Costa Mesa Acts to Help Shalimar Drive : Landlords Offered Loans for Cleanup

Every night when Guadalupe Santa Cruz, 56, goes to bed, she expects a rat to scurry onto her, bite her cheeks and nibble at her hair.

Last year, she slipped in the bathtub while cleaning the wall. Cruz didn’t complain to the apartment owner that the accident was caused by a leaky ceiling, unrepaired for five years, in her Costa Mesa apartment.

“These people are humble, they’re not used to complaining,” said Alex Skarbek, head of Costa Mesa’s Shalimar Drive Task Force, which has studied the area between Wallace and Placentia avenues during the past six months.

Earlier this week, the Costa Mesa City Council unanimously voted to support the task force’s suggestion to offer 18 property owners 3% to 4% low-interest loans to improve 22 buildings along the drive.

Property owners can get voluntary city-assisted rehabilitation for the buildings or possibly face condemnation, City Councilman Dave Wheeler said.

“The biggest problem is cleaning up the area in a manner that is sensitive to the people who live there,” Wheeler said. “Relocation is not the aim.”

The task force was formed in response to a “lingering problem,” Wheeler said. “This may sound lame, but we’ve been so busy with so many other things in the city, it (Shalimar Drive) has not been a top priority.”

Mayor Donn Hall said the task force effort was the city’s first serious attempt to clean up the area. “It’s always been the butt of jokes about areas of town not in good shape,” he said.

Located a few miles from the beach, and close to modern, pool-equipped apartment complexes and modest single-family homes, the small stretch on Shalimar Drive is home to a predominantly Latino population.

The buildings on Shalimar, Hall said, were probably built 25 years ago. Today, they appear dilapidated.

$575-$750 Rents

Most are two-story, stucco buildings with two-, three- or four-bedroom units with absentee landlords and often no managers. Rents can be anywhere between $575 and $750, according to William Noa, 29, who manages one building at 795 Shalimar Drive.

Noa says he and his parents are among the few Anglos living on the block, and they rent a two-bedroom apartment for $575. Most families, he said, would rather stay in the neighborhood than pay the same rent elsewhere, because more people can be packed in each unit.

“The owners are like phantoms. They don’t come around and find a dozen people sleeping on the floor. Where else can you get away with things like that?” said Noa, who has lived there nearly 10 years.

Different buildings have different problems, said Alicia Ontiveros, 32, who manages the apartment building at 782 Shalimar with her husband, Hermilo. Unlike many of the other buildings along the street that lack managers on the premises, their building appears better kept outside and much cleaner inside.

Ta-Shyong Lin, owner of the building and a resident of Irvine, said he recently changed the carpets, laid linoleum tile in the kitchens and installed some new kitchen counters, and plans to repaint the outside of the building.

Scared to Take Job

“With managers, you can get more information and find out what’s going on,” he said. “I come almost every week. When I see something that needs to be repaired from time to time, I repair it,” he said.

But Ontiveros, who has lived in the same apartment for 10 years, said Lin had asked her husband only a month ago to become the apartment manager. And at first her husband was scared to take the job, she said.

Confronting neighbors who littered the streets and wouldn’t move their cars might antagonize them to the point of seeking retaliation, she said. But they later agreed to manage the apartments, to help keep the premises clean.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “There are no managers.”

Shalimar Drive has a relatively higher rate of service calls for noise, public gatherings and alcoholism, but it is not widely known for drug trafficking and violent crimes, according to Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Ron Smith.

The biggest problem, Ontiveros said, is neglect.

The building across the street--where Guadalupe Santa Cruz lives with her husband, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in a two-bedroom apartment for $650 a month--illustrates that problem.

Santa Cruz’s daughter-in-law, Martina, 25, pointed to three holes in the bedroom, two in the living room and three in the kitchen--all large enough for rats to climb through.

On a four-burner stove, three of the four pilot lights don’t work, and the counter tile is chipped. During the 12 years Martina has lived in the apartment, she has seen three different owners, and her carpet, she said, has been changed only once.

The only flowers that decorate her living room are either faded green plastic ferns, dusty peacock feathers, artificial roses and daisies or pictures of flowers hanging on the dingy walls.

To begin remedying the situation, city officials said that within 30 to 45 days they will call a meeting with property owners to offer a carrot before the stick. “We have to show them we’re serious,” Skarbek said.

Since 1984, two property owners have participated in the city’s low-interest loan program. But the majority of them have “sat on their hands,” Skarbek said. The meeting will give the property owners a chance to speak. Some of them may not even be aware of the conditions if they haven’t visited the buildings in years, he said.

Few Applications

Skarbek said he has met with more than half the 18 owners of property on Shalimar Drive since the rental rehabilitation program began in 1984. He was uncertain why more have not applied for the loan.

But if apartment owners don’t cooperate with the city or begin making improvements out of their own pockets, city officials said the council may be forced to declare it a redevelopment area.

That would allow the city to get control of the area and use its power of eminent domain to condemn the buildings, Councilman Wheeler said.

Other options, he said, could also include filing notices of substandard conditions, establishing a code enforcement “swat team” or forming a nonprofit corporation to administer the units if they are acquired by the city.

Several of the tenants, he said, have cooperated with the city by allowing officials to videotape their living conditions.

“The interesting thing is that rents on Shalimar Drive are as high as anywhere else in the city. There are no inexpensive rentals in the city because of the low vacancy rates,” Wheeler said.

“These people on Shalimar Drive are paying as much as anywhere else in the city, (but) for substandard housing.”