Cody Recker and Jessica Perez love their Boyle Heights rentals – Warts and all. Many warts.
The pipes cracked and sprayed the original sewage puddles on the floor. The floor and foundation collapsed, inviting swarms of mice and fleas. The basement was flooded 14 times and there were so many leaks in the attic that the mushrooms sprouted on the bedroom ceiling.
They filed these charges in a lawsuit against the landlord’s invitation house. During the past decade’s lease, the two said they begged the company to solve various problems. But after years of minimal patching work, they think they are unlicensed contractors, and the house is living in uninhabitable situations.
Recker said in 2023, the invitation house admitted the loss and urged them to move out, claiming that repairs were necessary. At the time, Los Angeles allowed major remodeling.
But the house has never been fixed. When the couple moved out last March, the house was List for sale The same month.
“We were betrayed by the left and right,” Recker said.
Recker and Perez’s former residence in Boyle Heights, their landlords are for sale rather than renovating.
(Cody Recker)
The Invitation House in the Litigation and its attorneys declined to comment on this article. They have not responded to the allegations in the lawsuit.
The couple’s complaint was one of the invitation houses that thousands of people opposed the largest single-family landlords in the United States. Just last year, the Dallas-based real estate management company (only owns or manages 100,000 homes in the U.S. and more than 11,000 homes in California) agreed to pay $3.7 million Resolve the price case and $48 million Resolve the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into so-called undisclosed waste fees, retaining safe deposits and illegal evictions.
“It’s shocking how the invitation house treats Recker and Perez,” said Joseph Tobener, a tenant rights lawyer. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and it’s as bad as I’ve seen.”
This situation is a direct result of housing companies, with large corporations and investors buying as many single-family stocks as possible when trying to rent out their homes.
After the housing crash in 2008, companies like Blackstone Inc., which created the invitation house in 2012, began buying foreclosed single-family homes and converting them to rent. This situation gradually evolved to new extremes during the pandemic, when the popular housing market became a crazy for investors. In the second quarter of 2021 alone, the number of residential properties purchased by the company reached 67,943. According to Redfin.
“These companies are doing their best to report high returns to investors,” Toberna said.
Cody Recker and Jessica Perez have to store many items in the garage every year after their illegal eviction in their rental home in Boyle Heights.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Recker and Perez’s lawsuit will be heard in a jury in June 2026, which will file a series of charges in the company’s landlords, including negligence, improper eviction, tenant harassment, breach of contract and unfair business practices.
Everything looked great when Recker first moved into the house in 2014. Built in 1908, it is aged, but has six bedrooms and three bathrooms, two floors and 2,312 square feet.
When Perez moved in with Recker in 2020, the house was still habitable, but flooding became a problem. According to the lawsuit, every time it rains, the walls, floors and carpets are soaked, causing a moldy odor. Recker uses Shop-Vac to remove an average of 35 gallons of water from the basement in each storm.
“We will complain and give work orders, but they will be removed in the tenant portal or back off,” he said.
According to the lawsuit, Recker and Perez noticed signs of the house being transferred over the next few years: the kitchen floor is sinking, the top of the counter is separated from the backsplash, and the garage foundation is breaking.
Swamp-like conditions bring problems like swamps. The lawsuit says fleas invade the houses, biting their sleep, rain seeps into the attic through the shingles and sprouts of mushrooms.
The lawsuit says mushrooms sprout on the ceiling after rains penetrated the attic of the Boyle Heights home.
(Cody Recker)
After years of deterioration, the Invitation House dispatched engineers to conduct inspections in October 2023. Two months later, they received a call from the company.
“This house is not safe, so we need to move out as soon as possible,” the lawsuit said.
When they ask if they can return after repairs, the broker says no, because the process can take six months or a year.
Recker and Perez are not sure what to do. They were happy with the $3,362 rent, and the house was big enough to have all the equipment needed for a career in the film industry. But by then, the place had actually collapsed.
The lawsuit says the company will call them every few days for the next three months, urging them to leave.
“Every other day, I get a text message or a phone call saying ‘We need you now.’
At that time, the story of the invitation house changed. During the drills for the house, one of the company’s agents said: “Honestly, I think they’re going to sell it.
Tobener said the invitation house could legally evict the couple by applying for permanent removal of rent from the market, but that would damage the resale value as the restrictions would be passed on to new owners. Therefore, according to the lawsuit, the company has been urging them to leave on the premise of renovation.
A few months later, on March 12, 2024, the couple finally left. By March 31, it was listed for $850,000 and sold for $792,000 two months later.
“That’s the cherry on the top,” Perez said. “I will never rent it from them again.”
The trustee said the property was California Tenant Protection Act and Los Angeles Just cause regulationswhich limits the reasons why landlords can evict tenants. At that time, major renovations were the legitimate reason for the eviction, but the house was never renovated.
“They didn’t repair anything, they listed it right away,” Toberna said. “That’s where they made their biggest mistakes.”
Since then, Los Angeles City Council has stopped “renovation” and voted in March Temporarily prohibited Renovation-based evictions are exploring permanent legislation in New York City to help tenants maintain their leases during the remodeling process.
Since then, Recker and Perez have moved to a two-bedroom home in Pasadena. It’s cramped compared to their location in Boyle Heights, but they’re happy with their new landlord, an old man living in the front house, always asking if anything needs to be fixed.
