Slum Tenants Turn to City Council

More than 100 tenants of Garden Grove’s dilapidated Buena Clinton neighborhood, some carrying dead cockroaches and dying mice, turned out at Monday’s City Council meeting to demand that city building inspectors get tough with property owners who have refused to make needed repairs.

Nativo Lopez, who heads Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino immigrant-rights group that organized about 150 tenants in a rent strike four months ago, asked the council to investigate the building inspection process in the 39-acre neighborhood, in southeast Garden Grove near the Santa Ana River, which is considered Orange County’s worst slum.

“We have reason to believe that upper echelon personnel have developed a blind eye to addressing with seriousness the housing, health and safety conditions of this neighborhood,” Lopez said.

“We have reason to suspect that there exists a certain level of collusion between some of the upper echelon personnel and some of the apartment buildings before they are really brought up to code.”

Although the council did not address Lopez’s charges directly, Mayor J. Tilman Williams told Lopez and the tenants he represented, “We can’t do anything but enforce the code. The judge can take action on these problems.”

He added later, however, that he would investigate the tenants’ complaints.

“Enforcement officials will take action,” he said. “They will make sure the plumbing, electricity, is all taken care of.”

Richard Spix, a lawyer for Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, said that despite numerous building code violations in the neighborhood, not one property owner has been prosecuted in the past four months.

But Gregory Devereaux, director of the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development, disputed Spix’s assertion, saying, “There are a number of of active prosecutions ongoing now. Our efforts have not been diminished.”

Tenant Miguel Vargas, who addressed the council in Spanish, carried what appeared to be five dying mice on a tray, as he complained about the unsanitary conditions in his apartment. Other tenants showed off dead cockroaches they said they had trapped in their apartments.

Williams, however, appeared annoyed with the display.

“Is it better here than in Mexico?” he asked Vargas. “Do they not have roaches in Mexico?”

“We’ve got to educate people on how to take care of their units,” Williams said. “They bring the cockroaches into the place.”