Anaheim : Jeffrey-Lynne Landlords Told: Fix Up or Face Court

Notices will go out today to some landlords of the Jeffrey-Lynne apartment neighborhood telling them to bring their buildings up to code or face prosecution for unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

On the first day of the door-to-door crackdown, which began Tuesday, 75 substandard housing violations and 35 nuisance violations were cited in five apartment buildings on a one-block stretch of Lynne Avenue, Richard La Rochelle, a senior code enforcement officer, said Thursday.

Inspectors have totaled only the first day’s citations. But the inspections will continue until all 112 apartment buildings in the neighborhood have been checked, which is expected to take two months.

Some of the violations found by the two code enforcement officers and one county health official were inoperable plumbing and heating, cracked and leaking ceilings, torn carpeting, broken windows and cockroaches and rodents.

Nuisance violations included those for graffiti, trash littered around the buildings and disabled cars parked or abandoned on the properties.

City officials say the neighborhood near the Disneyland Hotel is one of the worst in the city.

The door-to-door search for violations is a new approach to crack down on substandard housing. Usually, city inspectors respond only to complaints. But some residents and apartment owners in the neighborhood who do keep up their buildings are worried about the neighborhood’s decline and its effects on their own properties, La Rochelle said.