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AN ASSAULT ON URBAN BLIGHT : City Inspector Now Wars Against a Domestic Enemy

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Times Staff Writer

The night before the Allied invasion of Normandy, Milford Bliss parachuted behind enemy lines. After the war, he spent some time traveling around a Europe in ruins. Whole towns “just flattened,” he recalled. “It changes your thinking.”

Last summer Bliss returned to see a continent rebuilt. Buildings that were 200 to 300 years old were repaired so they were as sturdy as ever.

As a Los Angeles building inspector for 41 years, Bliss has seen a different sort of destruction at home: urban blight, communities victimized by neglect and apathy. But to him, the postwar reconstruction of Europe is a model for what the bureau of city inspectors he heads might be able to accomplish in the decaying neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

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Inspectors fanned out Monday through South-Central Los Angeles in search of shoddy and substandard housing, citing a new “community-based” approach to monitoring housing conditions around the city.

The new approach was adopted after criticism by the City Council almost two years ago that inspection efforts were too slow and unresponsive.

In August, 1987, the Community Safety Bureau of the Department of Building and Safety was revamped and expanded to keep pace with a soaring number of residential property violations. Complaints of illegal and unregulated construction had doubled in the previous five years.

About $2 million was spent to hire 40 inspectors and station them in different areas of the city. Before then, inspectors were based downtown and drove to their areas--and drove back again at the end of the day. Now they work in those communities and, in many cases, also live there, Bliss said.

“It made a hell of a lot of difference,” he said. “Suddenly they’re interested in Watts; it’s not just a miserable neighborhood. . . . This is their territory and they’d like to take care of it too.”

22 Offices and Growing

Now 105 inspectors work out of 22 offices, with more scheduled to open. Complaints are answered in days, not weeks, Bliss said. Investigations have increased almost threefold.

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“It had been pretty much a reactionary bureau for many years,” said Frank Kroeger, chief of the Building and Safety Department. “The council said it wasn’t getting the job done. (Now) we’re going to deliver the right kind of product.”

Ultimately, Bliss said, the idea is to inspire residents to maintain their own neighborhoods, to develop a sense of pride and not tolerate blatant violations.

Blight grows house by house, he said, until a whole neighborhood has decayed. “When you lose one, you lose all,” he noted.

But the 68-year-old city official said that, in his experience, the traditional punitive approach--sometimes called “find them and fine them”--doesn’t work too well.

“You don’t come in with a bunch of hard-hitting jackboot types,” he said. “I don’t like to threaten. I like to convince.”

Convince people, that is, that property values will go up and life will be more pleasant if safety threats and eyesores are removed. At the same time, the inspectors must take the onus off people living in squalor and hold the landlords responsible, he said.

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For example, Bliss said, when the city learns that people are living in garages illegally converted into housing, the city should not simply throw the tenants into the streets.

Compromise Measure

Under a proposal being worked on by Councilman Robert Farrell, the owner of a converted garage would have to pay for improvements to make the structure safe to live in. Bliss said such a measure would be a stopgap until some sort of long-term affordable housing can be found.

“There’s an awful lot of people living in garages, living in a sub-habitable environment,” he said. “But it should be to minium housing standards. It should be healthy.”

“I think we could make some of these places habitable and safe,” he said.

Bliss, who was placed in charge of the bureau when it was reorganized, has had his inspectors meet with neighborhood leaders.

“We’ve been working with them quite a bit,” said Rick Ruiz, an aide to Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. The goal is to not let neighborhoods become problems, he said. “If you stay on top of it you can avoid problems that happen after years of neglect.”

“It’s like any other disease,” he said, “if you catch it quickly you can save it; if you let it go, you have to amputate.”

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