Re: Authorities want to evict family after 18 years

PL, ever with his Internet shovel knee-deep in mud, believes that his

efforts have enabled hi to dig up a couple of articles re Cubans

being evicted (e.g., "Authorities want to evict family after 18

years.") from the journalism's city dump, with the singature of

Cubanet, the U.S.-funded equivalent of the National Enquirer, i.e., a

"Cuban" scandal-scheet-cum-publication with bylines that may (or may

not) be from Cuba, but lines exclusively from Miami and Washington.

Wednesday's Los Angeles Times provides the story of 130,000+ people

documented to have lost their residences (in article reproduced

below). Unlike the articles from U.S.-funded Cubanet which PL has

reproduced,about 2 Cuban people / families allegedly being evicted,

whose contents neither provide details nor means of confirming the

accuracy of their contents, the accuracy of the article which mentions

that 130,000+ families / individuals have been evicted just by one

lackey laywer for L.A. landlords, can be easily confirmed by looking

up that attorney in the phone book and then calling his law offices.

Long before the Cuban Revolution moved in an explicitly socialist

direction, the new Cuban government instituted a thorough-going land

reform which gave -- with priority given to formerly landless peasants

-- all willing to till their land title to that land (with IRNA

established as an agency providing the low-interest loans and

knowledge / advice need to practice that occupation). Those modest

measures earned the then-new Cuban leadership the wrath of

Washington.

As one reads the article below about "A man who has evicted more

tenants than any other human being on the planet Earth. [and] has

never been busier, one of Cuba painted in the background for

contrast: Some may see a particular note of irony in that fact that

Cuba, the country whose revolutionary government and ruling party make

no attempt to disguise their desire to eliminate the system based on

private proverty, has the highest rate in the world of people holding

legal title to their residences, 85+%. I, by contrast, see in a the

product of a triump of a revolution which is also responsible for many

other gains: Cuba has outlawed foreclosures, INCLUDING evictions for

failure to pay to time on one's residence or farm. (While paint is

chipping off the four walls of many older (and not so old) Cuban

buildings, a chip on someone's shoulder cannot cause a Cuban family to

lose the four walls in which they live.

While one L.A. lawyer "shows [130,00+] renters the door," by contrast,

the country in which a revolution had shown the Yankee (and other)

imperialists the door, Cuba, a county run workers, farmers, and the

allies (including renters), has outlawed absentee land ownership,

foreclosures, etc.

After posting a reprint of an article about estimates of the number of

homeless people in U.S.apporaching 3 million, including 1,500+ women /

children homeless just in my home county of Los Angeles, I've reason

to recall a billboard which I saw while I was in Havana, Cuba (i.e., a

country where billboards are relatively rare): The rough translation

from the Spanish is: "More than 200,000,000 fo the world's child go

to bed homeless. Not one of them lives in Cuba."

-- Barry Schier

{Article}

COLUMN ONE

He shows renters the door

By Jessica Garrison, Times Staff Writer

March 14, 2007

Dennis Block

'I think my position is righteous. The average landlord is not a rich

individual.'- Dennis Block.

Dennis Block seemed glued to his black leather chair, his coffee

untouched, apparently impervious to physical needs such as the

bathroom or food, taking one landlord's phone call after another.

Almost all the callers wanted the same thing: to evict their tenants.

In a DVD he gives to landlords, Block describes himself this way: "A

man who has evicted more tenants than any other human being on the

planet Earth."

He has never been busier.

Zooming property values have sent rents skyrocketing more than 25% in

four years citywide and even higher in rapidly gentrifying areas. But

hundreds of thousands of tenants are protected by rent-stabilization

laws, which limit rent increases to 4% a year. When the tenant moves,

market rates can take effect - but tenants can be evicted only with

good cause.

That's where Block comes in. He has dedicated his considerable

creativity and intelligence to helping landlords evict tenants from

rent-stabilized buildings. He boasts that his firm has filed more than

130,000 cases since 1980, a year after rent stabilization went into

effect. He helps landlords identify minor violations - a pet fish in

an aquarium, a brightly painted bathroom, an extra occupant - to toss

out long-term tenants who are paying below market for their homes.

