It’s a modern-day story of David vs. Goliath.

Three long-time tenants of homes within the path of the now-defunct, 6.2-mile 710 Freeway extension fought the mighty Caltrans in court and won.

Rosarie Mata, who has lived in the path of the 710 in a Caltrans home for 25 years with her parents, siblings and children and seen on Friday, March 29, 2019, gets to stay after her sister won a judgment to buy the home on Berkshire Avenue in South Pasadena at the original price Caltrans paid for it. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Rosarie Mata, who has lived in the path of the 710 in a Caltrans home for 25 years with her parents, siblings and children and seen on Friday, March 29, 2019, gets to stay after her sister won a judgment to buy the home on Berkshire Avenue in South Pasadena at the original price Caltrans paid for it. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Sound The gallery will resume in seconds

Rosarie Mata, who has lived in the path of the 710 in a Caltrans home for 25 years with her parents, siblings and children and seen on Friday, March 29, 2019, gets to stay after her sister won a judgment to buy the home on Berkshire Avenue in South Pasadena at the original price Caltrans paid for it. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

The renter of this home on Prospect Avenue in South Pasadena won a judgment to buy the home at the original price Caltrans paid for it. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

The renter of this home on Monterey Road in South Pasadena won a judgment to buy the home at the original price Caltrans paid for it. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)



After decades of waiting, Angeles Flores, Marysia Wojick and Priscela Izuierdo received an offer from Caltrans last year to buy the homes they’ve been renting for a price that was hundreds of thousands of dollars less than any home on the market in tony South Pasadena, yet at a price that took into account inflation.

They objected to the markup and sued, saying as low-income residents who qualify for the affordable price program to buy some of the 460 homes along the 4.5-mile path of the killed extension, the homes should sell for what Caltrans paid originally.

Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff agreed with the three women. The homes should be offered to them at the original acquisition price — no more, no less.

“The Caltrans policy of adjusting the original acquisition price adjusted for inflation to determine the affordable sales price for the petitioners’ homes is an underground regulation and is therefore nullified,” Beckloff wrote in his ruling handed down March 11.

Beckloff ruled that Caltrans came up with the idea of upping the sales price — sometimes six or seven times the acquisition price — on its own. In other words, officials made it up. “Caltrans cannot use its pricing methodology,” Beckloff wrote, saying the bureaucracy was acting in a “type of ‘quasi-legislating’ power …”

The ramifications may make for the lowest priced, single-family home sales in Southern California.

For example, Flores will now be offered to buy the house she’s lived in for decades for $23,733, the price Caltrans paid in 1968, instead of the price adjusted for inflation of $171,547. The house on Berkshire Avenue has a fair market value of a little more than $1 million, Caltrans reported in its court brief.

Wojick will be able to buy the home she’s living in for $32,600, acquired for that same price in 1973, instead of $193,575. This house on Prospect Avenue has a fair market value of $1.1 million, according to Caltrans.

Izquierdo’s home was acquired by Caltrans in 1992 for $314,000, which now becomes the selling price for this tenant. The house on Monterey Road has a fair market value of just over $1 million, Caltrans reported.

The median price for a single-family home in Los Angeles County was $505,000 as of Feb. 19. The median home value in South Pasadena is almost $1.2 million, according to Zillow.

Caltrans tried to argue that selling any state-owned properties for less than the market value would be cheating the taxpayers. In its court briefs, the agency argued it had a fiduciary duty to not sell these properties at prices way below market value. Caltrans said it was “obligated and authorized” and later in its brief, that it was “mandated by law” to “adjust the original acquisition prices for inflation.”

Beckloff ruled for the women, saying the state has no authority to vary from what is known as the “Roberti Law,” a complex set of regulations that requires Caltrans to offer the homes to tenants living there for a certain period of time and at an affordable price who are low- and moderate-income. Of the 460 surplus properties, about tenants at 120 of them qualified for the affordable price program.

While Caltrans has until May 17 to appeal, the agency does not usually do so when it loses in court, said Chris Sutton, the Pasadena attorney who represented the tenants in the case and has been fighting for sale of the surplus homes for decades.

The ruling may allow more than 100 other tenants in the program to buy the homes they are living in at very, very low prices. Or, Caltrans may argue the ruling is limited to these three only.

It’s unclear what will happen next in a situation that continues to befuddle cities along the route and exacerbate tenants who have divorced, retired early or quit jobs just to keep their income low enough to afford to buy.

Caltrans didn’t walk away empty-handed. The court kept in tact covenants that will remain as liens on the property during a transfer of ownership. The tenant does not realize the full equity, only the appreciation from the sales price from the purchase to the next sale. Basically, for Flores and Wojick, about $900,000 in equity would go to a state agency charged with building affordable housing, called the California Housing Finance Agency.

Eight renters went ahead and entered escrow for the inflation-adjusted sales prices, Sutton said. In fact, two plaintiffs in the original complaint backed out after “feeling family pressure” to settle with Caltrans, Sutton said.

The victory may turn sour if Caltrans finds another way to block the sale at the lower, affordable price for the three women, he said.

The mostly Craftsman-style bungalows, located near Pasadena Avenue in Pasadena and along Meridian Avenue and on various cross streets in South Pasadena and in El Sereno, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, are often occupied by older adults. Many are living on Social Security and are fearful they or a family member will be denied the right to purchase even at an elevated price, so they don’t want to sue, he said.

“People are afraid of Caltrans figuring out a way to deny them the right to buy the property,” Sutton said.