Housing inspection findings mixed

Deirdre Newman

The city’s aggressive attempt to inspect rental housing for

substandard conditions has yielded moderate results: tenant inquiries

for inspections have increased, but it has not been matched by much

interest from apartment owners.

The Planning Commission in January 2002 approved creating an

apartment rehabilitation incentive program to encourage owners to

maintain their properties.

Code enforcement officers launched a pilot program in September

2002, targeting an area bordered by Harbor Boulevard, Victoria

Street, Placentia Avenue and 19th Street. They used three strategies

to motivate tenants and landlords to request inspections.

While more than half the property owners solicited asked for

voluntary inspections of their properties, most did not want the

interior of their buildings inspected. And the owners of properties

with the most visible exterior code violations never contacted the

code enforcement office, according to a report the Planning

Commission received Dec. 8 from building official Rick Brown.

Some of the obstacles to gaining entry for inspections are

tenants’ fears of retaliation from the property owner, and state and

federal law, which prohibit entering private property without

“reasonable cause.”

Planning Commissioner Katrina Foley said the program is a good

start to attacking substandard housing, but there’s a lot more that

needs to be done.

“I really believe the new police chief’s community policing

effort, in conjunction with the code enforcement effort, is going to

have a significant increase in our ability to resolve some of the

substandard housing problems in our community,” Foley said.

Two Spanish-speaking code enforcement officers carried out the

pilot program in the target area, which was selected because it

contained a large percentage of rental units versus single-family

homes. There is a large concentration of apartment buildings along

Pomona, Meyer and Victoria streets.

The officers tried three methods in three sections of the target

area to prompt requests for interior inspections. In one section,

they walked the neighborhood door-to-door and explained the program’s

goal to tenants. The officers heard of many problems, but most

tenants wouldn’t agree to let the officers into the apartments

because they feared retaliation from the owner in the form of rent

increases or evictions.

In another section, they mailed information to property owners

only, explaining that they would be in their area doing exterior

inspections. They asked the owners to make appointments with the

officers if they wanted a voluntary inspection of their property.

Twenty-five out of 40 owners responded, but the majority did not let

the officers inside their buildings.

The least successful approach was mailing information to tenants

and owners that described the program’s goals and gave contact

information for inspection. No one took code enforcement up on this

offer.

While the code enforcement department didn’t get the overwhelming

results it was looking for, it was buoyed by 40 additional complaints

from the target area during the pilot program. These came after the

officers sent out their information but were not prompted by direct

requests for inspections. They resulted in the identification of 77

violations, including hazardous plumbing and fire hazards.

The pilot program cost about $57,000 from code enforcement’s

approved budget and didn’t require the hiring of any additional

officers.

Mirna Burciaga, who was recently appointed to the Parks and

Recreation Commission, said she understands why some tenants might be

apprehensive to let code enforcement officers inspect their units.

She said she encouraged one of her own employees to alert code

enforcement to problems with her apartment. Code enforcement

contacted her landlord, who fixed the problem, but the employee was

eventually asked to leave the apartment, Burciaga said.

“They have the right to be afraid,” Burciaga said. “Because

sometimes, what happens when people are doing some things, like when

tenants check and they discover something is wrong and the landlord

needs to fix it, probably the majority of landlords won’t be really

happy about it. But the reality is that if you have a property, you

have to take care of it.”