Britney Spears…

…has ants in her real estate pants and plans to pack up the children and, once again, move mansions, this time to an exclusive, guard-gated golf community in the upscale and exurban outpost of Thousand Oaks, CA, about 35 miles northwest of Hollywood. We first caught wind of the famously peripatetic pop star’s’ upcoming move to suburbia to exurbia about two weeks ago when we received an unexpected covert communique from Anne Teak, a woman of few words who wondered if little ol’ we might be able to corroborate or squelch the latest neighborhood scuttlebutt about Miz Spears being the wealthy ‘hood’s newest celebrity resident. It took us a bit of time and a leg up from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air but we finally secured a confirmation from our always impeccably informed friend and snitch Lucy Spillerguts who told us with “110%” certainty the Britney Spears household has or will soon relocate to a big, beige stone and stucco mcmansion that overlooks one of the fairways (or greens or whatever) of the private Sherwood Country Club . According to Anne Teak the gossip goes that Miz Spears purchased a posh mansion in the Sherwood Country Club Estates and, indeed, the property in question was on the open market until sometime in September or October this year with an asking price of $8,900,000. However, charm bracelets, Miss Spillerguts told us Miz Spears has not bought but leased the property. We can’t say how how the rent check she writes will be because, well, we don’t know for sure. However, a little digging around in the murky depths of the interweb turned up multiple (expired) listings that reveal the 1.8-ish acre mini-estate was last but recently available for lease at $25,000 per month. Perhaps Miz Spears (or her people) negotiated a better price, perhaps not. A person who cares about such trivial celebrity real estate matters could not legitimately be institutionalized for wondering aloud why a woman and mother of means such as Miz Spears would opt to rent a damn mansion rather than buy one and make it a (semi-)permanent home for her, her children, her man-friend Jason Trawick, and their retinue. We have no wisdom to offer about the specifics of that particular matter, puppies, but we do know since fleeing–ahem–vacating her post-Kevin Federline mansion in the guard-gated Summit community in the Beverly Hill Post Office area–the luxurious scene of so much crazy for the global superstar in 2007 and 2008–Miz Spears has preferred to rent a short succession of rather large and expensive suburban mansions. She first settled, for a couple of short years, at the dorkily-named Chateau Sueños in Calabasas (CA) and since early 2011 she, the children, and etc. have shacked up in a 19,107 square foot mega-manse with 10 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms in the horse- and celebrity-friendly community of Hidden Hills (CA). Of course, Your Mama doesn’t know a blow hole from a microwave oven so we can’t very accurately speculate about the reason (or myriad of reasons) Miz Spears would choose to move again so soon after settling in to a rented mansion in Hidden Hills but maybe (or maybe not) it has to do with her recent turning of 30 , the December 10th finale in Puerto Rico of her international Femme Fatale tour and/or the rampant rumors running ’round the blogs and gossip glossies that Mister Trawick plans to very soon put a sparkly ring on Miz Spears finger. Mazel tov to all! Whatever the reason(s), listing information Your Mama squeezed like a pimple out of the interweb shows Miz Spears newest rented residence in somewhat-remote-to-the-Showbiz-World Thousand Oaks was built in 2004, stands two stories tall, and measures 10,567 square feet with a total of 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, at leasst 4 fireplaces (3 indoors, 1 outside), garage space for 7 cars, and one craptastically swelegant 8-sided foyer with inlaid marble floor, arched display niches, an unholy cacophony of doorway styles, and a wrought iron railing-ringed oculus that exposes the lower level foyer to the hand-painted geometric mural that spans the ceiling of the upper level gallery. The main living areas include (but are not necessarily limited to) a formal dining room and a not-very-formal formal living room with lustrous random-width, honey-colored oak floors, a full wall of wood-framed glass sliders that peel open to a covered porch, an ornate and over-scaled carved stone fireplace at one end of the long room and what appears to be a built-in entertainment cabinet with exposed flat-screen tee-vee at the other. A more manly architectural and decorative vibe was applied to the medium-dark wood paneled library immediately off the foyer that presents a coffered ceiling overhead, wall-to-wall carpeting the color of wet sand underfoot, a quartet of over-sized windows with a grassy backyard view along one entire wall, and a carved wood and marble fireplace with flat screen television mounted above it where there might more appropriately be a $47 painting of canines smoking cigars and playing poker. The kitchen borders on colossal and includes a Suburu-sized center work