Tenant advocates tend to turn red with rage at the mention of Block's

name. They say that in a city with a shortage of affordable housing,

Block's efforts leave people with nowhere to go and in danger of

becoming homeless. Worse, his example is followed by many other

lawyers and landlords. "He puts people on the street totally turns

communities upside down.... I think it's contemptible," said Brett

Terrell, the director of advocacy for the Inner City Law Center, a

nonprofit that works with tenants being evicted.

Block, 55, greets such criticism with indignation.

"I think my position is righteous," he said. "The average landlord is

not a rich individual.... Under rent control, unlike any other business

on planet Earth, a landlord is being ordered to support other

individuals totally at his own costs. This is not fair."

Evicting rent-stabilized tenants, he says, is his "patriotic duty."

Even his critics agree that no one does it better than Block. A legal

aid lawyer once joked that if a building had rats, Block could find a

way to evict the tenants on the grounds that the vermin were pets.

"Line," he yelled one recent morning in his office, a sign to his

staff that he was ready to take a call.

"This is ... " he paused for effect, making his listener wait "Dennis

Block."

Sometimes, the landlords don't believe they are actually talking to

Dennis Block, and Block has to convince them. Sometimes, they aren't

sure he exists, such is his Oz-like stature as Los Angeles' wizard of

evictions.

But this caller, the irate owner of a five-unit building in West Los

Angeles, launched right into his troubles. One of his tenants was in a

rent-controlled unit, and he wanted to "serve her with a 60-day notice

to get the [expletive] out."

Block nodded, as if he understood the impulse. But, unfortunately, he

told the landlord, "that is not a proper notice" under the city's rent

control laws.

The landlord paused, then offered up a litany of complaints about the

tenant in hopes Block could find grounds for eviction. She'd refused

to sign a new rental agreement. Block shrugged. "She doesn't have to,"

he said.

How about the fact that she had asked for interest on her security

deposit? Block made a sardonic face. "She's got a good point there."

The landlord tried again: She'd scraped off the textured paint on her

ceiling. Could she be evicted for that?

Block, whose bright blue eyes animate his thin face, leaned forward,

interested. But when he learned it had happened months earlier, he

sighed. "Talk to me about something recent."

The landlord thought for a second, then said he had noticed the tenant

had taken out her smoke alarms.

"The smoke detectors is a good one," Block said, promising to send out

a notice immediately. If the tenant didn't fix the problem in three

days, she could be out.

MORE than two-thirds of the city's 750,000 apartments are covered

under rent stabilization. Most people who get evicted leave quietly -

they've paid their rent late or violated their lease in some other

way, so when served with a notice, they pack up. Legal aid lawyers can

help only a small fraction of the more than 50,000 tenants evicted

each year in Los Angeles County, and they choose their cases

carefully, usually taking on only the fights they think they can win.

On this morning, over the next 90 minutes, Block took nearly two dozen

calls.

In most cases, they ended with Block's computer already printing out

forms to start an eviction case - but not always. To one landlord who

said his tenant promised to fix up his unit in exchange for lower rent

and then hadn't done any work, Block replied, "OK, you've got nothing.

The next time you have a tenant proposing doing anything other than

paying rent, take your head and hit it against the wall."

Other times, however, Block seemed to take pleasure in sticking it to

the people who had stiffed his clients.

For a landlord who complained she had not collected back rent in a

victorious eviction case against a tenant, Block pledged to file a

judgment even though it was unlikely the tenant would ever pay. "At

least you have the satisfaction of knowing you messed her credit up,"

he said.

"Good," the landlord responded. "I like your thinking, Dennis. I

always have."

Block argues that the city's rent-stabilization laws keep him in

business by creating conditions in which some landlords cannot make a

profit, and in some cases can't even make their mortgage payments,

unless they evict their tenants and replace them with people who can

pay the market rate.

