Los Angeles is known for having strong tenant protections. The city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO), which applies to nearly 70% of all rental housing, limits the percentage that rent can be raised in a given year. It generally protects tenants from the most extreme forms of rent gouging once they are already living in a unit. Additionally, tenants living in RSO properties are protected from most no-fault evictions. In other words, landlords of these units cannot simply decide they want to end a tenant’s lease “just because” — they must provide a sound, legal reason for an eviction.

With these protections, one might assume that long-term Los Angeles tenants are relatively safe from displacement. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Although city law protects against most no-fault evictions, a 1985 California state law called the Ellis Act provides a carve-out that landlords can use to evict tenants living in RSOs if the landlord is “exiting the rental business” and intends to permanently remove those units from the rental market. According to the law, they can do this by demolishing the building or converting it to condominiums or tenancy-in-common (TIC) units. If the building is not demolished, the units must remain off the rental market for two years.

Developers and corporate landlords often purchase RSO buildings with the intention of using the Ellis Act to remove long-term tenants so that they can flip the properties and then charge market rate. Real estate listings for RSO buildings boast an “upside potential,” or a high return on the buyer’s investment. Some landlords who wish to bring in higher-paying tenants even employ tactics like “cash for keys” offers and outright harassment to convince RSO tenants to move out.

In the Mar Vista neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, the tenants of two apartment buildings on Venice Boulevard are being threatened with displacement thanks to the Ellis Act. Most of the residents of these two buildings are Oaxacan immigrant families who have lived there for decades, across multiple generations. All together, the tenants have lived over 620 years in their buildings. These are the type of long-term tenants that the RSO and municipal law are supposedly meant to protect. And yet, on December 12, 2024, each unit received notice that they were being evicted under the Ellis Act.

Carmen, who has lived in her unit since she arrived from Oaxaca over 30 years ago, said that at first she didn’t understand what the Ellis Act eviction notice was — it was written in English, which Carmen doesn’t speak. Once Carmen learned what the notice was about, she was still confused. “It can’t be right that we’ve been here so many years and this new landlord, without meeting us, without giving us a reason … is evicting us.” Tenants knew that a new landlord had purchased the building in July of 2024, but didn’t learn the landlord’s name until they were served with eviction notices.

Ryan Yanulevich and Naresh Kotwani were listed as co-owners on the Ellis Act application for Carmen’s building. According to his LinkedIn profile, Yanulevich is an acquisitions manager at Pacifica Companies, which is a multibillion-dollar real estate corporation with more than 4,500 properties nationwide. Kotwani, who lives in Florida, is listed as a “principal” at the same company. Pacifica appears to be led by the Israni family, which includes the San Diego–based brothers Deepak and Ashok Israni. The LLC that holds the properties’ deeds is registered to Pacifica’s San Diego address, and Property Shark records show that both buildings were purchased in cash (without a mortgage). On their Ellis Act application, Yanulevich indicated that the buildings would be converted to tenancies in common, or TICs.

The Venice Boulevard buildings are a far cry from other recent TIC conversions in Los Angeles, many of which are located in trendier East LA neighborhoods like Echo Park and Silver Lake. TICs typically cater to young professionals who want to purchase a home but don’t have the up-front cash to buy a single-family unit or condominium. In a TIC, residents purchase shares that give them sole occupancy rights to their own unit and shared access to common spaces. TICs are usually upscale and in sound structural condition. In contrast, the two Venice buildings have dealt with habitability and safety issues for years: holes in walls, gas and water leaks, moldy ceilings and walls, exposed electrical wires, and recurrent pest problems. The tenants have made multiple attempts to get Pacifica to remediate these serious habitability concerns, only to be referred to Pacifica’s lawyer, Niv Davidovich of North Hollywood.

