Latino Tenants Win Promise of City Inquiry on Complaints

Los Angeles city officials promised to investigate complaints about substandard housing from more than 400 angry Latino tenants Sunday, and in turn appealed to the tenants to report improper rent increases and unsafe conditions despite fears of landlord retaliation.

Flanked by half a dozen city housing officials, Councilwoman Gloria Molina and Councilman Richard Alatorre also pledged to work with other council members to extend rent control to single-family houses.

The pledges were issued at a meeting on housing conditions arranged by the church-backed United Neighborhoods Organization at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church near Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Despite the tenants’ attendance at the meeting, their fear of retaliation by landlords or youth gangs and drug dealers was evident.

Many Are Hesitant

Father Richard Estrada and other leaders of the neighborhood organization said that only 25% of the 800 parishioners who registered housing complaints at the church in the last three weeks had agreed to sign the complaints.

Milford Bliss, head of the Community Safety Bureau of the Department of Building and Safety, assured the group that all complaints about substandard housing would be treated confidentially. He said his staff would investigate and report back to a complaining tenant within “three or four days.”

Javier Corona, chairman of the bilingual complaint session, said that of the 207 people who had submitted signed housing surveys, 62% complained about rats, 54% about plumbing problems, 34% protested rent increases and 33% registered complaints about electrical wiring.

In the meeting Sunday, two men and four women elaborated on their problems for the city officials.

Complaining of cockroaches and her landlord’s refusal to exterminate, one woman said: “I clean my apartment. I put poison. But there are so many that the cockroaches go to the ceiling and into the cracks. They fall in the kitchen on the food and in the bedrooms.”

A man who identified himself only as Julio said his rent has been increased three to four times a year, and that, “If we complain and do not pay, he (the landlord) threatens to kick us out the way he has done to other neighbors.”

The others reported exposed electrical wiring, clogged kitchen and bathroom pipes, rats and mice. One woman also complained of drug sales and the shooting of guns outside their windows.

The city officials were given a list of 15 specific buildings that the neighborhood organization wants inspected for “unsafe, unhealthful conditions.”

“You have two council people who care about your problems,” Alatorre assured the group in both Spanish and English. “But we don’t know everything. If you are afraid to contact our city agencies, then contact one of our district council offices.”

Molina and Alatorre agreed to work with other council members to upgrade apartment buildings to meet earthquake safety standards. They said they would report back on all the tenants’ concerns within two months.