Tuesday evening in Eagle Rock, used bookstore owners Jeremy and Debbie Kaplan were closing up shop for the day when a stranger walked through the entrance. He threw an envelope on the counter, said something like: “The building has been sold,” and walked out.
Inside the envelope, Kaplan received 30 days’ notice: the shop’s $1,200 monthly rent would increase to $2,805 on April 1, he had to decide if he would accept the price increase of more than 133% a month earlier, and if so he would need to agree to a three- to five-year lease. The letter arrived on February 17, which meant Kaplan had 11 days to accept the new landlord’s terms or leave.
“We couldn’t even consider it,” Jeremy Kaplan said. “That would be suicide.” The couple looked at the 680-square-foot shop. From floor to ceiling, more than 20,000 books were crammed into shelves, which he had built and stained himself about 20 years ago. “My first reaction was panic,” he said. “How do we get out of this place?”
His children grew up on Read Books (pronounced like color, as in: “These are not new books, these are previously read books.”) Jeremy said, and began to feel that they were being pushed out with bullying tactics. “We started getting angry. So the next day, we started looking into our legal rights.”
After searching the Internet, Kaplan found California’s Senate Bill 1103, the Commercial Tenant Protection Act, which passed last year. The law provides protections for “qualified commercial tenants” and requires landlords to give 90 days’ notice for rent increases of more than 10%.
When the Kaplans tried to contact the new property management company, Systems Real Estate was evasive, Jeremy said.
“This is a bill that protects commercial tenants, and it’s a fairly toothless bill because they don’t have to accept it unless you force them to accept it,” he said. Kaplan, with Sharon Croner, whose neighbor owns the vintage boutique owl talk Systems Real Estate is facing the same fate, wrote Citing SB 1103. He had the letter certified and enclosed his rent check for the next month.
In response, the 30 day notice was revised to 90 days. Systems Real Estate did not respond to The Times’ request for comment.
Kaplan had more time to scout the new location, but Jeremy quickly noticed a trend in Northeast Los Angeles. “There are vacant lots all over the place,” he said. “When we inquired, they were extremely expensive, about $5 more per square foot. The second thing we started to notice was that smaller stores like ours were going out of business or were priced exactly the same as we were.”
Jeremy Kaplan stands inside his bookstore on the last day Reed Books is open for business.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
forming an alliance
When Jeremy began posting about the plight of Read Books, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Many customers contacted said they wanted to help – the bookstore has been in Eagle Rock as long as they have.
“Not just condolences but calls to action from people I barely know,” he said. “Lawyers, journalists, activists, parents, children.”
Two days after being served the rent-hike notice, Kaplan and his supporters were formulating a plan to fight back — if not to save Reed Books, then to save other small businesses.
Save Northeast Los Angeles Shops was born.
Chris Newman, an immigrant rights attorney whose son learned to read from books purchased at an Eagle Rock shop, told The Times that he came to the group’s first official meeting with the intention of trying to save the bookstore.
“I was amazed to see so many people talking not only about Jeremy’s situation, but about the pandemic that small businesses are facing,” Newman said.
Jeremy arrived late to a coalition meeting in April.
He recently came from an event where he was able to talk to Mayor Karen Bass about the plight of small businesses and asked about the possibility of imposing a commercial vacancy tax on property owners who leave storefronts vacant for extended periods.
Jeremy said that, although sympathetic, the mayor shot him down too fast, saying no one in L.A. wants higher taxes.
A representative for Bass told the Times that under his leadership, “the city is focused on reducing red tape, increasing support for local businesses and pursuing solutions that address the broader affordability crisis.”
Signs against the fare increase have been put up outside Reed Books.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
precedent
Small businesses in San Francisco in March 2020, before the world shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic were struggling with rising rents Due to which storefronts became increasingly vacant. Then North Beach’s beloved corner gem, Cafe Sapor was informed about this. Like the Eagle Rockers, San Franciscans were simply mourning the loss of community. They started organizing.
Aaron Peskin, who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at the time, said that while there were many factors contributing to the vacancy issue, unviable property owners were the most common thread.
