A rent strike is brewing among more than 50 tenants who find their rents might double in a Marmion Way apartment building, according to KPCC and EGP news.
Residents of Marmion Royal – a 60-unit apartment complex on Marmion Way across the street from the Highland Park Gold Line Station – face a rent hike of $1,000 after the building gets remodeled, KPCC reported. According to EGP, the tenants would also have to find another place to live during construction.
Skya Ventures and Gelt Ventures, the new owners of the building, announced the change last May, shortly after buying the property from Azusa Pacific University for $14.3 million.
Since that purchase, residents have also reported water shut-offs, power outages and the removal of satellite antennas from the roof, KPCC reported from a news release by the North East Los Angeles Alliance.
According to EGP, most of the tenants are working-class Latinos, and several receive Section 8 housing subsidies.
John Urquiza, a community organizer with the NELAA told KPCC his team is helping tenants with the rent strike:
“Denying capital and income to the owners is the only way we can bring them to the negotiating table,” Urquiza said.
EPG reports that the Rent Stabilization Ordinance does not cover this property. Those protections apply only to multi-unit buildings built before 1978; the Marmion Royal was built in 1987.
Activists and tenants held a demonstration last week similar to protests and processions held in 2014.