A City Gets Tough

If landlords of the unhealthy and unsafe buildings in Garden Grove’s Buena Clinton neighborhood didn’t think that the city meant business when it ordered rundown apartments brought up to code, their doubts should now be gone.

Arrest warrants for six landlords who haven’t made the ordered repairs were issued late last week by two West Orange County Municipal Court judges who responded to criminal complaints filed by Garden Grove.

The city’s tough approach is justified.

In the past most government agencies that have been faced with similar problems merely threatened penalties or filed civil suits.

Santa Ana took a novel approach in a recent civil lawsuit against a property owner by also naming as defendants the lending institutions that held the trust deeds on two properties cited as being substandard. Santa Ana was hoping to prompt the lenders to help the city and to speed up improvements.

Garden Grove thought that criminal rather than civil actions would be a quicker way to prompt landlords to make the improvements.

Many of the apartments in Buena Clinton have been neglected by landlords for years. Living conditions there have become so bad that the neighborhood has been identified by county health officials as the county’s worst slum. Garden Grove officials say that they have repeatedly warned some slum landlords to correct dangerous and unsafe living conditions, but that the warnings have not been heeded.

Some of the conditions cited by the city include faulty electrical wiring, backed-up plumbing, rodent infestation and rotting walls.

Those are the kinds of deficiencies that cry out for instant attention, not months of foot-dragging by landlords and government red tape. Garden Grove acted responsibly in taking steps to bring about immediate improvements. Now it’s up to the landlords to finally do the same.