Buena Clinton Rent Strike Set : Latino Rights Group Backing Frustrated Tenants

Ana Maria Aldana, shy and uneducated, is unaccustomed to joining causes, especially ones dealing with the legal rights of her six-member family.

But after four years of living in a rundown apartment that never seems to get fixed no matter how many complaints are made to the landlord, Aldana and her husband, Julian, are banding together with 150 other tenants to stage a rent strike in the Buena Clinton neighborhood of Garden Grove.

Beginning Sunday, these tenants of one of Orange County’s best-known slums say they will set aside their May rent payment in an escrow account until owners make the needed repairs to their apartments.

Conditions Called ‘Horrible’

“We have lived for four years in horrible conditions,” said Aldana, who, with her husband, has raised four children in the small one-bedroom apartment on Sunswept Avenue.

Like most residents in the neighborhood, the Aldanas cannot afford to live elsewhere. Julian Aldana’s rent is $450 a month, already steep for a man who earns only $6 an hour on a construction crew.

Even with city code inspectors who regularly issue orders to landlords to make needed repairs, many tenants claim that their complaints go unheeded.

The Aldanas, for example, need new windows and work on their kitchen floor and bathroom.

“I’ve needed new windows for months. And every month, when I pay the rent, I tell them. But they never listen,” Ana Maria Aldana said.

Although there are other areas of poverty in the county as bad as Buena Clinton, the 39-acre neighborhood has long had the reputation as the county’s worst slum.

Through the organizing efforts of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino immigrant rights group that the Buena Clinton residents called upon for help, the number of striking tenants could reach 250 by next week, said Richard L. Spix, the attorney representing the tenants. During the strike, the tenants will deposit their rent payments in an escrow account with Hermandad Mexicana and pay the money if, and when, the repairs are made, Spix said.

Hermandad Mexicana has successfully organized several other rent strikes in Santa Ana and Anaheim. But because Buena Clinton has long been a very visible and identifiable pocket of crime and squalor, this rent strike could draw more attention than others organized by Hermandad.

The deteriorating conditions in Buena Clinton have been well chronicled in the past five years. In 1983, a survey indicated that there were 65 landlords in the neighborhood and that many apartment buildings were bought and sold frequently. According to city officials and some tenants, that practice has not changed dramatically.

For the past three years, the city has been immersed in a high-profile economic redevelopment program to improve Buena Clinton. The city moved into the four-square-block neighborhood, tore down some buildings and constructed a small business park.

City in Second Phase

Now in the second phase of its redevelopment project, the city is tearing down a few apartment buildings it has purchased. Plans also call for the rehabilitation of other buildings to provide low-income housing.

But scores of other buildings on the remaining streets of Buena Clinton are owned by absentee landlords, and conditions have not improved sufficiently to satisfy building inspectors or tenants.

Spix said he had no quarrel with the city and was only interested in getting the owners to improve conditions for the tenants in the slum that is home to more than 5,000 people. About 80% of the residents are Latinos who speak little or no English.

“I’m not there to come down on the city; I just want to interfere with the owners’ livelihood. This is nasty hardball conduct on their part,” Spix said, adding that he does not know who the owners are.”

But after the strike begins in earnest, the lawyer said, “they have to surface.”

However, one owner reached by The Times was very vocal about the pending rent strike and criticized tenants for the conditions of his buildings.

Denial by Owner

Edward S. Kuo is a Westminster businessman and a partner in H & L Development Co., which manages the 15 buildings that he and his partners, whom he declined to name, have owned for five years on Sunswept Avenue.

Kuo owns the apartment building occupied by the Aldanas, as well as those of many others involved in the pending rent strike. But he angrily denied that H & L Development, which is based in Rowland Heights in Los Angeles County, has failed to make repairs or listen to tenants’ complaints. He accused many of the tenants of destroying property and generally not taking care of their apartments.

“This has been a constant thing for five years,” said Kuo, who added that he and his partners are selling their interest in the buildings. “They think that they are entitled to get anything fixed when they destroy it,” he said.

Kuo also said Buena Clinton has vastly improved in the five years H & L Development has owned property in the neighborhood. With the help of the city, the exteriors of the buildings are much better than they were five years ago. Most of the buildings are freshly painted, and the city no longer allows cars to be parked on the street, only under carports.

According to property records, Alexander S. Lin of Yorba Linda is the owner of another building to be targeted in the rent strike. Efforts by The Times to locate him were unsuccessful this week. Spix said he would not know until next week if there are any other owners affected or how many apartment buildings would be included in the strike.

Greg Devereaux, the city’s director of housing and redevelopment, said recently that improvement had been made in conditions in the neighborhood. But he acknowledged that “we still have far to go.”

Kuo claimed responsibility for most of the improvement in the neighborhood.

“It’s much nicer and much cleaner than it used to be. You know who did that? I did tat,” he said.

Spix, who has handled tenants’ rights cases in other rent strikes organized by Hermandad Mexicana in Santa Ana and Anaheim during the past three years, agreed with Kuo--to a point.

“Outside, esta muy bonito . But inside, estan hasta el pescuezo con ratones, “ countered the lawyer, who speaks fluent Spanish. (“Outside, it is very pretty. But inside, they are up to their necks with rats.”)