island with veggie sink and under-counter booze fridge, many feet of custom milled raised panel cabinetry topped by swirly beige granite with double waterfall style edge detail, well-lit tumbled travertine back splashes, a full suite of high-grade appliances, and an adjoining breakfast area with backyard and swimming pool access through a bank of French doors. We’re just going to totally pretend we don’t see the dreadful swagged fabric valances and the hypertension-inducing items precariously set in to that slim and otherwise mostly useless space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling because otherwise we’d have a serious conniption fit. Casual indoor entertainment areas include, as per listing and marketing materials, a home theater and a gigantic, partly wood-paneled second floor game room complete with fireplace, full-size wood and granite pub, poker nook, and at least three built-in flat-screen tee-vee because as if the sound of one tee-vee isn’t enough to disturb the peace then three tee-vees blaring three different programs at the same damn time is enough to make Your Mama need a nerve pill and nap. Nobody in their right minds smokes indoors anymore–particularly if there are small children, pets, and/or old people around–so draggers and puffers will appreciate the long row of wood-framed sliding glass doors that provide convenient access to a covered outdoor balcony that also has a wide flight of steps that descend to backyard and swimming pool areas. Miz Spears and Mister Trawick, both fit as fiddles with hard booties and firm stomachs, will no doubt make real and serious use of the home gym, located in the same neck of the mcmansion as the game room and equipped with a built-in flat-screen tee-vee mounted about a corner wet bar. We are, we must confess, a bit troubled by the wall-to-wall carpeting in the fitness room. Not only does it seem somehow counter-intuitive to work out–or “work out”–on semi-shag carpeting it seems downright unsanitary. Think about it for a moment. Iffin a person or persons actually uses and uses correctly all that exercise equipment–otherwise known by Your Mama as Self-Inflicting Body Torture Devices–that carpet could quickly become saturated with an upsetting amount of sweat. Anyhoo, a tightly curled carved wood and wrought iron staircase tucked into its own vestibule off the foyer leads to the second level living areas where Miz Spears’ (and presumably Mister Trawick’s) private quarters occupy a private wing that includes a fully-carpeted bedroom big enough for a sizable sitting area with a huge carved stone (or cast-concrete?) fireplace. Glass sliders open to a private covered balcony with chunky stone balustrade and not-so distant view of the mansion-dotted rolling hills that weave their way around the unnaturally green golf course. There isn’t a mention of it in the online listing we perused but we assume closet space in the master suite is both custom-fitted and commodiously celebrity-worthy but listing photographs do show a master bathroom dressed up in expensive but utterly banal and all-beige manner with double sinks, jetted soaking tub, glass-enclosed shower, and a dedicated hair and make-up station with the ugly sort of hydraulically-operated chair one might more reasonably expect to find in a beautician’s workspace. The house sits fairly hard up on the street with a small motor court wedged into the parcel at one end of the house and a soccer-pitch sized grassy space on the other where the current owners erected a jungle gym that we’d bet our long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly cost more than a minimum wage domestic earns in an entire month. A long and wide free-form terrace extends off the back of the house and extends part way around the amoebic negative edge swimming pool and spa. At one end of the swimming pool an outdoor entertainment complex features an octagonal open air dining pavilion with massive outdoor fireplace and an adjacent conversation-friendly, horseshoe-shaped outdoor kitchen/barbecue center with a raised and umbrella-shaded snack & booze bar. A long, switchback stone staircase descends into a thickly wooded area below the house where Miz Spears boy children will no doubt

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Feds Launch Crackdown On California Pot Dispensaries

October 7, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors have launched a crackdown on pot dispensaries in California, warning the stores that they must shut down in 45 days or face criminal charges and confiscation of their property even if they are operating legally under the state’s 15-year-old medical marijuana law. In an escalation of the ongoing conflict between the U.S. government and the nation’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry, at least 16 pot shops or their landlords received letters this week stating they are violating federal drug laws, even though medical marijuana is legal in California. The state’s four U.S. attorneys were scheduled Friday to announce a broader coordinated crackdown. Their offices refused Thursday to confirm the closure orders. The Associated Press obtained