La Habra passes on approving a rental inspection pilot program — again
More than half a century after first considering an inspection program for rental housing, the La Habra City Council declined to fund and staff the policy once more.
During Monday’s council meeting, council members debated the merits and timing of a three-year pilot program that would hire a code enforcement officer to routinely inspect rental units for substandard and unsafe living conditions.
La Habra Mayor Daren Nigsarian spoke strongly of the program as one that addressed a key public safety issue in the community.
“My concern still lies first and foremost with the health and welfare of the people that live in the city and the people who are renters,” he said. “There’s a huge constituency of renters in this city, and they’re living in squalid conditions sometimes, and they simply feel that they cannot report them.”
But Nigsarian found himself in the minority.
“I don’t want to make bigger government here and add an almost $100,000 position at this time,” said Councilman James Gomez.
He suggested the city do community outreach in densely populated neighborhoods, like Montwood-Burwood, without having to approve an additional staff hire.
Chip Ahlswede, vice president of external affairs for the Apartment Assn. of Orange County, offered to help La Habra with any public outreach at the council meeting while offering his take on rental inspection programs.
“What we’ve seen with different programs [is that] some work, some don’t,” he told council members. “There are ways you can do it more efficiently. “The goal is to get quality housing for everybody. It’s not to overburden the property owners [and] not to put more costs on housing from the tenants, which is what this ultimately does.”
According to a staff report, La Habra considered a rental housing inspection program back in 1973. It has been a mainstay of the city’s stated goals and objectives since 2005 but without ever having been approved.
In considering the three-year pilot program this time around, Susan Kim, La Habra’s community and economic development director, noted inspections could average 40 units per week.
Currently, code enforcement officers inspect about eight to 12 rental units per day in response to tenant complaints.
“A proactive inspection program protects underserved tenants that may not be aware that they have a right to safe and habitable housing,” Kim told council members.
Anaheim enacted a similar program a decade ago. Santa Ana adopted an inspection policy in 1992 that is funded by a small fee imposed on property owners.
Kim noted that council members could lessen the inspection workload by exempting properties that are less than 20 years old. She also suggested that a $50 per unit assessment fee would cover costs associated with the pilot program.
Cesar Covarrubias, executive director of the Kennedy Commission, told TimesOC that rental inspection programs can be beneficial to tenants if designed in a proactive way that helps protects them.
“If a program is designed to address the conditions, it could be a systematic way of putting out information to landlords,” he said. “That way it’s comprehensive, not to one unit but to the whole complex. That protects tenants a bit more from being singled out as the ones that called the city.”
Councilwoman Rose Espinoza, who has served on La Habra City Council since 2000, recounted helping a tenant who called her office years ago to complain about substandard conditions.
“I had never seen an apartment like that,” she said. “They had to put some kind of tape around the counters and along the refrigerator so these bugs would not get into their refrigerator. It just broke my heart to see them live in that condition.”
Espinoza helped set up a meeting with the Fair Housing Council of Orange County and residents of that particular complex but noted not much came from it.
She recalled the hesitation tenants had in speaking out for fear of retaliation from landlords but did not support the inspection program out of concerns for adequate staffing.
“I don’t think that our staff is able to handle that,” Espinoza said. “They have too much work already on their hands.”
Nigsarian pushed back against the notion where it concerned the pilot program.
“We’re not placing any greater burden on community development,” he said. “We’re going to hire somebody for that three-year period to assume those duties. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If it does work, then we continue the program, no longer as a pilot.”
After the debate, council members voted unanimously to remove the rental housing inspection program from its goals and objectives for the next fiscal year.
The vote also removed it from future policy updates to the city’s General Plan document.
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