One tenant advocate called him "the Henry Ford of evictions" because

of the breathtaking efficiency of his office in processing cases.

Another, UCLA law professor Gary Blasi, said he is a "very sharp

lawyer ... exceptional in terms of his creativity in finding and

exploiting loopholes."

Block's office computer system has turned evictions into a high-volume

business. He takes such pride in the system, which he helped design,

that he pauses lovingly before the server while conducting a tour of

his office. Legal notices that can culminate in an eviction are

generated instantly. Landlords can track their cases on his website.

Block compares it to Southwest Airlines' website. Only, he says, his

is better.

Most clients don't set foot in Block's office, where the reception

area is decorated with community service commendations from the City

Council and county Board of Supervisors for his work with the

Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles. At another spot hangs a

photograph of someone being evicted on New York's Lower East Side at

the turn of the 20th century.

There is also a sign warning clients: "Meetings with an attorney are

subject to a charge of up to $150 per 30 minutes ... in addition to any

charge for legal services."

A simple eviction will cost landlords about $100 plus court costs of

around $400. If one of Block's attorneys has to go to court, that fee

jumps to $350 in attorneys' fees, plus court costs. If a case goes to

a jury trial, fees go way up. But most don't - in part because most

tenants don't have lawyers and don't fight back.

In rare cases, Block winds up in extended legal battles.

The Inner City Law Center fought his office for weeks on behalf of

Nazlu Stepanian, a disabled woman who has lived in her Hollywood

apartment for 26 years, now paying $469 for a one-bedroom, which is

significantly below market. The building was recently sold to a new

owner, a Block client, who said Stepanian hadn't paid her rent on time

and served her with eviction papers. Lawyers for Stepanian said that

Block and the landlord seized the pretext that Stepanian's rent was a

few days late to force her from her home so they could raise the rent.

"It was unjust," said Betsy Handler, litigation director for the

center. A judge ruled Feb. 28 that Stepanian could stay in her

apartment.

BLOCK knows Los Angeles well. He grew up in Hollywood and went to

Fairfax High School. He met his wife, Ida, near there when he offered

her a ride home. They've been married for 32 years. Their political

views sometimes clash - Ida worked as a schoolteacher in poor

neighborhoods before quitting to stay home with their three children.

It was Ida's father who gave Block his first eviction case. While

Block was still in law school, he helped his father-in-law evict some

tenants from a building he owned.

When he graduated from the law school at Whittier College in 1976, he

went into business with another lawyer, Michael Katz, planning to open

a general practice. But then the city of Los Angeles passed its rent-

stabilization law, and Block and Katz found they had more than enough

work handling evictions alone. Katz left the business in 1988.

Block rises each morning at 3:35, which he says gives him enough time

to drink coffee, head to the gym and be at his desk by 7. He's there

until 4 or 5 p.m. He rarely takes lunch. He rarely leaves the phones

for any reason.

Michael Gilbert, a real estate agent and friend for more than two

decades, said he does not find Block's obsession with work

particularly remarkable.

"He wants to make a lot of money, I think. He loves his job, and he

has a passion for it, and he makes money," Gilbert said, noting that

Block did not grow up rich. "It's just the ambition and the idea that

you never want to go broke."

Aside from work and his family, Block has few passions.

He has a tennis court at his Calabasas home, and he sometimes plays

with friends, although Gilbert joked that Block is too competitive and

he won't play with him anymore.

Block has Lakers season tickets and seems to have near perfect recall

of every game. Before heading to his seats he often has dinner at the

Palm restaurant, where on a recent night he sat sipping martinis,

eating steak and discussing O.J. Simpson and Anna Nicole Smith with

two old friends.

But even these topics circled back to evictions.

On the subject of Anna Nicole Smith, his friend Zachary Lawrence

quipped that Block "is to evictions what Anna Nicole is to large

brassieres." As for Simpson, Block said, "if they couldn't convict, at

least they could have evicted him."

Block said he is so dedicated to his work, he hates even the idea of

vacation. This spring, he said, Ida is making him go to Cabo San

Lucas, but he thinks he'll be able to bear it because he has figured

out a way to bring his phone and hook up his computer system so he can

work from his hotel room.

