Santa Ana Moves Against Landlords in 29 Housing Cases

In their biggest one-day sweep against slum housing to date, Santa Ana authorities on Tuesday filed civil complaints against 28 properties and brought criminal charges against the owner of another dwelling.

The properties contain a myriad of electrical, plumbing and structural problems, along with vermin infestation and other unsanitary and dangerous conditions, officials said. The owners have all been cited within the past several months but have not abided by orders to repair the buildings, authorities said.

Deputy City Atty. Luis Rodriguez said the property owners in the civil cases have 10 days to respond to the lawsuits. When responses are filed, trial dates will be set, he said.

If a landlord does not respond, the city can then seek a default judgment, under which it can order the owner to correct substandard conditions or face possible contempt of court charges.

‘Have to Go to Court’ “Whichever way they (owners) want to go, that’s fine,” Rodriguez said. “What we want is for the repairs to be undertaken and completed. That done, we would then have reasons for dismissing the lawsuits.

“The gist of it is that they’ve been ordered to fix up the houses and are not doing it. So we have to go to court to make them do it.”

The criminal complaint, containing seven counts, was filed against Delbert Scott, of Anaheim Hills, alleging more than 16 uncorrected housing code violations on his property at 1102 W. Pine St., including lack of hot and cold running water, vermin infestation, and structural, electrical and plumbing deficiencies.

An unknown number of tenants live in the three-bedroom house for which, one said Tuesday, they pay a total of $650 rent per month. An official notice to the tenants has been posted in Spanish, advising them that if the property is not repaired by March 15, it must be vacated.

Scott could not be reached for comment.

Rita Hardin, the city’s code enforcement coordinator, said that since Santa Ana launched the housing code crackdown in April, about 575 tenants have been forced to evacuate substandard dwellings. Although “the great majority were single individuals,” the total also includes more than 250 members of about 58 families, she said.

More Than 900 Citations

In the past 10 months, housing inspectors have looked at 1,680 residences and have issued more than 900 citations. They also discovered more than 250 illegal dwelling units, Hardin said.

As the city has hired additional inspectors, “we are finding a much larger problem than anticipated,” she said. The problem of illegal units, she said, is “much greater than we imagined it would be.”

One house had seven illegal “sheds” in the backyard, Hardin said. In a single block near McFadden Avenue and Bristol Street, she added, 13 of 14 contiguous houses had “at least one extra occupancy, either a converted garage or shed or both.”

In each of the 28 civil cases filed Tuesday, Rodriguez said, the owners had been cited earlier, and the time period had expired on each of the properties named in the lawsuits without repairs being made, he said.

“Now they’re facing the music,” said George Gragg, the city’s community preservation officer. The lawsuits, Gragg said, are “simply the next step in the code enforcement process.”

Gragg said 10 of the properties named in the civil suits are owned by Dempsy and Joy Stocker and Dempsy’s mother, Bulah. Most or all of the properties are just south of the Civic Center.

Joy Stocker said that although some of the houses were in “good condition,” the city “condemned every one of them.”

Finding themselves without rental income, the Stockers went to the city for a loan but were turned down “because we didn’t have enough income,” she said.

Dempsy Stocker “has been working on three or four of the houses, but we have to go slow because we don’t have any money,” his wife said.

Joy Stocker said the family feels singled out. At one time, she said, they had found a buyer for one of the properties and had intended to use the money from the sale to repair the others. Instead, the city ordered the building demolished, she said.

“We feel like our civil rights have been violated,” she said.

The 14 houses on several lots have been in the family since the early 1960s, she said. No rent has been collected since they’ve been condemned, Joy Stocker said.

Since the crackdown on substandard housing began, shortly after Robert C. Bobb took over as city manager, more than 100 lawsuits, civil and criminal, have been filed against landlords.

Bobb was out of town Tuesday, but a statement to reporters by a top aide mentioned the “steady war against substandard dwellings since April.”

Laurie Cottrell, Bobb’s director of communications, said Santa Ana “will continue to enforce housing code standards throughout the city as part of its commitment to provide safe and sanitary dwellings for all of its residents,” and “code enforcement measures will continue to be highly visible . . . as a signal to landlords that substandard housing conditions will not be tolerated.”

The city has “never forcibly evicted any tenant impacted by code enforcement,” Cottrell said, noting that some properties posted with notices to vacate remain occupied.

“It is uncertain at this time how many tenants, if any, will be forced to vacate” by the latest round of lawsuits, Cottrell said.