Some Renters Not at Home With Complex Changes : Housing: Renovations and rent increases at 548-unit Loma Palisades apartment complex are displacing many longtime tenants.

Eighty-year-old Leonard Henneveld admits that when millionaire Ernest Rady and his partners first bought the Loma Palisades apartments in July, he paid little attention. After 17 years in the sprawling Point Loma complex, the retired accountant figured it would take more than a new landlord to upset his life.

Then the rent went up 10%--from $600 to $660 for a two-bedroom unit and up to $680 for a three-bedroom. As part of a landscaping plan, Rady’s management company, American Assets Inc., poisoned the grass, turning it brown. Seventy of Henneveld’s neighbors were told they would have to move out to make way for renovations.

And then, to Henneveld’s amazement, a crew ripped the roof off the second-story unit he and his ailing wife share, showering their possessions with gravel and dirt. Henneveld made “a scene” in the management office and was recompensed eight days’ rent for the roofing fallout. But still, he has decided to move out.

“First, I decided, ‘I won’t pay a dime (in rent).’ But I won’t make a scene about it anymore. I have to think of my own heart,” he said, explaining that he plans to move by the end of this month. “The new owners don’t care. It’s an investment object, not a home.”

Henneveld is not alone. On recent weekends, the 30-year-old property--what some called Point Loma’s last truly affordable housing--has been dotted with moving vans and yard sales. Local liquor stores have noted a run on cardboard packing boxes, and Barnard Elementary School, many of whose students live in the 548-unit complex, has seen a decline in enrollment.

“Some of our families who have been with us for some time have indicated that they can’t afford the rent hike and they won’t be able to continue,” said Principal Pat McGann, who says the school has fewer kindergartners and first-graders this year than in the past. “We are monitoring it very carefully.”

A few residents even believe that the rent hike, which took effect Sept. 1, played a part in the Aug. 28 suicide of Lester Finkelstein, a 62-year-old grandfather and seven-year resident who drowned himself in one of the Loma Palisades pools. While he left no note, his roommate, Scott Rohter, says he is convinced that fear of homelessness made him do it.

“My roommate was down to his last few bucks,” said Rohter, who is leading a one-man rent strike, hanging a banner off his balcony that reads, “Rent Strike, Not Rent Hike.” “He didn’t want to be homeless and he was ashamed of having to borrow money from his family.”

Rady, a minority owner of the Padres, a director of Western Financial Savings Bank and chairman of the Insurance Company of the West, did not return telephone calls last week. But officials at American Assets, which manages 2,100 apartments countywide, firmly rejected the suggestion that they are ushering in an era of heartlessness at Loma Palisades. The repairs they are making are essential, they say, and even after the increase, rents remain lower than other apartments in the area.

“Change is difficult. And certainly some people that currently live there (will) not be able to continue to live there,” said Allen Garrett, an American Assets vice president who himself lived in Loma Palisades 23 years ago, when it was what he called still a “lovely, first-class garden-style apartment complex.”

“But due to the previous management’s lack of care for the property, it has turned into an eyesore--and could turn into a ghetto if something wasn’t done about it,” he said. “It is within a number of years or months before minor problems start turning into very major problems.”

“We assure you, it is all going to be worthwhile,” Mike Austin, the complex’s new resident manager, wrote to Henneveld and his neighbors last week in a memo commanding that they close the windows and doors in their non-air-conditioned apartments so workmen could water-blast the exterior paint. “Loma Palisades is going to be (once again) the place to live.”

But several tenants--among them single mothers, retirees and military personnel--lament that as Loma Palisades becomes the place to live, they will no longer be the tenants who live there. Most acknowledge that the dingy apartments could use improvement. But new roofs, remodeled kitchens, spiffier lawns and fresh paint will mean little, they say, to those who cannot afford to stay and enjoy them.

Rosalie Gilliland, a bartender and single mother of four, contends that is part of the new management’s plan--to clear out the current tenants to make way for upper-income residents.

“They’re blaming the condition of the building on the tenants--and equating tenants who make more money with a better quality of tenant,” she said, adding that since she was told to expect her 30-day “notice to vacate” just before Christmas, she, too, has been looking for new lodgings. “It’s becoming more and more clear: We’re not wanted here, folks. They’re doing everything to drive us out.”

Garrett denies this, saying that American Assets is doing “everything possible” to accommodate those people who already call Loma Palisades home. He admits, however, that the rents will likely go up again before the renovation process is over. Eventually, Garrett said, the company plans to charge $710 and up for a two-bedroom and $830 or more for a three-bedroom apartment.

Whatever the intent of such a hike, Gilliland says, the result will be the same: She will be priced out of Loma Palisades.

