Santa Ana Names Major Landlord in 95-Count Complaint

Santa Ana officials filed a 95-count complaint Monday naming Carmine Esposito and several partners who own six blighted buildings where tenants are staging a rent strike. The move was the city’s first criminal action against a major landlord.

The action against Esposito is part of the city’s 10-month-old crackdown on slum housing and serves as a signal to other property owners that Santa Ana will not tolerate owners who neglect their property, said Deputy City Atty. Luis A. Rodriguez.

Also named as defendants were Esposito’s wife, Marian K. Esposito, and Dalfranco Lucidi, Walter J. Lucidi and Enrice Lucidi, all of Villa Park. They are accused of violating Santa Ana’s uniform housing code.

Court documents show that Esposito has a 70% interest and the Lucidis have a 30% interest in the buildings located in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in the 1200 block of Brook Street.

Maximum Sentence

If found guilty of all the misdemeanor charges, the maximum sentence each could receive is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each count.

Esposito could not be reached for comment Monday.

The action is also significant because it represents one of the first attempts in Orange County to prosecute landlords who allegedly neglect their apartments but charge high rents to Latino tenants who may be in the country illegally and are afraid to complain for fear of deportation.

Last year the city filed about 75 criminal actions against owners who failed to make repairs, Rodriguez said. Thirty have been filed to date this year, he said.

Most of the cases were settled without any defendants being jailed. In one case, an owner did receive a six-day jail sentence that was stayed by a judge to allow the owner to make repairs on his property.

Esposito has substantial real estate interests in Orange County, including apartments in Garden Grove’s Buena Clinton area.

The city also has filed two civil suits against Esposito, seeking to force him to clean up the properties or prevent him from selling them without improving them.

Rodriguez, the counsel in charge of the city’s code enforcement program, said that he intends to “definitely push” the case from trial through conviction. Rodriguez said he will ask for Esposito to be jailed if convicted.

“The city is going to enforce the prosecution of this case to achieve maximum results,” Rodriguez said. “Hopefully that result will create deterrents for other property owners or landlords who own real property in Santa Ana and do not exercise their responsibilities to maintain those properties in a habitable condition.”

The buildings have been the subjects of complaints by Latino residents for years. Rents are high for the area and range from $375 for a 1-bedroom apartment to $500 for a 2-bedroom.

As a means of protest, about 500 Latino tenants organized a renters’ strike in February to help force owners into making improvements.

Renters won a temporary restraining order preventing landlords, including Esposito, from evicting any striking renters who paid rent into a special fund. An April 11 hearing has been set.

Tenant organizers said the timing of the city’s new action was crucial to the renters’ movement.

“We’re totally in support of the city’s action,” said Nativo Lopez, a volunteer organizer for the renters’ group, which once held a protest in front of Esposito’s Villa Park home, demanding criminal charges be brought against him.

“This confirms what the tenants have been saying for a long time, that the condition and management of those buildings was criminal,” Lopez said.

“Without the criminal charges being filed we were left in the open waiting for the hearing in April, and who knows how that could have gone,” he added.

Renters have said they would like the city to prosecute “all landlords” who ignore city warnings and neglect their property.

18-Page Complaint

The 18-page criminal complaint details the physical appearance of each building and lists numerous health and safety code violations in all 70 rental units in the six buildings.

City housing inspectors first cited the apartments last October, during the city’s crackdown on substandard housing. The owners were given 60 days to submit a plan for repairs and then another 60 days in which to complete them.

However, Esposito failed to respond, city officials said.

Esposito has begun some renovation to the Brook Street apartments. However, city officials note that he started after the deadline passed.

“A subsequent inspection conducted Feb. 27, 1985, found that there had been no change in any of the conditions,” Rodriguez said.

Violations included cockroach infestation, structural hazards such as deteriorated stairways, inadequate sanitation and general dilapidation of the apartments, he said.