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Judge rules Paso Robles slum lords can evict tenants

September 30, 2019

By CCT STAFF

A San Luis Obispo County judge is allowing the owners of a Paso Robles apartment complex that is infested with vermin and plagued with numerous other hazards to evict their tenants. On Friday, the owners of the 55 unit Grand View Apartments began serving 60 to 90 day eviction notices.

The Santa Barbara couple who own the property, Ebrahim and Fahimeh Madadi, are required to provide tenants $1,000 for relocation expenses and to return security deposits within seven days after tenants move out, according to court documents.

In May, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of tenants of the Grand View Apartments alleging a vermin infestation, severe mold and dangerous gas and electric lines, according to the suit. A few weeks later, Judge Ginger Garrett issued a temporary restraining order requiring the landlords to stop collecting rent until necessary repairs are made.

However, rather than make the repairs, estimated at $2.5 million, the landlords elected to close their business. While attorneys for the tenants argued that forcing the tenants to vacate was retaliatory against them for attempting to change their living conditions, Garrett ruled on behalf of the landlords.

“We are disappointed by the court’s ruling,” said attorney for the SLO Legal Assistance Foundation Stephanie Barclay. “We were hoping to get more time for the tenants, but unfortunately the law allows Grand View to go out of business instead of making the apartments safe and habitable for its tenants. Some municipalities have ordinances in place that provide extra tenant protections, but such protections do not exist in San Luis Obispo County.”


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The lawyers forgot these apartments are part of the free enterprise system and not a government subsidy. They may have won the battle but lost the war.. More reasons the private sector has abandoned providing housing for the public, and we wonder why we have an out of control homeless problem.


0

So unsurprising to see local residents blame the tenants. If these were white families it would be a whole other story.


-10

Bullpucky! No one is saying anything about race here. Maybe we’re just tired of the Left blaming landlords every time they have to raise the rents. Like they see any of that money, it goes to taxes, plumbers, carpenters, landscapers, painters, etc. Do you really think the security deposits cover the average amount of damage to rentals? Maybe you should talk to the other side and find out!


9

So Mr conspiracy wants to blame race, Shelworth blames the left.


“Maybe we’re just tired of the Left blaming landlords every time they have to raise the rents.” Who do you think raises the rents? Landlords are the only ones who can, so yes they are to blame every time.


“Do you really think the security deposits cover the average amount of damage to rentals?” Yes they do or the landlord is failing as a business operator


-8

Have you been there? No? I have. I saw a guy changing the oil in his car by draining it into the dirt next to his apartment. I’ve been both a tenant and a landlord, Landlords are betrayed as evil, money grubbers, who hate the poor, while tenants are poor, honest people just trying to get by. People are the same, whether they have money or not.


5

So, the owners just let this type of behavior go on? Really?! Then they are the consummate slum lords! Just collect the rent, don’t evict those who are to blame and then let the rest of their tenants suffer (to the point of filing suit)!

I was a landlord at one time too shel’, and I can tell you now that with the right owner, one who values his or her investment, this type of shit would have been stopped in short order! The parasites that intentionally damage property would have been gone quickly, or as quickly as the law allows!

These two, Ebrahim and Fahimeh Madadi, are slum lords and in my opinion they dodged a bullet! If this was me, I’d appeal the court’s decision and seek an injunction to stop the evictions.


-3

I don’t know the landlord in this case, so I have no idea what their motivation was, apathy? Cheap? I was just trying to point out always blaming the owner is wrong, two sides to every story, right? But in this day and age, with the current political climate, good luck evicting a poor minority tenant who has a lawyer.


-1

Jeeeez! Politics again?!!! And the minority shit? Well it’s just that, shit!

The owners are minorities, or at least their surname implies they are, and they got the verdict they wanted, right?

I have been involved with a ton of evictions, and I’ve never seen a court rule in favor of a defendant just because of their minority status, never! As a matter of fact it seemed easier to present an unlawful detainer with a positive outcome when the defendant was a minority.

“…good luck evicting a poor minority tenant who has a lawyer.”

No, good luck to that poor minority tenant in finding an attorney in the first place…


1

I’ll lay odds the owners were approached by a developer or the city who will pay a kings ransom for the parcel. This is prime real estate as you enter the city. Not the first place nor the last as they try to turn Paso into the next Napa valley, you’ll see the small ma and pop shops,hotels and motels go bye bye.