Peskin said, “Commercial landlords had incredibly unrealistic expectations about rents, and a small business could only sell a T-shirt or hamburgers or a service that the market would bear, and none of those could raise the rent.”
That year he authored Proposition D, a commercial vacancy tax ordinance that would apply to street-facing, ground-floor properties that are vacant more than 182 days a year. It passed with about 70% of the vote.
“I served on that Board of Supervisors for 17 years and it is my proudest piece of public policy,” Peskin said. “In the years since it passed, it’s working and has really helped our neighborhood commercial corridors recover after the pandemic. It’s been a rare quick success story.”
Protesters marched to Eagle Rock City Hall holding signs protesting against rent increases for small businesses.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
landlord
The question of why someone would buy a commercial property, raise rents so that current tenants are displaced and prospective tenants look elsewhere, only to gather cobwebs in a once-in-a-lifetime community center, has inspired myriad theories.
Peskin pointed out the impractical landlord mentality; An LA Council member suspected that landlords were after the tax breaks; An economics professor said he believed there was more going on and that tax benefits were probably not the driving factor; And one commercial real estate expert said landlords are likely setting prices for tenants so they can demolish buildings.
The Times contacted Dr. Ari Ukar, the new owner of the Eagle Rock Boulevard building, who did not respond.
Los Angeles City Council member Isabel Jurado, a former tenant rights attorney, told The Times that landlords can take advantage by claiming the vacancy as a loss on their taxes. “For landlords who have multiple commercial properties across a wide portfolio, a vacancy may be marked as a loss. In essence, when you file taxes and mark it as a loss, it reduces the total income generated. This is a perverse incentive to hold a vacancy.”
But Andrew Gradman, a tax attorney in Los Angeles, wasn’t convinced the tax incentive was enough to curb landlords’ appetite for the passive income of steady rent payments. “You have to consider the most reasonable basis, which is that these landlords think they can get a better tenant, or they think the lease will stand in the way of them getting some other better deal than, say, selling the entire building.”
Nick Quackenbos, a commercial real estate broker, said a possible motive for such price increases is a plan to tear down the building and build apartments in its place. He pointed to a recent landmark bill, state Senate Bill 79, which overrides local zoning laws to allow taller, denser buildings near major transit stops. The bill would go into effect July 1 statewide, but L.A. plans to delay citywide upzoning until 2030 by crafting special plans targeting 55 single-family and low-density areas that allow 4-16 unit buildings up to four stories tall.
The 55 areas are mostly in Central LA, West LA, the Eastside and the San Fernando Valley. While Eagle Rock isn’t what L.A. city planners are designating as an “opportunity center” just yet, Reed Books is located just a short distance from the upcoming Colorado/Eagle Rock station, a stop on the North Hollywood to Pasadena BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) line, which is scheduled to launch before the 2028 Summer Olympics.
“This bill is allowing things to happen that can disfigure a town like Eagle Rock,” Quackenbos said. “I’m sure that’s what you’ll find in the future: These spaces will become vacant, and suddenly there’s a foundation for a new apartment building to be built.”
Jeremy Kaplan talks with community members outside his store, Reed Books, about the issues facing small business owners.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
rally
Reed Books was about to close last weekend, and Kaplan wanted to go out with a bang. There was a single book in the store’s front window: Tavis Smiley and Cornel West’s “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto,” surrounded by signs reading “Forced Out!”, “Shame on Greedy Landlords,” and “Our Family Loves Reading Books.”
As Debbie sat at the register inside, helping the last of the shop’s steady flow of patrons, protesters gathered at the back of the building, holding homemade posters and waiting for Jeremy to speak. Crying he addressed the crowd.
Debbie Kaplan, co-owner of Read Books, hands out books to a customer.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
“Three months ago, when this all started, my initial action was to fight back, because fighting is my default setting. But I also felt… a fear of insignificance, of missing out, as if everything we’ve built over the past 19 years, often working seven days a week, would soon be destroyed and forgotten. The support you’ve given us over the past few months is a constant reminder that we’re all in this together.
“The real estate lobby is rich and powerful. They have more lobbyists than our representatives have on staff, but we are building a coalition to fight them.
“What’s at stake? The soul of Los Angeles.”
