Evictions

Two tenants of a condemned Pasadena apartment complex said Friday that the former owner of the building knew people were living and working there because he was paid rent as recently as last month. Walter Brent, 46, said he paid $535 a month to developer Raymond C. Jones from July, 1991, until last month for office space for his house cleaning business.

Historical advocates in San Juan Capistrano argued that the jagged hills of southern Orange County were deep under water when dinosaurs first roamed the Earth. No land-roaming dinosaur - neither a T. rex , stegosaurus nor apatosaurus - would have come through unless lost at sea. Many things have changed since the water washed away: Missionaries built a majestic cathedral, settlers established what would become one of California's oldest neighborhoods and a thick cloud of swallows would flock back to their nests here each spring.

A national community organizing group Thursday announced a campaign of civil disobedience designed to help families resist eviction and remain in their homes after foreclosure. Activists with ACORN, the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, said they would encourage people facing eviction to use text messaging and cellphones to quickly summon volunteers to their homes.

Lauryn Hill is facing eviction from her New Jersey mansion, according to reports circulating Friday. The eight-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter could be ousted from the South Orange mansion she's been living in since 2009. She stopped paying rent last month, TMZ reports, and now her landlord is trying to evict her. The former Fugees member was reportedly due in tenancy court earlier this week, according to South Orange Village Counsel Steve Rother ( via Patch). This proceeding is the latest in her personal financial struggles.

Los Angeles County residents saved a shooting victim from eviction this week. Rashaun Williams, 29, a home health aide and crossing guard, has been out of work since she was shot in both legs July 11 on Imperial Highway in South Los Angeles, caught in gang crossfire while visiting relatives. "It changed my life. It just changed everything completely," the single mother said. "I haven't been able to provide for my daughter like I want to." The Times reported Williams' story in August.

Citing concerns over whether its foreclosure paperwork was handled properly, Bank of America Corp. on Friday put evictions on hold in 23 states ? joining two rivals that have taken similar steps. The freeze is taking place in states where courts have jurisdiction over foreclosures, Bank of America said. It will not apply to California and 26 other states where foreclosures usually take place without a court order, but the action could put added pressure on banks to ease back on foreclosures more broadly amid high unemployment and continued turmoil in the housing market.

For 20 years, Renee Duncan has lived happily on a shady 12-acre ranch perched at the intersection of a paved street and a dirt road where cookie-cutter houses give way to rural homesteads. "You hit that dirt road and it's like taking a Valium," she says with a weary smile. But Duncan's life could be about to change.

In an apparent gambit to head off a legal challenge, the charity that operates a nursing home for entertainment industry workers said it has "no plans" to issue eviction notices to more than 100 residents. On the face of it, the announcement makes it seem as though the Motion Picture & Television Fund, operator of the Woodland Hills facility, is backpedaling from its decision to close the nursing home.

BEIJING - Forced evictions of poor and working-class people from their homes and property are accelerating in China, leading to violent disturbances and deaths, a report released Thursday by Amnesty International asserts. The human rights group said it had collected reports on more than 40 cases from January 2009 to January 2012 in which people resisting relocation by local governments had set themselves on fire, a sharp rise from previous years. Forced evictions are a well-documented issue in China.

The Cook County sheriff said Wednesday that he was ordering his deputies to stop evicting renters from foreclosed properties because many people his office has helped remove had done nothing wrong. "We will no longer be a party to something that's so unjust," a visibly angry Sheriff Thomas Dart said at a news conference. "We have to be sure that when we are doing this -- and we are destroying some people's lives -- we better be darned sure we're talking about the right people," he said.

When the government came for his land, Doan Van Vuon fought back --  first with the law, then with a shotgun. The fish farmer used rifles and explosives to battle police and soldiers seizing his converted swampland, injuring several officers in the clash. His resistance made him a hero to dispossessed peasants fed up with losing property in Vietnam, where the government can confiscate farms and give little in return. Street protests erupted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City over his case.

Question: When I moved into my apartment building about two years ago, I had a job as a physical therapy assistant. About three months ago, however, I had a bad bicycle accident, and now I can't work. Currently, my main source of income is disability insurance from my employer and state disability benefits. When the apartment manager saw me around the apartment complex during the day, she asked me whether I was still working. I explained to her that I was on disability. She seemed concerned about this and about a week later served me with a 60-day notice terminating my tenancy.

Low-income tenants fighting eviction will be disproportionately harmed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court plan to cut costs by reducing the number of courts handling landlord disputes, legal advocates for the poor say. The number of courthouses hearing such cases will be reduced from 26 to five throughout the county under a plan expected to be implemented by the end of June. Some people will have to travel up to 32 miles to litigate their cases, court officials said. For some, the trips could take several hours using public transportation and include transfers on multiple trains and buses, said Neal Dudovitz, executive director of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian activists were evicted Sunday from a tent village they had set up Friday on a large plot of land east of Jerusalem that Israel has designated as the site of a new settlement. Israeli police raided the site known as E-1 after the Israeli government told the Supreme Court that evacuating the activists was a top national security matter. The court Friday had delayed eviction proceedings, giving the government six days to explain why it would want to remove the protesters.

BEIJING - The men who barged through Shen Jianzhong's door probably thought it was a routine assignment: Break in and beat Shen's family into submission. Forced evictions to make way for real estate development are an everyday occurrence in China, and the family may have seemed no different from any in that situation. It was only after they forced open the door, threw Shen's wife to the ground and began to beat her that they learned the 38-year-old Shen and his 18-year-old son are kung fu masters.

The pace of foreclosures in California is the lowest in five years, and lenders are doing more to modify troubled home loans than ever before. But in South Gate, where Ana Casas Wilson lives with her husband, James, and her mother, Rebecca, the complex legacy of the subprime lending boom lingers and the harsh lessons for lenders and borrowers remain fresh. Casas Wilson, 50, now nearly bedridden with terminal breast cancer and cerebral palsy, has lived in the 86-year-old house for 40 years, but the Wilsons haven't made a mortgage payment since July 2008.

A threat to evict about three dozen Palestinians this week from their East Jerusalem homes to allow Jewish landowners to build housing in an Arab-dominated neighborhood is posing the latest threat to fragile Mideast peace talks. The ruling in the long-running dispute comes at a particularly sensitive time, as Israel faces mounting criticism for its decision to resume settlement construction in the West Bank after a 10-month moratorium. U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel on Tuesday in a diplomatic bid to keep Palestinians from quitting the talks in protest.

Israel's Supreme Court ordered the government Tuesday to delay closing offices at the Palestinian headquarters in Jerusalem for at least a week, defusing the issue until after the country's May 17 general election. Palestinians who had gathered outside the headquarters in the century-old building known as Orient House greeted the news with cheers and fireworks.

Awakened by the sound of gunshots, Fanny Paiz opened her window and looked across the dark Inglewood street to a nightmare scene of bloodied neighbors and a house in flames. "I heard a man yelling," Paiz said. "Then I saw a lady run out into the street with a child in her arms. She was bleeding. She was standing in the middle of the street with the child, whose face was covered in blood. She fell down, screaming, 'He's shooting me. He's shooting me.' " Three other shooting victims were in the house, all members of the same family who police say were attacked before dawn Saturday by a rampaging neighbor who was being evicted.

BEIJING - Forced evictions of poor and working-class people from their homes and property are accelerating in China, leading to violent disturbances and deaths, a report released Thursday by Amnesty International asserts. The human rights group said it had collected reports on more than 40 cases from January 2009 to January 2012 in which people resisting relocation by local governments had set themselves on fire, a sharp rise from previous years. Forced evictions are a well-documented issue in China.