The real victim in the Stevie Wonder eviction is the exhausted celebrity landlord

It is a truth universally acknowledged in this town that once you have won twenty-five Grammy Awards, you should be legally exempt from dealing with a broken garbage disposal. Yet, here we are. The discourse this week has been utterly consumed by the frankly shocking news that Stevie Wonder is being dragged into court by his ex-fiancée, Carmen Efferson. Mr. Wonder is, quite reasonably, trying to evict her from a property he owns. Ms. Efferson is firing back, claiming that he—in his capacity as her landlord—needs to fix numerous alleged issues with the house where she has resided for decades.

I read the court filings over my morning matcha, and I have to confess, I nearly choked. The sheer audacity of demanding a property be brought up to code right as you are being asked to vacate it is staggering. It fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of an eviction, which is to make a person go away, not to provide them with a newly grouted guest bathroom on their way out.

I was discussing this very dynamic just yesterday over yellowtail jalapeño at Nobu Malibu with a very prominent showrunner whose name you would immediately recognize from several prestige streaming deals. We were both lamenting how difficult it has become to maintain a healthy real estate portfolio when the people living inside your investments insist on having running water. My lunch companion recently had to ask his own ex-wife to vacate a Bel Air compound, and she had the nerve to request he fix the security gate before she surrendered the keys. We agreed that the entitlement of the modern squatter knows no bounds.

Let us look at the facts of the case. Ms. Efferson has lived in this home for decades. Decades! One would think that after enjoying decades of shelter provided by the man who wrote "Isn't She Lovely," she would have the grace to pack her belongings into a reasonably priced moving van and depart without causing a scene. Instead, she is demanding repairs. What kind of repairs? The filings vaguely gesture at numerous alleged issues. I am not a general contractor, but I do know that when a house has issues, the easiest solution is to remove the person complaining about them.

I myself am no stranger to the heavy crown of property management. A few years ago, I decided to rent out the converted pool house of my Los Feliz estate to a struggling character actor who had just landed a recurring role as a barista on a CW drama. I thought I was doing a philanthropic deed. But within three months, he was sending me passive-aggressive text messages about the HVAC system emitting a burning smell.

I explained to him that as a creative, I simply did not have the bandwidth to engage with his thermodynamic grievances during awards season. When I eventually served him with a thirty-day notice, he had the temerity to ask for his security deposit back. I kept it, of course, for the emotional labor of having to read his texts while I was on the red carpet at the Golden Globes.

We also must interrogate the concept of decades of residency. If you have lived somewhere for decades without securing your name on the deed, that is a failure of personal branding. You have essentially been a guest who overstayed by twenty-nine years. To turn around and demand the homeowner snake the drains as a parting gift is a level of hubris that belongs in a Greek tragedy, not a civil court filing.

Consider the toll this takes on Mr. Wonder's representatives. The reps are the unsung heroes of any messy eviction. Have you ever seen a crisis PR team try to spin a broken water heater? It is devastating. Publicists are trained to manage box office tracking and comeback narratives, not to issue statements on whether a residential roof is up to municipal code.

The broader entertainment industry is watching this case closely. If Carmen Efferson successfully forces Stevie Wonder to fix a house he is actively trying to throw her out of, what precedent does that set? Will Leonardo DiCaprio have to repair the foundation of a Malibu beach house before he cycles out his current twenty-four-year-old tenant? Will Netflix executives have to ensure their panic rooms are properly ventilated before locking out the showrunners they just canceled?

It is a slippery slope toward holding the elite accountable for the physical safety of the people they casually discard, and I, for one, will not stand for it.

We must protect our national treasures from the mundane tyranny of property maintenance. Stevie Wonder has given us enough. It is time for Carmen Efferson to step out into the elements, embrace the reality of the Los Angeles rental market, and leave the man in peace. I am told the tracking for independent films is abysmal right now, and frankly, I cannot focus on fixing the industry while I am worrying about whether an icon is being forced to call a plumber.