Governor Thwarts Eviction of Disabled Monrovia Residents
By Terry Miller
Published: Sunday, September 20th, 2009
11th Hour Intervention Spurred by Newspaper Reports
Following the appearance of an article in the Los Angeles Times last week, as well as an article printed nearly three weeks prior in this paper, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared Friday morning at the Regency Court building in Monrovia where he announced his plans to stop the evictions.
Regency Court Tenants had been given thirty day eviction notices from the management company late last month.
The 30 day notice, issued from Professional Property Management, LLC, a division of Star Holdings of Illinois, LLC also allegedly purged all developmentally disabled individuals from its waiting list for vacancies.
Attempts to contact Gerald Walters of the Property Management Corp. who manages the units have gone unanswered.
As tenants and supporters gathered outside the Regency Court that August day, people held photos of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who devoted her life helping end some of the obstacles the Developmentally Disabled by founding Special Olympics.
This was apparently the driving force behind the Governor’s action.
Apparently, news of these Monrovia residents plight took more than three weeks to get to the Governor’s desk, and it seems that his office only became aware of the evictions after an article appeared in the Los Angeles Times early last week.
The Monrovia Weekly was the first newspaper to print the story and publish it online. Currently, Beacon Media staff are attempting to better relations between the newspaper and the Governor’s Office.
Said Editor John Stephens of the issue, “It is inspiring to see the impact newspaper reporting can have on public policy makers in times of such community distress. I only wish that the Governor’s office was more attentive to smaller, community-oriented papers. ”
The Times can’t do it all, and I shudder to think what might have happened had they not picked up the story, and ours had continued to go unnoticed,” said Stephens.
Here’s coverage of the press conference, courtesy of the fellas over at KGEM-TV:
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