LA officials join Silver Lake tenants fighting for a day in court

Two working-class immigrant families in Silver Lake have fought eviction for over five years. 

Last month, Judge Cherisse Heidi A. Cleof decided to close the case of the two families who have lived in their homes for more than 30 years. 

Cleof, who was appointed to serve in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year, granted the landlord’s motion for summary judgment, a request made to decide a case without a full trial, asserting that there were no further relevant disputes in the family's housing case.

Residents continue to demand the right to a fair trial after facing eviction under the Ellis Act. Last Wednesday morning, affected tenants, housing rights advocates and city representatives gathered outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse to demand a fair trial for two families who have fought eviction for over five years. 

Recently, Julio Cienega and his wife, Maria Anes Soliz, one of two families facing eviction, gained city support in their organizing efforts. 

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council District 13 (CD-13) office, represented by councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, joined the fight to demand thatCleof reopen the families' housing case and grant them a motion for a fair trial.

“It is illegal for landlords to buy properties and then harass and intimidate tenants into leaving so they can flip their units for higher rents. Our office will not stand idly by as long-term tenants are pushed out of their homes and into the streets,” said Sachin Medhekar, policy director of housing, homelessness and public safety for Soto-Martínez's office. “These tenants have been in their homes for decades. Once their property was sold, they began sharing with our office deeply troubling accounts of behavior by their new landlord that would amount to gross violations of many of the tenant protections our city has adopted.”

Housing rights advocates argue that the Ellis Act is a “silent cancer” that is rapidly displacing long-term tenants who are living in rent-stabilized units. 

“Our homes are not businesses that landlords and investors can take without considering people's lives. Housing is a human right,” Soliz said on Wednesday. 

The two affected families, organized as the North Occidental Tenants Association with the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), have fought three rounds ofEllis Act evictions since landlord Farid Muhammad purchased their homes in 2021.

The Ellis Act is a 1985 California state law intended to help mom-and-pop landlords who were permanently leaving the rental business. With the Ellis Act, landlords could legally evict residential tenants if they withdrew the property from the rental market. 

According to UCLA's Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, the loss and replacement of rent-stabilized housing in L.A. is in fact tied to Ellis Act filings. 

According to the 2025 research, only 26% of rent-stabilization ordinance removals through Ellis Act filings are tied to known affordable replacement development projects. 

Medhekar said that, like the Cienega and Soliz families, there are thousands of families across L.A. who are also being terrorized by landlords that use the Ellis Act to flip properties or re-rent them at much higher market rates.

"We are calling on the court to grant their motion for a jury trial,” Medhekar said. 

A hearing for a motion for a new trial will take place later on November 9 at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in DTLA at 1 p.m.