Despite his love for his job, there's one place Block seldom goes: to

court. Instead, he sends one of the nine lawyers on his staff.

On any given day, courtrooms in Los Angeles County hear dozens of

eviction cases, and it's not unusual for nearly a third of those to be

handled by Block's firm.

A recent Friday in Department 97 in the downtown civil courthouse was

no exception. Of 35 eviction cases on calendar; 11 were Block's. The

seats in the courtroom were filled with families facing eviction. One

worried-looking couple took turns holding a sleeping baby.

Toward noon, a commissioner sent one case to another courtroom. John

Greenwood, one of Block's attorneys, got up and headed down the

corridor.

He didn't get far before he was waylaid by a lawyer who represents

tenants.

"Why doesn't Dennis Block ever come here?" Daniel Bramzon demanded.

"I'm challenging Dennis Block to a jury trial."

Greenwood, a head taller than Bramzon, stopped and snorted. "Do you

see Norman Schwarzkopf in battle? Dennis Block is the general. We are

the lieutenants. We keep the system working."

"Hah," Bramzon answered. "He keeps the system working by kicking out

poor Mexicans." Bramzon took a step toward Greenwood. "He's scared of

me."

Greenwood snorted again. "No one's scared of you." He paused, then

delivered his kicker: Dennis Block never comes to court because "he's

too busy making money."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

On Mar 18, 1:48 pm, PL <pl.nos...@pandora.be> wrote:

> Authorities want to evict family after 18 years

>

> HAVANA, Cuba - March 13 (Ahmed Rodr

"Barry Schier" <bschier@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:1174262472.944422.143870@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

> PL, ever with his Internet shovel knee-deep in mud,

"mud" meaning abuses created by your favorite dictator, no?

> believes that his efforts have enabled hi to dig up a couple of articles

> re Cubans

> being evicted

more than a "couple", actually more than a couple of hundred

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaVerdad/msearch?query=desalojo+OR+evict&submit=Search&charset=UTF-8

and including reports by human rights organizations like Amnesty

International

(snip)

> Long before the Cuban Revolution moved in an explicitly socialist

> direction, the new Cuban government instituted a thorough-going land

> reform which gave -- with priority given to formerly landless peasants

(snip)

and then moved to take it all away using all means to force them to go in to

Stalinist type "cooperatives", no?

(snip)

> After posting a reprint of an article about estimates of the number of

> homeless people in U.S.apporaching 3 million, including 1,500+ women /

>children homeless just in my home county of Los Angeles, I've reason

propaganda reasons you mean.

> to recall a billboard which I saw while I was in Havana, Cuba (i.e., a

> country where billboards are relatively rare): The rough translation

> from the Spanish is: "More than 200,000,000 fo the world's child go

> to bed homeless. Not one of them lives in Cuba."

(snip)

Which is a lie.

A lie from Barry Schier that I have exposed various times in the past.

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.cuba/search?q=%22Not+one+of+them+lives+in+Cuba%22+author%3Apl&start=0&hl=en&filter=0

Here are some pictures:

http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=9022

Madre Duerme en el Parque Con Sus Hijas Peque

"Barry Schier" <bschier@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:1174262472.944422.143870@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

> PL, ever with his Internet shovel knee-deep in mud, believes that his

> efforts have enabled hi to dig up a couple of articles re Cubans

> being evicted

(snip)

Eviction

Eviction is another less common method of repression used by the authorities

to suppress dissidence.

Victims are ordered to leave their homes and reportedly sometimes

transferred to crowded shelters for

the homeless. Amnesty International is concerned that incidents in which

eviction is threatened or

carried out allegedly for political motives or as a means of suppressing

freedom of expression,

association and assembly undermine respect for the principles articulated in

article 12 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This article states that ''no one shall be subjected to arbitrary

interference with his privacy, family,

home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation,'' and

other related rights.

For example, in August 1999, as well as being temporarily detained,

opposition activist

Ram