Apartment Karma Payback by Kelly Kuvo
I’m from Illinois, Colorado, New York, Maryland, and California. I’ve traveled to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, and England. Not living in one place for very long is completely normal for me. My parents, each with their rotation of new spouses, moved around constantly, uprooting their children along with them. Different countries, different states, different towns, different schools, different addresses had become a way of life. When the time came for me to move out to live on my own at age 17, I was ready because we had always been able to find an affordable place to live and I was very adaptable to any housing situation. Now I’m 53 years old. Things have changed.
In 1987, a few days after I graduated High School, I found an apartment that I could afford to rent by myself (no need for a credit check or a parent co-signer or 3 months rent in advance) in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of downtown Denver, Colorado. I paid the rent and utilities with a minimum wage job while also taking Metro State Community College art classes. I transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1992. Years later, when I decided to become an art teacher, I took classes at Los Angeles Community College and then transferred to New York University to graduate with a Master of Arts degree in 2005. To finalize my teaching credentials I went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland in 2007 and taught art in Baltimore City Public Schools. If I had known it would take much longer and be more difficult to pay off my Graduate student loans because I would no longer be able to find an affordable place to live, I would have never gone back to Graduate School for a Teaching Credential. Hindsight is 20/20.
Let’s rewind. As I moved around for 30 years, how did I know where to go? What was an affordable neighborhood that would welcome me? I looked for the good access to public transit, the thrift stores, the used book seller, the cool record shop, the health food co-op, the poetry cafe, the artist collectives, the jazz club, the independent movie theater, neighborhoods where English was a second language for most residents, and mom & pop bodegas on the corner. I not only found one in Denver/Capitol Hill (1987), but later in Chicago/Wicker Park (1989), NYC/Brooklyn/Williamsburg (1996), LA/Los Feliz (1999) Beachwood Canyon (2000) Venice (2001) Echo Park (2002), Santee Alley (2005), and Baltimore/Charles Village (2007)… My method: just find a job nearby, make friends, get to know the people in the neighborhood, ask around about vacant apartments at the laundromat, anybody moving out soon? Word of mouth was how I found my apartments. We called it apartment karma. Back then, an RSO apartment stayed that way. When I found one and then moved out, I told a friend, who applied to take over the lease, and since I was a good tenant who always paid on time, the landlord took my word based on good faith that my friends would do the same, and they got the keys. And vice-versa. No renovations were made. Maybe fresh paint and new carpet. The rent stayed the same. That was how it used to be. Not anymore.
When I moved back to Los Angeles from Baltimore in 2014 my previous neighborhoods were not affordable to me as a renter any longer. Most of my friends had all been priced out and moved away to other neighborhoods further East or much further away. AirBnB was in full swing. Rental property predators had grabbed most of the cheap rent controlled apartments and removed them from the affordability market as an easy way to make a profit. The long-term monthly residential hotels of last resort were now vacant or turned into high priced boutique nightly rentals for tourists. The only place I could find where I could afford to live was in Jefferson Park. I found a guest house studio to rent behind the main house of the property owner. This time, my new neighborhood was not welcoming to me. At all. They wanted me to leave and they let me know it; Go away, like, yesterday. I drove a Prius Plug-in and I might as well have been flying a freak flag over my head. If I did not park it directly in front of the house where I lived, the neighbors would pin my car in front and back so I couldn’t leave. I never saw who or asked why. I just ignored it or slowly inched my way out at 4am so I wouldn’t be late for work in the morning. Thank god for the camera on my back bumper! I’m sure if they saw me trying to get out without causing their car alarms to go off they thought that was hilarious! Was this because I was a clearly identified gentrifying artist? I dunno. It seemed like the USC student population was starting to encroach on West Adams and MidCity too at the time. So maybe my new neighbors thought I was a part of that. A yoga studio had opened up nearby on Washington Blvd and be damned if I wasn’t going to go to it. There goes the neighborhood! They saw what was coming. I knew why. Every neighborhood I had ever lived in since 1987 had become gentrified. I was a walking talking poster child of the starving artist who moves into an affordable neighborhood and moves out never to be able to afford to move back and live there again. I had taken that affordability of rent-control apartments run by slum lords in low-income neighborhoods for granted. I assumed, like a fool, they would always be there to find. A trail of destroyed affordable communities followed me all over the country.
By word of mouth in 2016, I heard a friend of mine, who I met in Chicago over 25 years ago, needed a roommate. She has an apartment at 4th and Sunset Ave in Venice where we live now. This was one of those RSO buildings with tenants of 20 + years as renters. Tenants of all ages, from the elderly to small children. An eclectic mix of all stripes and solids – immigrants and native Angelenos, lawyers, artists/actors/musicians, surfers, college students, auto mechanics, political activists, nurses, retirees, etc. and it was safe for everyone, gay or straight. When I moved in, because everyone liked my roommate, thankfully they welcomed me too. It was a friendly community of neighbors who looked out for each other’s packages so they wouldn’t get stolen, walked each other’s dogs if a neighbor was late getting home from work. When the reclusive old lady died in the apartment below me, the neighbors noticed something was wrong immediately and called for help. That kind of place. The old property management had agreed to let me be a roommate added to the Lease and I submitted my application. But the building was in transition. A new Real Estate Investment group had just purchased the property. I had agreed to the credit check with nothing to fear since I was a full-time teacher with Beverly Hills Public Schools and had good references from my prior landlords and building managers. I had no idea what I was about to encounter. While living in NYC there were always stories circling around about insane Landlords attempting to murder old tenants in order to raise the rent, but that was in Manhattan, we never imagined it would get that bad… everywhere.
