Taking an Eviction Case to Court Is Risky. But This Mom Decided to Try It

The defendant, a dark-haired woman named Dahbia Benakli, watched nervously as the prosecutor took the stand one final time.

The prosecutor, Steven Pinza, was defiant as he gave his closing statement. “If you don’t believe me,” he said to the jury, “one last thing. If you guys don’t believe me, let’s extend this trial.”

The judge interrupted: “Mr. Pinza, your time is up. And no, we’re not extending the trial. The trial is going to be over.”

It was a scene straight out of any courtroom, except for one thing: This case was about an eviction lawsuit, a kind of proceeding that almost never goes before a jury in California. Benakli was a tenant, waiting to find out whether the court was going to evict her. Pinza was Benakli’s landlord, a local real estate investor and president of the Pinza Group, representing himself in an eviction lawsuit against her.

Benakli’s case, unique as it was, also reveals what many tenants may be facing outside the public eye. More than two years after the beginning of the pandemic, evictions are on the rise. Many of the far-reaching emergency housing protections passed in 2020 have since expired, leaving millions of renters facing eviction.

As new rules for California tenants and landlords vanish and the old rules return, Benakli’s case — and its aftermath — show the challenges renters face in charting their way through this moment of uncertainty and change.

Part 1: The notice

It was May 2021 when Steven Pinza bought the wide, gray apartment building where Dahbia Benakli had lived for 11 years.

Benakli, a single mother and preschool teacher in Walnut Creek, didn’t think anything of the change in ownership at first. She said she had always had a good relationship with the previous management and wasn’t expecting anything different. 

At the time, she also had other priorities. Benakli was a single mom taking care of her two young daughters — Leah, 7,  and Elina, 2 — by herself, juggling a frantic job search and gig work during the pandemic, in a year-long scramble to pay her bills.

Then, later that month, the eviction notices began to arrive. Pinza told 11 of the building’s 18 tenants they needed to move out. 

“If I was someone that’s not paying rent or just pay part, and he gets tired of that situation, I would understand,” Benakli told me. “But I’m someone that pays the full rent. I do nothing illegal.”

Benakli is one of a growing number of California residents facing eviction as millions of people across the state wrestle with the return of pre-pandemic housing laws.

Between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, landlords filed nearly 4,000 eviction lawsuits across the Bay Area — more than 700 of them in Contra Costa County, where Benakli lives.

And the number of eviction lockouts in the Bay Area — that’s when sheriff’s deputies physically remove people who were evicted in court from their homes — rose from 184 in March-December 2020, to 349 during the same months of 2021, according to an analysis by The San Francisco Chronicle.

In the case of Benakli and her neighbors, Pinza was ordering them to move out because he claimed the building needed major renovations.

“While we wish these repairs were not necessary or could be done without you moving out, it is not possible,” he wrote in a letter to the tenants.

He gave tenants the option to relocate for two months at their own expense “while renovations are made,” then pay an additional $600 per month when they returned — a proposition Benakli could not afford.

She had lived in her one-bedroom apartment for 11 years, and her monthly rent was still only $1,000 — less than half the market rate in Walnut Creek. 

“I want to move,” Benakli said. “I want to have two bedrooms. I want to have a backyard for my kids. I do want to have all that — but I cannot afford it right now.”

Upon receiving the letters, most of the tenants moved out. But Benakli, DeCher Young and John Taylor decided to stay and wait for the landlord to file an eviction lawsuit.

“I do understand he got this building and he wants to raise up the price,” Benakli said. “I do understand that he’s the new owner. I do understand he doesn’t know us. But he does not have the right to treat us less than a regular person.”

Steven Pinza declined to speak on the record for this story.

Part 2: The lawsuit

Benakli and her neighbors thought they stood a chance of fighting Steven Pinza’s lawsuit in court, and in an unusual request, they wanted a jury to decide the case.

Experts say eviction cases almost never go to a jury trial. In roughly the first year of the pandemic, 3,000 eviction cases went to trial and only 16 of them were decided by a jury.  

But representing Benakli and her neighbors was David Levin, a Bay Area-based housing attorney, who saw cracks in the foundation of Pinza’s legal reasoning — specifically, two of them. 

