Telephone Hill residents again face quick eviction as judge agrees with city that demolition is a separate issue
- Mark Sabbatini
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
CBJ will file new cases to remove people from two residences within 15 days; residents sought to stay until lawsuit challenging demolition is resolved, which could take years
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Three people still living on Telephone Hill are again facing eviction within 15 days after their attempt to link their removal to a civil lawsuit challenging the city’s redevelopment plans for the neighborhood was rejected by a Superior Court judge on Wednesday.
The city as the owner of the property has the right to evict tenants renting houses there, which is a separate legal issue from the civil lawsuit, Assistant City Attorney Clinton Mitchell said while presenting arguments at the Juneau courthouse.
"What the city keeps hearing is the tenants shouldn’t be evicted because they might be successful at preventing teardown," he said. "The city’s position is that whether the tenants reside there has nothing to do with whether the city is eventually allowed to demolish the buildings.”
Judge Amanda Browning, presiding over the hearing remotely from Sitka, said she agreed with Mitchell that "possession versus preservation are two separate issues." She also agreed with him that linking the evictions to the civil case could allow the residents to stay in those homes for months or years, rather than the short timeframes defined in state law for eviction cases.
Browning’s ruling essentially reverses actions taken last Friday by District Court Judge Kirsten Swanson, who dismissed the eviction cases against the residents, stating she didn’t have jurisdiction to rule on issues raised in the Superior Court lawsuit — and the city could refile eviction cases if the lawsuit ended in the city’s favor.
Mitchell, on Wednesday, told Browning that Swanson’s ruling was a “massive surprise” and the city will seek to bump Swanson from new eviction cases that will be filed immediately. Browning said she is willing to hear those cases within 15 days if they are assigned to her and scheduled a pre-trial conference on the civil lawsuit for Dec 12.
Eviction notices issued by the City and Borough of Juneau this summer for 13 residences in seven structures on Telephone Hill were originally set for Oct. 1, but the deadline was delayed until Nov. 1 because the original notices were not properly served. Nearly all of the residences were vacated by the deadline, with the city soon afterward filing the eviction cases against two homes that were still occupied and allowing the occupants of a third home to remain until this week due to medical issues.
The civil lawsuit — by two of the tenants named in the city’s filings, as well as a third longtime resident of the neighborhood — asserts CBJ is proceeding with the redevelopment plans without knowing if they’re legally feasible and violating historic preservation laws.
Fred Triem, an attorney representing Telephone Hill residents in the eviction and civil cases, told Browning "the objective of the lawsuit and the central issue is the preservation of these buildings."
"That’s a complex issue — it cannot be resolved in a simple one-hour (eviction) hearing," he said. "The residents have been there 30 years. They can stay there a couple more months until the court decides if the historic buildings should be preserved."
Triem also argued that leaving the aging homes empty during the winter will result in freezing pipes and other damage.
Mitchell said the Telephone Hill residents haven’t presented evidence the city’s evictions are illegal and as such the city wants that part of the dispute resolved quickly.
"We feel like this is a time-sensitive matter and we want the actual merits of this heard as soon as possible rather than attempts to delay," he said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