In late December, tenants formed Árbol de Hierro Tenant Association, which is part of the Mar Vista Palms local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU). Together, they informed their landlord that they had a right to a one-year extension of tenancy, because they’d lived there for over a year and have residents who are disabled and/or over 62 years old. Pacifica begrudgingly granted the extension, but warned tenants that they planned to continue with the eviction. Boosted by their small victory, tenants gathered over 150 signatures on a petition asking Pacifica to stop the eviction entirely. Davidovich claimed that since the tenants’ petition did not “provide any legal basis” for their request, the owner would not drop the Ellis Act eviction.

Tenants say that the law itself is unjust, and that Yanulevich and Pacifica should have a conscience. Carlos, who has lived in the building for over 25 years, said he knows this is business as usual for real estate investors: “This is a country where people don’t have much of a conscience. They’re always thinking about money and the economy. … [Yanulevich] is not going to have a job evicting people forever. … It’s better to leave a good legacy.”

West Los Angeles is home to hundreds of Oaxacan families, many of whom live in RSO units and are facing the threat of displacement by real estate developers and gentrification. These tenants have spent decades building a support system for themselves and their children. Some tenants’ children are waiting for college acceptance letters, and other tenants with special-needs children say they’ve fought for years to get their children the specialists and support services they need. Marina, whose 21-year-old son has special needs, emphasized that “if you [Pacifica] evict us, you will be taking away that network of support and community.”

The Árbol tenants work in construction, gardening, food service, housekeeping, radio, and medical imaging. Like thousands of other working class immigrants in Los Angeles, they are a vital part of the local economy and labor force but have suffered emotionally and financially due to the latest round of ICE terror. Many of them have lost work, and as of November 1, will not be receiving the SNAP benefits that many mixed-status families rely on. Every day, they must risk being kidnapped by ICE just to earn enough money for rent and necessities. A recent study by The Rent Brigade showed that immigrant Angeleno tenants spend an estimated 91% of their income on rent. This doesn’t surprise Carmen, who said, “We work so much so that we can keep paying the rent, so that we don’t fall behind.” Now, even though they have never paid rent late, these tenants are facing eviction anyway.

Tenants say that they are not powerless against ICE or gentrification, even as both threaten to rip them from their homes. Roberto, a tenant for more than 25 years, says that his sister connected him to LATU after fighting off landlord harassment in her own building, where a landlord hounded tenants with cash-for-keys offers and threats of eviction for nearly nine months before tenants formed an association in their building and sent him a letter demanding that he cease the harassment. Roberto’s advice to tenants facing Ellis Act eviction is to join LATU and form building associations to fight the eviction: “Don’t let yourself be intimidated. Don’t give up right away. … Sometimes we don’t know that we have rights.”

The Árbol tenants’ one-year extension is set to expire on December 12, 2025, and tenants say they intend to fight the eviction until the end. In August 2025, a group of tenants and allies visited San Diego to demand to speak with their landlords, who have forwarded all communications to their lawyer. The Isranis and Ryan Yanulevich refused to open their doors.

A month later, the Árbol tenants decided to knock on the doors of other buildings in their neighborhood that had received Ellis Act notices. They found three such buildings within a mile of their own: two buildings whose tenants were evicted stood empty, with demolition notices posted. Both buildings are set to be demolished to make way for “affordable housing.” However, the Árbol tenants also discovered a nearby apartment that had successfully fought off an Ellis Act eviction earlier in 2025. Like the Venice Boulevard buildings, all of the tenants were long-term, Mexican or Mexican-American, and many were related. To defeat their Ellis case, those tenants said they had to proactively organize as a group. When sharing his story with the Árbol tenants, a remaining tenant was emphatic about the racial and class motivation behind the displacement caused by Ellis evictions: “Fuck them [real estate developers]. They think they’re better than us because we’re Mexican. They want to take it just because they think they can.” Pointing to his family’s Impalas parked in front of the building, the tenant proudly said “We’re not going anywhere.”

[Note: The quotes from Venice Boulevard tenants were originally given in Spanish and have been translated by the author.]