According to court filings, Pinza had initially sent eviction notices to tenants who were mostly Black, Algerian or other people of color. Of the eight tenants who had decided to move out voluntarily, seven had been replaced by white renters. Levin planned to make the case that the evictions were racially motivated.

His second argument was that the repairs Pinza planned would not “substantially remodel” the building.

The Tenant Protection Act of 2019 gives landlords the right to remove their renters for a major remodel if the repairs are extensive enough that the renter has to move out for their own safety — for at least 30 days.

But what “substantially remodel” means is murky, according to multiple attorneys who specialize in housing cases, because the Tenant Protection Act has not been tested in court.

And to Levin, its vague language presented a potential foothold to challenge Pinza’s eviction lawsuit. 

It’s hard to overstate how much was at stake for Benakli, Young and Taylor. If they lost, their eviction would be public in a court record, visible to any future landlord. Some tenants’ advocates call this the “scarlet E.” Families who are evicted also tend to lose their jobs or have to switch their children’s schools, and they report higher rates of anxiety and depression.

Somehow, though, Benakli wasn’t nervous. She had faith that the courts would hear their concerns and would find in their favor.

“He wants to take it to the court?” she said. “That’s my dream. I want to go to the court with him. Because I know the truth will always win in the end.”

Part 3: The trial

The trial began at the end of February in the Superior Court for Contra Costa County, a tall, gray, downtown building in the sleepy Bay Area suburb of Martinez.

Before he could use a particular argument in front of the jury, Levin had to convince Judge Danielle Douglas of it: that Pinza had shown a pattern of discrimination by evicting mostly tenants of color and bringing in white renters to replace them. But Douglas tossed it out, saying Levin couldn’t prove Pinza intended to discriminate.

As the jurors arrived the next day, Benakli, in a black shirt with pink flowers, sat with her neighbors in the front row of the courtroom. Levin, in a dark suit, sat between them and the judge like a shield, with a rolling bin full of legal papers on the floor next to him. To his left, at the prosecutor’s table, sat Pinza in a crisp suit of light gray. 

Pinza, who had elected to represent himself, argued that his plans to renovate the apartments — which included adjustments to the plumbing and electrical systems and installing new stoves, dishwashers and ceiling fans — were extensive. He said his expert witnesses would demonstrate that the scale of these renovations did justify evicting Benakli and her neighbors.

Levin said his expert witnesses would show that Pinza’s plans for the apartments were minor and would not have required the tenants to move out. There was an ulterior motive at work, he argued: Kicking out Benakli and her neighbors would allow Pinza to raise the rent for their units substantially.

Pinza interrupted the witnesses frequently, prompting Judge Douglas to step in and reprimand him for breaking courtroom rules.

“It’s just the bathroom,” Benakli said, in answer to a question from Pinza. “The floor is popping out a little bit.”

Pinza interrupted: “Oh, so there is damage to the bathroom. OK, so maybe your floors do need to be repaired. Good enough.”

“Mr. Pinza,” Judge Douglas said sharply. “Mr. Pinza. Let the witness answer the question.”

On the way back to my car at the end of the third day, I ran into Benakli and one of the other tenants, DeCher Young. They were leaning over the railing on the top floor of the parking lot. Dahbia was smoking a cigarette — she said she’d just started smoking again. They didn’t seem worried. Not that they were confident, simply resigned to whatever was going to happen.

The next afternoon, Pinza gave a defiant closing statement, reiterating that his expert witness had done “thousands of remodels.”

“So who do you believe?” Pinza asked the jury. “[Levin’s] guy? Who’s never been a contractor? He’s done as much construction work as I have, and that’s not a lot.”

Levin spoke next, using his time to focus on the key question. “This whole case comes down to the time that a substantial remodel will take,” he said. “So now it’s your job to figure out where this line is in this case, based on the law and the facts.”

After two hours of jury deliberation, Judge Douglas called everyone back into the courtroom. The clerk read the verdict: 11 to 1, in Pinza’s favor.

Benakli and her neighbors had lost. They were going to be evicted.

