Tenant Organizer Faces Retaliation of K3 Holdings

Andrew Elrod is a tenant organizer in Los Angeles facing criminal charges in retaliation for organizing with his neighbors. Andrew has poured so much into the LA tenants’ movement. Now, we must support him in his own time of need. Donate now to help cover Andrew’s costly legal expenses and support tenant justice in LA.

Andrew Elrod is both a tenant and an organizer of the K3 Tenant Council—a project of the larger Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU). The K3 Tenant Council is a multiracial, multi-ethnic collective of tenant associations living and organizing in buildings owned and managed by K3 Holdings, a notorious corporate slumlord that owns over 44 apartment buildings and houses over 2,000 tenants and their families across Los Angeles. Our Council is resisting the violent displacement by our landlord and fighting for our right to have safe and habitable homes.

K3 Holdings has a blueprint for displacement: After acquiring rent-stabilized buildings, K3 Holdings makes these buildings uninhabitable by canceling maintenance and janitorial contracts, firing on-site management, turning off hot water and elevator service, and withholding contact information for tenants. Many tenants go months without knowing who their new landlord is. Once tenants turn to the city for help, K3 Holdings managers retaliate against those who file complaints by entering units without notice and permission. It is in this context of unequal power that the company begins to ask for "voluntary" agreements for long-term tenants—many of whom are senior citizens and immigrants who do not speak English—to leave their destroyed homes.

Andrew became active in our struggle when his building was bought by K3, which immediately canceled all service contracts. Since then, Andrew has been involved in direct actions, growing our base, and organizing an ongoing rent strike in order to encourage K3 to come into compliance with the law. On July 20, Andrew led a direct action at his building in protest of K3’s destructive renovation.

In retaliation for defending his home, K3 is not only attempting to evict him for nuisance—but they also filed a police report which led to Andrew now fighting a criminal burglary charge on top of a civil charge.

The growing power of our movement threatens landlords like K3 Holdings. Already, the Kadisha-Nazarian family which controls the company have ordered their lawyers to change the name of the holding company to Alpine LA Properties. News outlets like ABC7, KTLA, Univision, L.A. TACO, Jacobin and Capital & Main have covered the company's predations and tenants' struggle to defend themselves against it. Now that tenants in so many buildings are organized, company managers have turned to the legal system and the police to aggressively disrupt our organizing and accelerate the already meteoric pace of evictions in the city. Landlords spend massive sums of cash on targeting tenant organizers individually with frivolous evictions and police reports. The number of eviction notices and unlawful detainers filed against tenants, especially those in direct retaliation to organizing efforts, has risen dramatically in the past year.

As a result of K3’s legal harassment, Andrew will now have to pay:

Fee for the bailbondsman: $1,200

Deposition fees for eviction defense: $6,000

Subpoena fees for eviction defense: $1,200

Criminal defense legal fees through pre-trial hearing: $15,000

Criminal defense legal fees if the District Attorney goes to trial: $15,000 or more

He needs your help to support his legal defense and show slumlords like K3 that the growing movement for tenant justice cannot be crushed by harassment and legal intimidation.

Your donation here will go straight to paying Andrew’s legal expenses. If the District Attorney drops the case before trial, any funds not spent on legal fees will be donated to the Legal Defense Fund of the Los Angeles Tenants Union.

Tenant solidarity means supporting and fighting for one another in the face of landlord retaliation and harassment. Tenants united will not be defeated ✊ #FreeAndrew!