Apartment Owner Investigated : Leaks, Surcharge Make for a Stormy Relationship

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office is investigating complaints that leaking rainwater has forced some elderly residents of a Woodland Hills apartment complex from their homes, authorities said Friday.

City building inspectors visited the 474-unit Woodland Hills Tennis Club Apartments on Friday at the request of the city attorney’s office. Officials are considering prosecution of the owner, GBW Properties of Los Angeles, for building-code violations, said Stephanie Sautner, head of the city attorney’s housing enforcement section.

“It’s an unusual step for me to be this aggressive, for me to ask building and safety to gather the evidence,” Sautner said. “We would volunteer to take it this once because they are elderly,” she said, referring to the residents, “and because of the immediacy of the problem.”

Such a prosecution, normally aimed at slumlords, could result in a court order to repair roofs at the complex, Sautner said.

This week’s heavy rain and the resulting leaks heated up a longstanding dispute between the mostly elderly residents of the Woodland Hills Tennis Club Apartments and GBW. The tenants have sued GBW over what the landlord calls a “capital-improvements” rent increase they have paid for the past six years.

“I’m paying for nothing,” said Joe Polman, 75. Polman and several other tenants said the roofs have leaked for years and that the surcharge, from about $9 to $25 a month per tenant, should have been enough to pay for repairs.

Another resident, Muriel Brown, 64, sat on a tarp covering her living room furniture this week and pointed to water spots on the wall beside her closet.

“This wall looks like a waterfall,” said Brown, who is sleeping at her daughter’s home to avoid the strong smell of mildew from the damp carpet. “I had to get my umbrella out to get into my closet.”

The city attorney’s office began the investigation after learning of 61 tenant complaints about leaks, some dating back to 1985, Sautner said. Building inspectors first learned of the complaints last fall and told GBW to repair the roofs, she said.

A spokesman for GBW said the company spent $48,000 last year to patch the leaks, but more keep appearing. Roofs on three of the complex’s six buildings have been replaced, and GBW plans to replace the remaining three within the next two months, said spokesman Douglas Lind.

“It doesn’t behoove us in any way to not fix it,” Lind said. “We’re not slumlords.” The company has offered to move affected tenants into different apartments, but some have refused, he said.

The animosity between GBW and the tenants stems mainly from the surcharge, which is permitted under the city’s rent-control law. The surcharge began about 1981. But, under a city regulation, the surcharge was to last only five years, unless GBW could show a financial hardship. Last year, GBW successfully argued that a hardship existed because few tenants had left the complex and rents could not be significantly raised. The capital-improvements rent increase was made permanent.

The tenants sued, challenging the city’s provisions for hardship. Late last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in their favor, but GBW and the city have appealed.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the area, said Friday she pushed a “statement of policy” through the council earlier this year saying that “tenants’ rent increases for capital improvements should be temporary, not permanent.”