Part 4: The way home

That evening, Benakli and Young drove back to Walnut Creek together to pick up Benakli’s daughter from school. They let me ride with them in the back seat.

Benakli and Young were shaken. As they drove, they talked about how the trial had gone and what losing meant — court fees and having the eviction on their record.

“I don’t think I’m going to go to sleep tonight, looking for an apartment,” Benakli said.

“When, when I get home, I’m going to start looking for places,” Young said. “After I finish looking, then I’m gonna start dashing for a little bit to get my extra money on the side,” she added, referring to her side job driving for DoorDash.

“I can’t dash tonight,” Benakli said. “There’s just no way.”

As Benakli drove through downtown Walnut Creek, they stopped at a red light and Young looked out the window.

“I’mma miss living over here, I really am,” she said.

“That’s so true, girl,” Benakli said. “So true.”

What happened in this case, housing experts say, is part of a pattern of gentrification and displacement in the Bay Area that stretches back to long before the pandemic.

Benakli and Young both used to live in cities like Berkeley and Oakland and San Francisco, which have stronger protections for renters. Eventually, though, like many of those in lower- and middle-income households — disproportionately Black and brown — they saw their rent and other costs rise too high and left for Walnut Creek, where rent was lower, but there were also fewer protections.

“It’s a general story about inequality in America,” said Tim Thomas, research director at the Urban Displacement Project.

Some parts of California are working to clarify how substantial remodel evictions work, by requiring landlords to help pay relocation costs, for example. State lawmakers are considering a bill requiring landlords to get local government permits before they can issue substantial remodel eviction notices. 

Back in Walnut Creek, Benakli and Young arrived at the school of Benakli’s daughter, Leah. Young waited in the car while Benakli went inside. Minutes later, Leah clambered into the back seat.

“I lost a tooth today in school, and I got this from the office,” she said to me, holding up a small, plastic, tooth-shaped container.

Benakli and Young drove home, talking about going up to Concord to look at apartments later that week. As they spoke, Leah told me about the money she was going to get from the tooth fairy and her plans to buy her sister, Elina, a present.

“I think I will get her a puppy,” she said. “A toy puppy set.”

It was a moment of extreme contrast: a kid being a kid in the back seat, while adult conversations went on in the background. It was also a reminder of who this could fall on the most — and who, years from now, might look back on this as a moment that changed everything.

Epilogue

In the months since their case ended in mid-March, Benakli, Young and their third neighbor, John Taylor, have all moved out.

“It was maybe one of the darkest moments in my life,” Benakli said of the days after the case ended, in a recent interview.

A few days after the case ended, she received an email from her attorney, who said Pinza was asking for back rent and court fees — several thousand dollars.

Benakli panicked. She packed what she could, grabbed her two daughters, and left for a motel in Walnut Creek. She tried to disguise the move for the kids, offering them Starbucks for breakfast as a special treat, but she knew they could tell something was wrong.

“I was asking myself questions,” she said. “Am I a good mom? Am I a good person? What did I do wrong?”

They were at the motel for three days. Benakli spent the entire time trying to figure out what to do next.

Eventually she got in touch with a friend of a friend who had already applied for a lease and needed a roommate, meaning Benakli didn’t have to worry about the eviction on her record.

She was nervous about the thought of moving her family in with some strange man she didn’t know. But she didn’t have much of a choice.

Two weeks after Benakli had left her apartment in the dead of night, she and her daughters moved into their new unit, and slowly, a bit of their stress faded.

“It’s just like we’re right back home,” Benakli said. And on top of that, their new roommate was kind and caring.

She knows the repercussions of the case — the “scarlet E” on her record and the money Pinza was asking for — are going to follow her for a long time, although her attorney says the real amount she will have to pay is still uncertain.

Benakli has lost a lot of faith in the court and other government institutions. As all of this was happening, she says, she would receive calls from canvassers trying to get her to register to vote.

“I don’t want to vote,” Benakli said. “There’s no laws protecting me. Nothing is protecting me.”

In Benakli’s eyes, the only people who were really able to help her were her friends and her family. At the end of the day, she said, that’s all some of us really have.

Kori Suzuki produced this story for a class at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.