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Cody Recker and Jessica Perez loved the Boyle Heights rental. Lots of warts.
The pipes were broken and raw sewage was sprayed on the floor. The floor and foundations fell apart, bringing in a horde of mice and fleas. The basement was flooded 14 times and the attic had so many leaks that the mushrooms sprouted from the bedroom ceiling.
They filed these claims in lawsuits against their landlord, invitation home. Over the course of the ten years of tenancy, the pair said they had appealed to the company to fix the Rittany in question. But after years of naked patch work done by claiming they were unlicensed contractors for years, the house was uninhabitable.
In 2023, Invitation Holmes acknowledged the damage and urged them to go out, claiming that repairs were needed, Recker said. At the time, LA allowed evictions for substantial modifications.
But the house was never fixed. When the couple moved last March, the house was on sale the same month.
“We were betrayed left and right,” Tokker said.
The former homes of Boyle Heights in Recker and Perez were selling them in lieu of renovations by their landlords.
(Cody Recker)
The litigation invitation home and its lawyers declined to comment on this article. They have not yet responded to the lawsuit claim.
The couple’s complaints are one of thousands of people against Invitation Homes, the country’s largest detached homeowner. Last year, the Dallas-based property management company (which owns or manages more than 100,000 homes in the US) owns or manages more than 11,000 homes in California alone, but agreed to pay $3.7 million, paying price adjustment cases and $48 million, and to settle $48 million to resolve unpublished junk fee investigations.
“It’s really frightening how Invitation Holmes treated Recker and Perez,” said Joseph Tobener, the tenant rights lawyer who represents the couple in the lawsuit. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and the conditions are as bad as I’ve seen.”
Tobener said the situation was a direct result of the corporateization of homes, with large corporations and investors buying as many detached home stocks as possible in attempts to rent a home.
After the 2008 housing accident, companies such as Blackstone Inc., which created the invitation home in 2012, began buying and converting seized single-family homes into rentals. The situation has grown to a new extreme during the pandemic, when the hot housing market became a feeding frenzy for investors. According to Redfin, in the second quarter of 2021 alone, the number of home assets purchased by businesses reached an all-time high of 67,943.
“These companies do whatever they need to do to report high returns to investors,” Tovener said at the expense of tenants.
Cody Recker and Jessica Perez had to store many of their belongings in their garage at a rental home in Pasadena, a year after being illegally kicked out of a rental home in Boyle Heights.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The Recker and Perez lawsuit, which ju judges will be listening to in June 2026, casts a string of accusations with business landlords, including negligence, illegal evictions, tenant harassment, breach of contracts and unfair business practices.
When Recker first moved into the house in 2014, everything looked great. Built in 1908, this aging was found, but it had two stories and six bedrooms and three bathrooms over 2,312 square feet.
When Perez moved in with the towker in 2020, the house was still habitable, but flooding was becoming an issue. With each rain, the walls, floors and carpets get wet, creating a moldy, foul smell, according to the lawsuit. Recker used Shop-Vac to remove an average of 35 gallons of water from the basement with each storm.
“We complained and issued work orders, but they were either removed or pushed back on the tenant portal,” he said, reflecting his claim in the lawsuit.
Over the next few years, Recker and Perez noticed signs that the house was changing, according to the lawsuit. The kitchen floor was sinking, the countertops separated from the backsplash, and the foundation of the garage was cracked.
The swamp-like state brought about problems like swamp-like. The fleas broke into the house, bit them in their sleep, and the rain leaked through shingles into the attic, sprouting a herd of mushrooms, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleges that mushrooms germinated from the ceiling after rain leaked into the attic of the Boyle Heights home.
(Cody Recker)
After years of deterioration, Invited Housing dispatched engineers in October 2023 to investigate the property. Two months later, they received a call from the company.
“This house is not safe, so you need to leave as soon as possible. The sooner the better,” said an agent at the company.
When asked if they could return after repairs were made, the agent said no as the process could take six months or a year.
Towker and Perez didn’t know what to do. They were happy with the $3,362 rent and the house was big enough to hold all the equipment needed for a career in the film industry. But by then the place had practically fallen apart.
For the next three months, the company called them every few days, urging them to leave, the lawsuit said.
“Every other day I got texts and calls saying, ‘We need you guys right now,” Recker said.
Meanwhile, it is said that the story of Invitation Holmes has changed. According to the lawsuit, during a walkthrough of the house, an agent at the company said, “To be honest, I feel they’re trying to sell it. There’s no way to fix this.”
Tobener said the invited home might have legally kicked the couple out of the market by submitting to permanently remove the rental, but those restrictions would have hurt the resale value as they were handed over to the new owner. So, according to the lawsuit, the company continued to urge them to leave under the premise of renovations.
On March 12, 2024, a few months later, the couple finally left. By March 31, it had competed in the market for $850,000 and sold two months later for $792,000.
“That was the cherry blossoms above,” Perez said. “I will never borrow from them again.”
Tovener said the property is subject to California Tenant Protection Act and the L.A. legitimate cause ordinance and will limit the reasons why landlords can oust tenants. At the time, substantial modifications were just a good cause of evictions, but the house was never remodeled.
“Instead of fixing something, they quickly listed it,” Tovener said. “That’s where they made their biggest mistake.”
The LA City Council will then vote in March to suspend “renovations” and temporarily ban evictions based on renovations, and the city will explore permanent legislation to help tenants maintain occupancy during remodeling.
Recker and Perez later moved into a two-bedroom home in Pasadena. Although it is a brink compared to the Boyle Heights location, they live in a new homeowner, the front house, and are happy with the old man who always asks if it needs to be fixed.
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