Escondido to Bill Landlords of Substandard Housing

Escondido has resumed its crackdown on substandard rental units in the city’s aging core, announcing an aggressive new plan Thursday to bill landlords who have profited from the dilapidated housing for the cost of relocating displaced renters.

Dan McFarland, Escondido building director, said the city has acted to recover demolition and relocation costs from landlords in the past only when the property owners failed to respond to the city’s orders to improve their rental properties. From now on, whether or not the owners comply and bring their rentals up to city code standards, they will be billed for the full cost of relocating their low-income tenants, including the city’s administrative overhead in running the relocation program, he said.

McFarland explained that the new get-tough policy is designed to encourage rental property owners to improve their holdings before the city is forced to step in, and thereby avoid the additional costs of relocation of tenants.

In the past three years of code enforcement, the city has acted against owners of 170 substandard structures, McFarland said, demolishing about two-thirds of the buildings. He estimated that “10 times that many” remain.

City officials also believe that the desire of many owners to avoid the public exposure city eviction notices can bring may serve as an incentive for them to make improvements. McFarland said he has had calls from prominent people asking that their names be kept out of the newspapers when code enforcement notices are issued.

But the building director cannot promise anyone anonymity once the city becomes involved, he explained, “because these are matters of public record.”

The city’s crackdown on substandard rental units was abruptly halted a year ago after about 100 people in 15 families were evicted in two city actions. None of the homeless families had the means to find new housing until the City Council stepped in and appropriated emergency funds to relocate them.

Since that first emergency bailout, the program has been expanded to involve several city departments, the city Housing Commission and the nonprofit North County Interfaith Council, which was hired by the city June 5 to handle the relocation of the families displaced by the city’s enforcement efforts. It will also offer other services to the evictees, including medical, child care, job training and employment services.

McFarland said the building code enforcement program has been modified in an attempt to save the buildings by working with property owners to bring the units up to code because of the critical need for moderately priced housing.

Patricia Getzel, city housing and human services manager, estimated there are 10,000 families in Escondido who need some level of help to obtain decent housing but that only a few hundred units of moderately priced or subsidized housing are available.

The City Council recently authorized $750,000 from community development funds to provide 66 beds for “transitional” housing, which can be used temporarily until low-income families caught in the city’s code enforcement program find affordable housing that meets city standards.

Suzanne Stewart Pohlman, executive director of the NCIC, praised city officials for their efforts to consider “the human factor” when moving to clean up substandard housing. She praised the cooperation among city departments to meet the needs of affected tenants of the run-down properties while continuing to crack down on owners of dilapidated buildings.

Lack of coordination in the past has led to incidents in which improvable properties and housing built with federal subsidies have been razed before housing officials were aware of the pending demolition, Getzel said.

Funding for the housing relocation program comes from money set aside by the city from profits from its redevelopment program.