copies of the letters that a prosecutor sent to at least 12 San Diego dispensaries. They state that federal law “takes precedence over state law and applies regardless of the particular uses for which a dispensary is selling and distributing marijuana.” “Under United States law, a dispensary’s operations involving sales and distribution of marijuana are illegal and subject to criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions,” according to the letters signed by U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy in San Diego. “Real and personal property involved in such operations are subject to seizure by and forfeiture to the United States … regardless of the purported purpose of the dispensary.” The move comes a little more than two months after the Obama administration toughened its stand on medical marijuana. For two years before that, federal officials had indicated they would not move aggressively against dispensaries in compliance with laws in the 16 states where pot is legal for people with doctors’ recommendations. The Department of Justice issued a policy memo to federal prosecutors in late June stating that marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws could face prosecution for violating federal drug and money-laundering laws. The effort to shutter California dispensaries appeared to be the most far-reaching effort so far to put that guidance into action. “This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The administration is simply making good on multiple threats issued since President Obama took office,” said Kevin Sabet, a former adviser to the president’s drug czar and a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Substance Abuse Solutions. “The challenge is to balance the scarcity of law enforcement resources and the sanctity of this country’s medication approval process. It seems like the administration is simply making good on multiple statements made previously to appropriately strike that balance.” Greg Anton, a lawyer who represents dispensary Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, said its landlord received an “extremely threatening” letter Wednesday invoking a federal law that imposes additional penalties for selling drugs within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and playgrounds. The landlord was ordered to evict the 14-year-old pot club or risk imprisonment, plus forfeiture of the property and all the rent he has collected while the dispensary has been in business, Anton said. Marin Alliance’s founder “has been paying state and federal taxes for 14 years, and they have cashed all the checks,” he said. “All I hear from Obama is whining about his budget, but he has money to do this which will actually reduce revenues.” Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said the warnings are part of what appears to be an attempt by the Obama administration to curb medical marijuana on multiple fronts and through multiple agencies. A series of dispensary raids in Montana, for example, involved agents from not only the FBI and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, but the Internal Revenue Service and Environmental Protection Agency. Going after property owners is not a new tactic though, Hermes said. Five years ago, the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush made similar threats to about 300 Los Angeles-area landlords who were renting space to medical marijuana outlets, some of whom were eventually evicted or closed their doors voluntarily, he said. “It did have an impact. However, the federal government never acted on its threats, never prosecuted anybody, never even went to court to begin prosecutions,” Hermes said. “By and large, they were empty threats, but they relied on them and the cost of postage to shut down as many facilities as they could without having to engage in criminal enforcement activity.” Besides the dozen dispensaries in San Diego and the one in Marin County, at least three shops in San Francisco already have received closure notices, said Dale Gieringer, director of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The San Diego medical marijuana outlets put on notice were the same 12 that city officials sued last month for operating illegally, after activists there threatened to force an election on a zoning plan adopted to regulate the city’s fast-growing medical marijuana industry, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said. A judge on Wednesday ordered nine of the targeted shops to close, while the other three shut down voluntarily, Goldsmith said. Duffy, the U.S. attorney for far Southern California, planned to issue warning letters to property owners and all of the 180 or so dispensaries that have proliferated in San Diego in the absence of compromise regulations, according to Goldsmith. “The real power is with the federal government,” he said. “They have the asset forfeiture, and that means either the federal government will own a lot of property or these landlords will evict a lot of dispensaries.” Continue reading here: Feds Launch Crackdown On California Pot Dispensaries

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