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The saga of one of Berkeley’s most derelict and contested properties, in legal limbo after a series of controversies and misadventures—one of which found the elderly owner abandoned and stranded in a Paris bathroom two years ago—ended with a whimper Thursday. 

Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputies met with no resistance when they evicted Gregory Levin and Nattalia Yalke from the run-down rust-brown house at 1734 Bancroft St., which the pair insisted Rivka Sigal had promised to them before her death. Along with the couple, deputies booted nine homeless squatters who, with permission from Levin and Yalke, had set up tents and futons in the back yard. 

The eviction followed an Aug. 25 ruling by Alameda County Superior Court Judge John Kraetzer rejecting the couple’s claim that they had an oral contract with Sigal giving them the house in return for caring for her. The case spent two years in the court system, effectively giving Levin and Yalke control of the property until the judge’s ruling. 

Neighbors celebrated the couple’s removal. 

“When Rivka was here, the property was a mess, but she wasn’t threatening,” said one neighbor who insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals. 

Last October the city had tried to intervene, sending in police, mental health officials and housing inspectors, who were turned back when the couple refused entry, said Michael Caplan of Berkeley’s City Manager’s office. “There was a question of whether or not they were the legal residents,” Caplan said. “If they were legal, then they have a right to deny access.” 

Caplan said the couple had already fixed the major complaint—trash lining the property—so the city opted not to get an inspection warrant. 

“It was really a messy situation from an enforcement issue,” he said. “The county said they were going through the process of getting them evicted, so we decided to take a back seat to them.” 

Although neighbors were glad to see Levin and Yalke go, they said Sigal was “no walk in the park.” 

A left-wing activist who charmed locals with spunky calls to local talk radio shows and infuriated neighbors with the 30 cats in her house and the eight-foot-high trash piles in her back yard, Sigal’s mental decline in the 1990’s set off a chain reaction that sent her house into legal limbo.  

According to Deputy Alameda County Counsel Sandra Bean, Sigal suffered from dementia and had a long history with the county’s department of adult protective services. Bean said Sigal had once shown up at Alta Bates Hospital covered in urine and feces. 

“She really couldn’t take care of herself,” Bean said. “She always had people to support her.” The court ruled that Sigal, who had no children, left her house—her only asset—to her three long-standing confidants: live-in care providers Mark Bellinger and Irene Cronin and ex-boyfriend Hunter Kuo. 

Levin and Yalte insisted their deal with Sigal superseded the will. 

Yalte said she was introduced to Sigal in April 1999, while she was caring for a friend of hers. “Rivka said ‘I want you to care for me.’ And so I went to work for Rivka cleaning out all the trash in the back yard,” Yalte said in an interview on her last night at the house. 

Yalte said Sigal agreed to make Levin and her joint tenants so that when Sigal died they would own the house. 

Though she said the couple said they drew up a contract to that effect, Sigal never signed. 

Her condition steadily worsened and in April 2001, according to court papers, Uzbek national Ali Abusgosh convinced Sigal to take out a $38,000 mortgage on her house. The two then flew to Paris, where he left her in a bathroom and disappeared with the money, presumably heading back to Uzbekistan. 

When Sigal returned, the county placed her under a conservatorship with the Public Guardian, who sent her to Willow Tree Convalescent Home in Oakland—one of three facilities where she resided until her death last January at the age of 71. 

Yalke and Levin insist their motives were pure and their care top notch. “Nattalia worked very hard caring for Rivka,” said Levin, a retired professor of music at the University of Calgary. “It wasn’t just about a house but about two people who cared for her.”  

According to the couple, Yalke returned to Canada in April of 2000 after she couldn’t convince Sigal to sign the contract turning over her house, but later returned to Berkeley five months later at Rivka’s request. “She would call me over and over again, ‘please come back,’” Yalke said. 

Even though Sigal still refused to sign, Yalke said she moved into the house in June of 2001, after the county put Sigal in the nursing facility. 

The couple’s court filing claimed they provided 92 weeks of work and services to Sigal worth more than $84,000. 

They filed suit against Sigal as the corporation Repuesto L.C. in June of 2001, alleging she had breached an oral agreement to put their names on the deed. After Sigal died, the county probate judge ruled that despite the will, the three named beneficiaries couldn’t take possession, because the lawsuit was still outstanding. 

The judge named the Alameda County Administrator to control the property while the legal case proceeded. 

Bean rejected Yalke and Levin’s claim, saying there was no evidence that they ever cared for Sigal and filed suit against them for elder abuse on the grounds that they pressured her to sign away her house. The suit was tossed out, Bean said, because she could not prove that Levin and Yalke had malicious intent. 

After Judge Kraetzer’s ruling, county authorities served the couple with an unlawful detainer order, demanding they vacate the property. Judge Kraetzer rejected the couple’s request for a 30-day stay, setting the stage for Thursday’s eviction. 

Yalke and Levin said they had no money left to appeal the case, and that, for the time being, they would stay at a friend’s house. “It never occurred to me that we could lose the place,” Yalke said. 

Tim, one of the nine homeless people squatting in the back yard seemed more upset about the eviction than Yalke or Levin. 

“This place is ideal because since it’s private, we can kick out any trouble makers,” he said. “If the city gave us a couple of houses like this one, it would solve the whole problem.”