Even before the rent went up, Gilliland was skimping to make ends meet. In July, she put a deposit on a two-bedroom unit and told management she wanted to switch to a three-bedroom when one opened up. Anticipating how crowded things would be, she sent her youngest child to live with her sister--just until she could save a little to move into the bigger unit.

But when she picked up her keys on Aug. 1, she learned that new owners were raising the rents and that she would soon be asked to move out. With the moving van idling outside, she says she had little choice but to move in. But now, she is running out of hope.

“I’m living paycheck to paycheck. All the money I have goes right into survival,” she said, adding that she lives in fear of unexpected expenses, like her car breaking down. “Now, with the three-bedroom at $800 and up, I have no hope in hell of getting my baby back.”

Not everyone is so desperate. Many tenants are choosing to stay and move into the renovated units as they open. Those who can afford to pay more say the improvements will come not a moment too soon.

“It was going to crumble the way things were going,” said Queenie Murphy, who has lived at Loma Palisades since 1960. “I’m sorry for people who can’t pay the higher rent. But if we’re going to upgrade and renovate so we can be proud of how we live, then you have to, naturally, pay more. Let them get after the government to build more low-cost housing.”

When some residents came door-to-door trying to organize a tenant organization, Murphy says she gave $10. But she does not support those who bash the new management.

“I feel for them. It could happen to me,” she said. “But attacking men who want to invest money--that’s not right. They are not the ones to be attacked for improving the neighborhood. I think the new people have done all they can do. They’ve been cooperative, they’ve been humane. They’ve gotten rid of some of the undesirables, which I am happy about.”

Gilliland feels that while she doesn’t have much money, she should still be considered desirable.

“I’m a good tenant. I pay my rent. I don’t let my children destroy the property,” she said. “But this is tight for me. At $60 (more), I could probably hang on. But at $110 and up, there’s no way.”

Especially for Gilliland and others whose bare-bones budgets are barely balanced, the first edition of the Loma Palisades newsletter was hard to stomach. Published by the new owners, the September issue offers tenants cheerful suggestions about water conservation--not to mention an opportunity to “get rich on us” by winning $50 for each new tenant referred.

“Loma Palisades isn’t just an apartment building, it’s an apartment community, and we want everyone to be part of it,” the newsletter said, urging residents to submit their birthdays, wedding anniversaries and baby announcements for publication. Tenants who pay their rent on or before Oct. 1, it said, will be eligible to win $100--”You could be the next BIG WINNER,” the newsletter promised.

And then there were the “PROVEN STRESS REDUCERS,” a short list that included these helpful hints: “Get up fifteen minutes earlier in the morning. That way, when something goes wrong (and doesn’t it always) you’ll have more time to deal with it . . . Prepare for the morning the evening before . . . Don’t rely on your memory . . . Always carry a small pad of paper and a pencil or pen.”

“Stress reduction? Ha! If they want that, why did they raise the rents? It’s laughable,” said a woman in her 70s who asked that her name not be used because she is moving out and, after more than 20 years as a tenant, wants to get her security deposit back.

Garrett says he feels for such people, but wishes they would consider his side.

“The landlord is always caught in a vise. We’re caught in the middle because we’re the new guy, and thus the bad guy,” he said. “Not only do we not want to manage substandard properties, but by law we can’t. . . . If somebody didn’t step into this property, the county of San Diego would (soon) be saying, ‘You cannot rent the units.’

“Candidly, I’m very empathetic. But especially when you have senior citizens who are living in apartment units that are huge, on a cost-per-square-foot basis these are some of the lowest rents in the county,” Garrett said, noting that Loma Palisades units range from 950 to 1,200 square feet. “Usually senior citizens are looking for places that are a little smaller.”

If they weren’t already, they say they are now. Nanette Scherzer, a 57-year-old widow who has lived at Loma Palisades for 11 years, just finished moving from her two-bedroom apartment into a less expensive one-bedroom unit in another complex.

Scherzer didn’t want to leave the home she shared with her late husband. When he died three years ago, she recalls, the old management offered her a job in the rental office--a gesture of kindness that she has not forgotten.

The new management left a different impression. When she told them she could not afford the rent hike, she says, they “said, ‘Why don’t you get a roommate?’ I said, ‘I don’t like roommates.’ ”

With a fixed income of less than $1,000 a month, she had no choice. She hired a moving company, said goodby to her neighbors and piece by piece, sold off treasured possessions that will not fit in her new 600-square-foot home.

Once she unpacks, she will return her cardboard boxes to Loma Palisades--they’re hard to find these days, she says.

“I’ll empty them and pass them on to someone else,” she said.