Senior citizens who have lived in Silver Lake for decades are facing looming evictions under a law that allows landlords to vacate rental units to exit the rental industry.
Rent-controlled residents with the Robinson-Ellsworth Tenant Association were served eviction notices in 2025 under the Ellis Act. The Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU) helped the seniors — between the ages of 65 and 87 years — get a one-year extension. That grace period is over now, and the tenants told The LA Local they have no idea what’s coming next.
“Now we are in limbo, waiting for something to happen because the owner never met with us,” Teresa Moran, 70, said. “[The landlords] don’t want to meet with us.”
According to public records, the building at 3309 Ellsworth St., last sold for $1,880,000 in November 2024 to Jacobson Investment Group. Cameron Samimi and Aaron Jacobson with Lyon Stahl Investment Real Estate, which represent the ownership group, did not respond to requests for comment.
Moran has lived in the apartments for 35 years. She and her husband live in fear of a forced eviction. According to their notice to vacate, their last day was April 7, but they have received no word on what is supposed to happen after that. They are still living there as of this article’s publication.
“We don’t have anywhere to go. My aunt passed away, so we don’t have family here in LA,” Moran said. “We are always depressed, we wake up in the middle of the night just thinking that we could be thrown out onto the street. It’s stressful thinking we don’t have a place to go.”
Moran and her husband are retired and said they have looked at senior living homes, but they are too expensive for their monthly budget.
Paula Espizo, 83, and her husband have lived in the same Silver Lake units for nearly 40 years. They are the oldest tenants in the apartments and are also retired. They told The LA Local that if evicted, they also have nowhere else to go.
“We are distressed that they haven’t even contacted us. We don’t know whether or not we need to leave, but we keep paying the rent,” Espizo said. “It gives me great sadness that we can’t fix this.”
According to the 2025 annual point-in-time counts, the number of people aged 65 and older experiencing homelessness has increased more than 36% in two years.
How landlords can use loopholes to evict
Los Angeles has strong tenant protections, including limits on rent hikes and no-fault evictions, meaning landlords can’t end a tenant’s lease without reason. But under the Ellis Act, landlords can evict tenants if they are seeking to exit the rental business. The law requires owners to either leave the building vacant for two years or demolish it.
Citlali Vasquez, an organizer at LATU, told The LA Local that a growing number of landlords are using the Ellis Act “in bad faith” to evict tenants, destroy the buildings and replace them with pricier apartments.
The Ellis Act was created in 1985 and was intended to help mom-and-pop property owners sell their properties without fear of lawsuits.
“Many of the folks we’re seeing getting evicted by the Ellis Act are seniors and disabled folks,” Vasquez said.
However, since 1994, the law has been used to allow for the destruction of nearly 32,000 rent-controlled units in Los Angeles, Chris Herring, a sociology professor at UCLA, told The LA Local.
“As the law continues to stand, it will continue to be used to reduce the number of affordable housing units that currently exist.” Herring said.
Legally, there is nothing that can be done to fight an Ellis Act eviction if the owners did everything according to the law, he added, but there have been efforts in the past to change that. Only the owners can stop it. “They could withdraw the Ellis Act, there’s just a simple form online where they could just withdraw it, they don’t have to move forward with the eviction,” Vasquez said.
In 2022, a bill was introduced that would have required landlords to own the property for at least five years before invoking the Ellis Act. Another law would have imposed a 25% tax on profits for properties sold within three years of purchase. At the time, the California Association of Realtors wrote a letter to state legislators saying ending the Ellis Act would devastate “struggling small property owners.”
Both bills failed.
“You cannot legally fight back. You can ‘politically’ fight back,” Herring said, adding that protesting and pressuring owners can be effective.
LATU has called on the Los Angeles Housing Department to implement stronger protections against the Ellis Act. One demand is that seniors and renters with disabilities be protected from Ellis Act evictions.
“We want to protect those tenants more because they have so much more to lose and nowhere to go,” Vasquez said.
As of now, seniors in the Robinson-Ellsworth Tenant Association are on their toes, waiting to hear if they can stay in their homes or if they should pack their bags.