Suddenly, for the first time in my life, my rental application was rejected. I was accused of having a prior eviction from my apartment in Baltimore. It wasn’t true. I looked at my 3 Bureau Credit Report and it said no such thing. Yet, there was this new third party credit bureau called Appfolio that this new breed of Real Estate Investment firms was using to screen potential renters and dig up something to reject them. It made no sense to me. Why would you turn down a renter with a good track record and make up a phony story to do so? By chance, it was Summer break from teaching and I had the time to fight back. I spent hours making calls and getting signed notarized documents proving my innocence and even joined a class action lawsuit against Appfolio. Their bad reputation grew as they became notorious all over the USA for making bogus claims about rental applicants. Their Real Estate Housing Market Landlord Investment Property Manager clients used their falsified data to purposely reject rental applications. What the hell was going on? Even after getting paid a settlement from Appfolio as well as submitting the new proof with my Lease application that I really have a good credit history; the new property owner and manager of my building decided to just simply ignore me. When Appfolio opened up an office branch at the corner of Rose and Hampden… I almost died. Karma payback took care of that when they closed it down after 2020. Good riddance.
Rewinding back to 2016 again, I learned very quickly what kind of racket was going on when I heard the neighbors gossip. All 15 of the RSO tenants in the building were offered Lease buy-outs and they all wanted to know who was getting offered what from the new Landlord. That would include my roommate who had already had a Lease with the apartment for 4 years and wasn’t going to budge. She used to live at Lincoln Place before getting an Ellis Act eviction and then ended up moving to 4th Ave Apartments as a result. From past experience, she knew the newly named 4th Avenue Apartments LLC had no intention of keeping anyone already here. They arrogantly assumed we’d all take the money and run and changed our street address from 356 4th Ave to 354 4th Ave without even telling us! They wanted to vacate the building, cheaply renovate to label it “Luxury” turning every apartment into a Market Rate unit, then sell/flip the building at a profit. And they’ve been trying to do that for the past 7 years. The list of harassment goes on and on. Construction workers stole our electricity while “renovating” vacant neighboring units, left exposed walls and wires out for months, ignoring local Law the construction noise started too early and ended too late, they used a leaf blower to blow dirt and rocks from the roof through our windows onto our floors, they “relandscaped” by taking out the fruit trees we all shared as neighbors including a banana tree that gave us bananas every year, they permanently took away our parking spot, they gave me a 3 Day Notice for feeding a squirrel in the courtyard tree, they threw away our potted plants outside our doors, they threatened to cut the locks off our bikes and put them in the dumpster if we continued to park them in the common area, they forbid us from hanging beach towels and wetsuits out to dry on the railing, they forbid wind chimes and bird feeders… anything that makes a Venice Beach apartment building look like it’s in Venice Beach – now FORBIDDEN. There are only 5 of the old rent-controlled renters left. Including me, as a roommate not on a Lease.
I hear that 17 year olds today wanting to start a life on their own who no longer want to or have the choice to live with a family member- with no credit history, or parental support, or ability to pay $5000 advance move-in costs- are living at a youth hostel, or living with 3 other roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment because the rent is $4000 a month, or living in a car, forced to get into credit card debt as it’s become the only option to pay for the high cost of everything. The expectation is that they’ll file for bankruptcy later to get out of the hole they dug themselves in. Who handed them the shovel? This was not what was handed to me at their age.
What do I do now? I have been on the Below Market Housing waitlist in Santa Monica for 2 years. No longer working in Santa Monica means I no longer qualify. As Rent Control availability diminishes, the BMH is the only option to find an affordable place to live these days. If you can wait that long. A Lease via a Community Corp. that offers a place to live with rent at only 30% of your income is a terrific opportunity, but it’s first come first serve. I heard that the Venice Community Housing waitlist is opening up in January 2024 and I’m hoping to add my name to that list when the time comes. As a former Homeless Outreach Case Manager, I know about Healthy Housing Foundation residential hotels recently purchased to remain that way as Single Room Occupancy properties. I could try that.
I expect I will receive some kind of eviction notice in January 2024 when the COVID rental protections end for people living in apartments as roommates and are not on the Lease. I’m sure they’ll give my roommate the option to get rid of me or lose her Lease and I assume they’re hoping she can’t afford to pay the rent alone and will then have to move out. Or, they do nothing. After 8 years of paying rent and utilities on time in an apartment that has had the same decaying carpet for 12, we suck it up so we can stay. I have no idea where I’ll go next. Nothing surprises me anymore. One thing is for sure though. I will never again be a part of the problem by finding something short term on The Lee List or AirBnB. Learning my karmic lesson the hard way, I refuse to be willingly complicit with the affordable housing developer tax write-off racket bullshit but it isn’t going to be easy.
For fun, I have been documenting the concrete graffiti on the sidewalks of Venice as a historical record of the neighborhood. A lot of new construction around town has been replacing the old cement. Check out kellykuvo.threadless.com if you’re interested. You may recognize something from your block… and then, if you want, you can wear it too!