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Nearly 700 rent-controlled tenants were evicted in Los Angeles City Council Districts 4 and 13 in the past five years under the Ellis Act—a 1985 California law meant to allow aging landlords to evict rent controlled tenants and retire, but one that activists say has increasingly been exploited by investors and developers as California rents rise—according to a Ledger analysis of city data.

But according to Larry Gross of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a Los Angeles based non-profit renters’ rights organization, that number only represents a small piece of the picture.

“What [the city’s data] represents is landlords who actually go through the Ellis eviction process, which means that they have to file a declaration with the housing department,” said Gross. “What we’re seeing more of though, is landlords who are avoiding the process altogether.”

Under the Ellis Act, landlords are required to provide tenants with a minimum of 120 days’ written notice and a resettlement fee—typically around $8,000, but sometimes as high as $20,000 depending on factors such as age, disability and income—if they plan to remove the building from the rental housing market, most commonly for a condominium conversion.

However, according to Gross, landlords can circumvent this process through “cash for keys” schemes, where tenants sign away their legal rights and voluntarily move in exchange for a cash settlement.

While cash for keys contracts are not illegal, Gross said, they can often be predatory, aimed at those who don’t understand their rights and are willing to accept less money and less notice than they are legally entitled to.

“Especially targeted are tenants that are seniors or have disabilities” because they are eligible for a year’s notice before they are evicted under Ellis, Gross said.

A 2016 city ordinance meant to address such issues now requires landlords to inform tenants of their rights and file any cash for keys agreements with the city’s housing department.

But according to Gross, while the ordinance may look good on paper, it is hard to enforce.

“All [a landlord has] to do is not observe the ordinance and tell the tenants, ‘You gotta get out’ … then if the tenant raises an issue [the property owner] can say, ‘Okay we didn’t know.’ They’re likely to get a lot of tenants who don’t know their rights out that way.”

Additionally, according to Gross, the majority of building owners who file such evictions couldn’t be further from the elderly mom and pop landlords the bill was designed to protect.

“Most of these Ellis evictions … are from owners who purchased the buildings within the last year with the express purpose of displacing existing tenants and jacking up rents one way or another,” Gross said, whether that be through a condo conversion, illegally listing the units on Airbnb or simply flouting the law and re-renting the apartments at market rate.

Under the law, Ellised buildings are meant to be taken off the rental market permanently, but are only monitored by the city for five years.

When units are returned to the market within that time period, tenants have a legal right to return at close to their previous rent amount.

Such was the case for Sylvie Shain, who recently moved back into Franklin Village’s Villa Carlotta building.

Shain was evicted from the Franklin Avenue apartment complex two years ago, when a new owner filed Ellis paperwork, citing plans to turn it into a boutique hotel.

Ultimately those plans fell through due to community opposition, and the building was instead converted into Airbnb-style rental housing for stays of 30 days or more.

Shain said she and four other former tenants received notice from the city that the units had returned to the market and they were eligible to move back in.

But according to Shain, most of the others who had been her neighbors in the 50-unit complex had signed cash for keys agreements, relinquishing their right to return.

Of the five who retained their rights, Shain was the only one who ultimately opted to return to the building through a process she said was “stressful, time consuming and expensive.”

According to Shain, the initial lease agreement for her return to the building was significantly more restrictive than her previous one in terms of things like noise or guest policies.

“The [housing] department’s stance is that I have the right to return, but what does that mean if you are provided lease restrictions that are so prohibitive that they keep you from living your day to day life?” said Shain.

So Shain hired a lawyer to help negotiate the terms of her new lease, and while she was successful in doing so, Shain said she remains in debt for her attorney’s fees.

But Shain’s case was rare. Many Ellised buildings do not return to the market, and when they do, landlords don’t always follow city protocol.

Tenants of 1655 Rodney Drive in Los Feliz received Ellis notices in early 2015 after their building was purchased by a new owner.

But according to several former tenants, while the notices claimed the building was being taken off the rental market, the landlord immediately began renting to new tenants, with no apparent repercussions.

“Literally the day the last tenants in our building were moving out towards the end, the driveway entrance was blocked by tenants moving in,” said Mark Simon, a former resident of the building. “Within three months, the building was nearly full with new tenants.”

According to Simon, when he and other tenants reported the violation to the city’s housing department, they were told that without rent receipts from the new tenants, who were believed to be paying in cash under the table, there was little that could be done.

Simon, 70, had lived in the Rodney Drive building for 23 years when he received his eviction notice.

“It was like having an atomic bomb go off in my life,” he said. “But thank goodness I knew my rights. Most people have no idea.”

And that, is what CES’s Gross said troubles him the most.

According to Gross, when tenants are properly Ellised, there is a paper trail. But when landlords use intimidation techniques or questionable cash for keys contracts to vacate tenants from a building before filing Ellis Act paperwork, there is often no record of the eviction, making it impossible to get a true count of how many rent-controlled tenants have been displaced.

“The only way we know [if a landlord is breaking the law] is when [the tenants] come to us,” said Gross. “I worry about the ones we don’t know about.”

The city’s housing department did not respond to interview requests on deadline.