Although city housing officials will make no public comment on the rent strike called by Hermandad Mexicana, one city employee familiar with Buena Clinton said conditions are indeed as bad as the tenants claim.

“Except for four buildings, everything on Sunswept (Avenue) is a toilet,” said the employee, declining to be identified by name.

22 Citations

Robert Schmieler, Garden Grove’s manager of neighborhood revitalization, said that in the last three months city inspectors had issued “Notice in Order” citations for 22 apartments in Buena Clinton. The citations call for the landlords to make badly needed repairs in each apartment within 30 days, but property owners can--and have--sought extensions.

Yet that number gives only a partial picture of the problem, since most of those citations list multiple code and safety violations in each apartment, Schmieler said. He added that the number of citations issued during that period was “about normal” for Buena Clinton.

Many of the tenants complain that minor breakdowns in their apartments go unrepaired for months at a time, sometimes not at all.

Bertina Marcial said the landlord tried to evict her for having too many people in her two-bedroom apartment. But she said the extra people were only visiting. Marcial said she thought the threats of eviction were to keep her from complaining about the problems in her two-bedroom apartment.

The stove in the apartment is without knobs. And every several hours Marcial has to dig beneath her kitchen sink and empty a large pan of water that collects from a 5-month-old leak. A rat hole is clearly visible behind the pots and pans that clutter the cabinet below the sink.

Marcial also pointed to a window in a bedroom of the second-level apartment that she said was broken by a strong gust of wind on New Year’s Eve.

“It gets cold in here at night, but they won’t come fix it. They never listen to us,” she said.

It was the threatened eviction of Marcial and her family by Lily Tirong, the on-site manager for H & L Development for the past two years, that sparked another Buena Clinton resident to call Hermandad Mexicana three weeks ago. Thus began the dialogue in the neighborhood that culminated with the decision to stage the rent strike.

Marcial’s neighbor, Blanca Navarez, said Tirong was abusive to Marcial and threatened to remove her bodily from the apartment.

“That lady is very humble. It was cruel to treat her like that. That’s why I decided to do something,” Navarez said.

Navarez also claimed that instead of getting the tile in her living room replaced, the manager only allowed for a patch job where it was worn out the most.

“For months and months I told her to fix the floor, the bathroom, but nothing was done. That’s the way they treat everybody,” said Navarez, a mother of three small children.

‘I Try to Help Them’

Tirong, visibly shaken by the tenants’ accusations, denied that she was abusive and said she always listens to their complaints and moves to make repairs quickly. She pulled out a notebook full of vouchers to show that small repair work is being completed almost daily.

“I work more for the tenants than for the owner. I try to help them. I don’t understand why they want to hurt me,” she said, fighting back tears.

Whatever the outcome for the 152 tenants who thus far have agreed to join the strike, the Buena Clinton residents are uniting in a manner very uncommon for them.

For Ana Maria Aldana, the reason to join the strike is simple.

“People were afraid before. But now that we have support, we won’t be afraid,” she said.

Spix has pledged to “defend every one of the cases to the hilt. Conditions there are bad, and the tenants should not have to finance the repairs.”

In the past three weeks, Navarez has organized neighborhood meetings in the courtyard outside her apartment. Only five families appeared at the first meeting. By the third meeting Saturday night, the crowd had grown to 200.

The majority of the tenants committed to the strike live on Sunswept Avenue. But in the last two days others from Morningside and Keel avenues, which flank Sunswept, have signed on.

Navarez said she expects even more people to join the strike during another strategy meeting scheduled this weekend.

“We are all in agreement now. I think we can win because everyone has been treated badly here for a long time,” Navarez said.

Kuo, however, said he was ready to take whatever legal actions necessary to defend himself against the strike. He also accused many of tenants of joining the strike only to “live free without paying rent.”

“Some people just want to take advantage of the rent strike,” he said.

And Kuo reiterated that the tenants are responsible for the majority of the breakdowns.

“We fix everything they want, and a month or two later we have to fix it again,” he said. “Tenants don’t fulfill their duty, period. And society only wants to hear pitiful stories about the tenant. But nobody says what the tenant’s obligation is.”

Although he would not reveal to whom H & L Development is selling their apartments, Kuo said he was glad he and his partners were getting out of Buena Clinton after five years of frustration.

“Don’t call me ‘owner’ or ‘landlord.’ Call me ‘slave.’ That’s what I am, a slave to the tenants,” Kuo said bitterly. “In this society, we don’t need a slumlord. But we don’t need a slum tenant, either.”

BUENA CLINTON

Population: 5,000 to 6,000 residents; 80% Latino and 10% Indochinese. Most residents are undocumented. 46% lived outside the United States in 1979 or later.

Size: 39-acre neighborhood in Garden Grove.

Housing: An average of seven people live in each apartment; some one- or two-bedroom apartments house up to 12 people.

Crime rate: 400% above the city average. 1,400 requests for police services each year.

Median income: $12,987 in 1984. 28% of households are below poverty level. 86% are low or moderate income.

Median age: 21.7 years; city average is 28.8. 36% of population is under 15; 22% in city.

Education: 77% of people ages 16-19 are high school dropouts. Just 26% of those older than 25 are high school graduates.

Source: Garden Grove