A developer who owns luxury apartment buildings in Los Angeles is likely to lose his $100 million lawsuit against the city concerning the eviction moratorium, according to an attorney and local mayor.
“The courts have been backing the local and state governments on this based on the emergency order unless you’re a church,” said attorney Rex Parris, mayor of Lancaster. “Landlords should win but they likely won’t because an emergency order is still in place and courts are ruling in favor of the government, which is inexplicable to me. When does it end?”
As previously reported, Geoffrey Palmer is seeking to be reimbursed for losses that his building-management company incurred during the city’s eviction moratorium, which began some 18 months ago as a way to protect renters from coronavirus-related lockdowns.
“Geoffrey Palmer’s units are expensive,” Parris told the Southern California Record. “There's nothing cheap about them so this is rich people who aren’t paying their rent. If you're going to have a rent moratorium, have an application process where there is at least some review that the tenant really needs it.”
The Commercial Observer reported that LA County's eviction moratorium is scheduled to finish on Sept. 30 but the city of Los Angeles’ moratorium continues to be in effect with no end in sight because it is linked to a March 2020 emergency order.
“I don't think there should be a state of emergency,” Parris said. “I don't think that that's justified. You can't have an ongoing condition for over a year and still call it a state of emergency. If that were the case, why isn't everything an emergency? This is the new normal now. It's something the state legislature ought to deal with.”
The state’s ban on pandemic-related evictions was extended by Assembly Bill 832.
“How is this anything but a taking of private property by the government,” Parris said. “It's a due process case. Property is being taken just by fiat without due process of law.”
Palmer’s building-management company, GHP Management Corp, owns the Da Vinci, Ferrante, Medici and Orsini luxury apartments while his G.H. Palmer Associates owns some 15,000 Southland apartments.
"I've been to Geoffrey Palmer's $50 million home for a fundraiser and I've never seen anything like it. He’s not hurting,” Parris added. “What I really think Geoffrey Palmer is doing by filing this lawsuit is trying to force the government, the state, into paying all of these people's back rent. “