LOS ANGELES – Residents of several buildings on Flower Drive in South Los Angeles marched Sunday, asking city leaders to intervene.

They say loopholes in the law allow corporate landlords to wage a war on rent control.

Protesters and residents alike say city leaders have promised the upcoming Olympics will be good for Angelenos. But they say that here in Exposition Park, where many of the events will take place, all it’s doing is speeding up gentrification.

Investors buying buildings on Flower Drive hoping to cash in are also being lured, they say. But they also force people out.

“I’m 71 years old and I can’t live on the streets.”

Pearl Scott says she is fighting for her life, joining the Flower Drive and LA tenants unions to reject her Ellis Act eviction and asking Mayor Karen Bass to do the same.

“I would say keep your promises about lowering the rent and not being evicted from their homes. The people who are leaving are living on the streets.”

After 14 years on the 3800 block of Flower Drive, near USC, she’s noticed she’ll have to move out of her $1,560-a-month apartment, but says the relocation fees aren’t enough to cover a new place to live. inhabited.

Ventus Group Real Estate bought the building and others and is using a loophole in the Ellis Act that does not allow wrongful eviction if the landlord goes out of the rental business.

Many protesters say the company has already evicted residents and demolished buildings across the street.

“They put those people out on the street, all of them, and they were sleeping on the sidewalk… they have nowhere to go,” said the CP activist.

“They’ve been planning for years to buy whole blocks of rent-controlled housing, push people out, replace them with students, with rich people who can pay double, triple, quadruple the rents,” he said Nico Dergni, LA Tenants Union.

The company’s president told us in a statement, “We followed the process required by state law.”

But protesters say the city needs to change the law, calling the move a rent-control war. And they say seniors and people of color are paying the price.

“The board should do what they are in a position to do, what is in their power. They should freeze all Ellis Act evictions to protect tenants in rent-controlled housing,” Dergni said.

“We just want to say to tenants in Los Angeles, if you get Ellis Act documents, that’s not the end of it. Don’t leave just because you have the documents. You have the right to request a one-year extension. And beyond that, if you organize with your neighbors, if you fight, if you fight, you can stay in your homes,” said David Albright of the LA Tenants Union.

And protesters also expressed frustration with the city council and Mayor Bass, who they accused of rubber-stamping what developers want.

We’ve reached out to City Hall for comment, but have yet to hear back.