18

I have first hand experience with these apartments, having worked on them several times in the last 15 years. Garbage strewn about the property is probably the cause of the rats and vermin, I doubt the owners broke the windows and doors, or crushed in the stucco walls. If the owners had fixed them up the current tenants could no longer afford to live there. If someone does buy it and puts in the 3-5 million to make it nice, the rents will be raised to pay for it. It’s a business. It’s really funny (tragic) to listen to government officials lamenting rents on one hand and on the other saying if you want to build an apartment building the permits and fees are $$$$$$$$$$$$$!


24

A good lesson to be learned here. There were a lot of people who had housing they could afford. Now they are all out because some tenants listened to some social activists (who live elsewhere) and fell for their line. Got greedy. The people that enabled the complaining tenants still have their nice houses to live in.


11

“Now they are all out because some tenants listened to some social activists (who live elsewhere) and fell for their line.”

Proof? Link?

SLO Legal Assistance Foundation, the folks who represented these people, is a local firm who’s mission statement reads in part [to] “…provide and promote free legal-aid services, assistance in self-representation, and conflict resolution for low and moderate income individuals, including seniors and veterans.” So, they’re neither a activist group or from out of town.

Got any more pure conjecture for us there slo’?

Oh yea! The only “out of town” representation here was the owners, from Santa Barbara…


4

Underlying issue is, what were the rents that they were paying?

Was it cheap and the landlords kept it that way by not doing much maintenance?

More often than not this goes the other way, the landlord goes through and fixes them up and raises the rent accordingly,then the tenants complain that they can’t afford the new rents!

Chicken or the egg, who got greedy, the tenants or the landlord?

When i was a young whipper snapper, i rented a sub standard house, fixed it up, did any necessary repairs, I loved the cheap rent and wanted it to stay that way:)


22

A one bedroom was renting for $1,450.00 a month. They had 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments, a total of 55 units.

So let’s say the average rent was $1,550.00 a month (an added bedroom usually raises the rent by $100.00 per bedroom a month), times 55 would bring in around $84,000.00 a month. This property was bringing in well over $1,000,000,000.00 a year and the owners couldn’t afford to keep it up? Are you frickin’ kiddin’ me?!!

These two, Ebrahim and Fahimeh Madadi, were the consummate slum lords! Takin’ the rent they collected to support their Santa Barbara lifestyle while lettin’ their tenants live in squalor, two POS’s!

You can defend the owners in any manner you choose, try and justify their slum lordliness and put the blame on the tenants, but you’ll come up short every frickin’ time! And if you see yourself as law abiding and law supporting citizen then California Civil Code Secs. 1929, 1941 should be your point of reference in pointing the finger at who’s actually at fault here.


4

Oooops! that would be three less zeros, $1,000,000.00 and not $1,000,000,000.00


-2

The owners should go out of business. They are horrible people. Let someone else take the property over. Unfortunately the amount of rent paid probably reflected the poor conditions. Too bad housing is so scarce.


-12

Good-Bye Grand view….Hello New Hotel..


19

If the living conditions were that bad why would they want to stay longer? Another article stated that the tenants were not paying any rent, perhaps that is the real reason. You can not have it both ways. You cannot refuse to pay rent and expect the landlord to keep investing more money into the building. Where would the money come from? If the cost to repair is too high, the landlord has the right to shut it down. If you implement rent control you will see a lot more of this. I do not know if these people are slum lords or not but either way the property owner has the right to close it down if they have had too many complaints or if the cost of repairs are too high.


26

The lack of affordable housing answers your question.


The landlords were collecting rent without resolving the issues and concerns brought forth by the tenants, from what I recall earlier articles stating. At that rate, the courts ruled to in favor of the tenants in what would be comparable to prorating rent.


-20

Affordable housing? Where?

We just had a 62 unit affordable apartment complex open up here in Medford and it’s already filled! They had a lottery for those apartments and in a city with a population of just over 80,000 they had over 10,000 applicants (applicants were limited to those living in Medford)! What’s that? About 12%? 12% of the city’s population applied for affordable housing? Jeeeez!


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