Zoila Hilda Funes, 75, is facing eviction from the apartment complex where she has lived for the past 38 years.
Funes, her husband and youngest daughter, then 6, moved from Hollywood to the El Sereno neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1986 following the North Palm Springs earthquake. One of her sisters lived next door.
The couple worked at a local seafood restaurant together, saving their money to bring the rest of their children from El Salvador. After a few years, Funes invited her brother, Farid Melendez, and his three kids to move in and join her family of five. The logic was that the members of the close knit family could rely on each other for child care while the adults worked.
“I feel as if [the children] are all under my wings,” she said through an interpreter. “We were all struggling and striving together. Us being all together gave me more strength.” The extended family of nine made the four bedroom apartment their home for decades.
In 2019, the family suffered a devastating loss when Funes’ husband passed away. He had suffered a stroke in 2012, the same year Funes broke her spine and injured her arm, forcing her to retire from her job as a restaurant server. But for three years the family was able to pay their rent, a bit more than $800, with their Social Security checks.
Then, in 2023, the building, 4629 Grey Drive, was sold to Grey City Lofts, LLC. Grey City told Funes and her family they had to leave because only Funes’ late husband was on the lease and rejected their rent payments.
These days Funes lives in the apartment with her brother, two of his sons and her daughter. They are fighting their eviction in court, noting they had made rent payments, which were rejected.
Their cozy apartment is unadorned. There are no photos on the walls. The family’s personal items are neatly stowed away in containers and boxes, as if ready to be picked up and moved at a moment’s notice.
“I don’t even hang my pictures, “ Funes said through an interpreter.
Funes received the first notices of eviction in October. Through an interpreter, she recalled her property manager coming to her unit and trying to force to vacate the premises. She said the manager claimed that she was in the unit illegally because she was not on the lease. That confused her because she had been in the building for nearly 40 years and paying rent.
“We’ve been here our entire lives,” Funes said through an interpreter. “We have the right to stay where we are.”
Funes said her name was on the original lease. When they temporarily moved units to allow for repairs to be completed, her husband signed a new lease in which only he was listed.
“Landlords that come in and just say, ‘You’re not on the lease, you’re unauthorized,’ that’s not necessarily accurate. It’s more nuanced than that,” said Claudia Medina, a tenants’ rights attorney.
In California, case law has established several precedents allowing people who are not on the lease to be recognized as tenants. Courts have ruled occupants not on a lease can be considered tenants if they have paid rent or are otherwise acknowledged as tenants by the landlord.
“The landlords accepting rent from the tenant that remains establishes consent for occupancy with that tenant,” Medina said.
Funes sent checks for $829 in rent for three months in 2023.
Funes said her landlord told her that as an unauthorized tenant, she could not be the person making the payments. Checks the family handed over to the property manager were returned in the mail, and no money was deducted from their bank accounts, Funes said. She said the landlord then served her with a three day notice to pay three months of back rent, or be evicted.
Medina said that she sees these types of tactics frequently.
“That three day notice has legal significance. It doesn’t matter if they rejected your rent; you get a three day [notice], pay immediately. The three days are demanding your rent, and it’s going to tell you where to pay it and how to pay it,” Medina said. “If you don’t pay within three days now, the landlord is going to use that to argue that they met their burden of giving you a three day [notice]. You didn’t pay within three days, and now they have a basis to get rid of you, to evict you.”
In 2021, the city of Los Angeles adopted a tenant anti-harassment ordinance prohibiting landlords from harassing tenants by means of such tactics as ceasing services, withholding repairs or refusing to accept rent payments. The ordinance gives tenants the ability to raise harassment as a defense in an eviction proceeding, as well as the ability to sue the landlord. The burden is on the tenant to prove the harassment occurred with evidence: things like postmarked returned rent checks or emails and text messages spelling out the refusal of rent.
Medina says anti-harassment ordinances for tenants in California have been “piecemeal” and carried out on a city-by-city basis.
Rose Lenehan, an organizer with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, said that there needs to be stronger state laws that protect basic tenants’ rights. In Funes’ case, for example, a vacancy control law would prevent landlords from being able to rent units for market rate after a rent stabilized tenant has been evicted. Lenehan says the potential to earn more on a unit is a big motivating factor for a building’s owners to evict people like Funes.
Under California’s current landlord-tenant laws, “It’s not a fair system,” tenants’ rights attorney Medina said. “This system is not set up to house tenants. It’s set up to help landlords.”
Funes is not the only tenant in her apartment complex who has received paperwork claiming they are unauthorized tenants and demanding they move out. Capital & Main reviewed similar letters two of Funes’ neighbors received.
“It’s happening to families that we know,” Melendez said through an interpreter. “They’re taking advantage of older people to get them out of their homes.”
She estimates at least 10 other families have also received the notice.
Funes’ property manager presented paperwork for her to sign agreeing to leave in October of 2023. All of it was in English, in which she is not fluent. Panicked, she called her daughter Sujey, who also lives in the apartment, for help.
“My mom called me crying. She’s like, ‘Oh, they say that they want to evict us because I’m illegally living here.’ And I’m like, ‘How do they figure that when we have, like, 40-something years-plus?’”
Funes is part of a larger trend involving who is becoming homeless in California. People over age 55 are the fastest growing segment of the population becoming unhoused, according to data from the state’s Homeless Data Integration System. Capital & Main reported that nationwide, the number of homeless seniors is expected to triple over the next six years. The number of adults over 65 who are homeless is projected to rise to 106,000, and will include people who are already unhoused and aging into seniors, as well as people becoming homeless for the first time.
“I see a lot of landlords evicting low income folks, vulnerable folks. That includes a lot of seniors. It’s like taking candy from a baby, as the saying goes,” said Medina. “They don’t know where to get help. They’re misinformed. They’re naive about the court system. Landlords capitalize on that.”
Funes says that she has continued to pay the rent on time, and that the landlord’s claims of outstanding rent are false. Now, she needs to prove that, as well as the fact of her long established tenancy in the unit. Funes’ husband was meticulous with document retention — every piece of paper the family received is kept in a binder in the possession of Funes’ daughter Sujey.
But not all tenants hold on to everything.
“It’s going to be your word against the landlord. If you have proof you’ve been trying to pay, if you’re able to say, ‘Look, here’s my Priority Mail receipt. Here’s me texting, trying to pay,’ that creates a paper trail’” Medina said. “The more evidence you have, the more you’re able to convince a judge, convince a jury. Because otherwise, if you didn’t do all of that, now you’re having to convince a jury based on testimony alone.”
Grey City Lofts LLC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The company is one of several limited liability companies connected to Candelabra, a real estate investment company owned and operated by Brian Tabaroki. Candelabra and Tabaroki have a history of evicting seniors that have been long-term tenants in the buildings they acquire. Capital & Main reviewed two additional cases filed against long-term tenants in buildings owned by Candelabra and Tabaroki resulting in eviction.
In 2020, ColoradoBoulevard.net covered the story of a woman in Alhambra who lived in her building for more than 20 years, and was served with an eviction notice from Candelabra, ignoring a notice from the city of Alhambra protecting them.
Funes and her family are working to gather the rent checks, correspondence and other evidence that will prove they have the right to be in their home. “We’ve lived here our entire lives, and now this is happening,” Melendez said through an interpreter.
