Pasadena to Check Up on HUD Project

Fear haunts King’s Villages in Northwest Pasadena, tenants say.

Drive-by shootings on adjacent Hammond Street and drug dealers within the 313-unit, low-income housing project contribute to the unease. Members of the Tenants Union recite a litany of maintenance and privacy complaints against Thomas Pottmeyer & Co., manager and co-owner of the complex.

Now, the Jan. 18 death of Robert Earl Holloway, 28, a supposed trespasser who was chased down and wrestled into submission by four King’s Villages security guards, has prompted an investigation by Pasadena police. It has also drawn a hard look at the complex from the Pasadena Board of Directors, who toured it last week.

On Tuesday, the board ordered an unprecedented, $20,000 unit-by-unit inspection of King’s Villages to check compliance with city Building, Health and Fire codes. In addition, the board agreed to work with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, project tenants and majority owner Goldrich, Kest & Associates, to change the project’s ownership. The board wants to form a tenant cooperative, nonprofit housing corporation, or other form of management to let tenants help run the complex, which is the city’s largest low-income housing project.

“It won’t be easy,” cautioned Director Rick Cole, who proposed the change in ownership, “but it offers us perhaps the only solution to the situation we’ve heard about.”

And the situation at the 26-acre project is grave, said Tenants Union President De-Vera Joe. She claims that reduced trash pickups have led to piles of garbage crawling with maggots. She also complains of raw sewage collecting in pools outside some apartments, broken glass littering the lawn and tenant requests for plumbing and electrical repairs going unanswered.

About 50 evictions from the projects were referred last year to the Fair Housing Council of San Gabriel Valley when tenants protested they were unfair. About half were reversed, said council member Isaac Richards, who also sits on the city’s Northwest Task Force.

“You’re constantly in fear of getting a little (eviction) notice,” Joe said. “People are afraid here.”

“The security guards do what they want,” added Lisa Hogan, a tenant evicted last April.

Robert Hirsch, a partner in Goldrich, Kest & Associates who appeared at Tuesday’s council meeting, admitted that King’s Villages has its problems. Hirsch said he could not respond to any of the specific complaints because he is not the project’s on-site manager.

In a phone interview, Pottmeyer denied tenant allegations of mismanagement. “We have done a tremendous amount of work in the 15 months I’ve been there,” Pottmeyer said. “The project is tremendously better.”

All evictions have been according to law, he said. In addition, he said, King’s Villages is regularly inspected by HUD and follows HUD regulations.

He declined to counter in detail other complaints, most of which he said came from former tenants.

Hirsch told the board: “The development has turned around 1,000% to the better since Mr. Pottmeyer took over management.” Drug dealers have been evicted and tenant safety has been improved, he said. To counter what Pottmeyer perceived as past discrimination against Latinos, the manager has allowed 40 Latino families to move into the project, Hirsch said.

In addition, more than half of the apartments have been repainted or recarpeted and new appliances installed in the past two years, he said.

Hirsch’s view is bolstered in part by Melvin Lim, a city Health Department supervisor in charge of inspections at King’s Villages.

As a result of tenant complaints in July last year, the Health Department began regular, weekly inspections at the complex. Because of landlord cooperation and compliance, those inspections have been reduced to once a month, Lim said.

In addition, the Health Department conducted 13 inspections last year after tenants complained of clogged sewer lines, cockroach infestation and other maintenance problems. “I’ve seen worse apartments than King’s Villages,” Lim said, but he hesitated to call the complex “well-kept” and said it was “just maintained.”

Nonetheless, Hirsch said many tenants have thanked the company for improving conditions at the project. Those who complain represent only a “very small minority,” he said, adding, “You’ve got two sides to every income property, the tenants and the owners.”

The project opened in 1969 as King’s Manor at a time when giant, low-income housing projects were still the preferred, affordable housing mode.

But HUD foreclosed on the property after the three original developers went bankrupt, Hirsch said. The still-uncompleted project reverted to city hands. In 1982, the city turned to private management as the solution to the project’s woes and selected as new owners Goldrich, Kest & Associates, a Culver City-based company with 10,000 HUD projects in California.

The company took over a $5.3 million HUD loan, financed another $1.6 million loan and made nearly $2 million in improvements to King’s Villages, Hirsch said. The company also came up with the idea of using gates and block walls to divide the complex into five, separate “villages” of about 60 units, with tenant managers for each.

But after the project continued to lose money, Goldrich, Kest & Associates looked for a buyer in 1988. Thomas Pottmeyer & Co. was brought in as a managing partner and co-owner.

“One of the reasons Mr. Pottmeyer was selected by us is because he is a good, experienced manager who has cleaned up other difficult developments,” Hirsch said.

But Richards, of the Fair Housing Council, accused Pottmeyer of selectively evicting tenants from 130 units so the units can be converted to condominiums. The blacks evicted from those units have been replaced by Latinos unfamiliar with English, who will not protest when they are later evicted for the conversions, Richards charged.

“Fixed up, it’s valuable property,” he said of the apartments. “They can make a killing.”

Hirsch called Richards’ scenario “a figment of his imagination.” Hirsch said it was only coincidence that vacancies occurred in the 130 units into which some Latinos moved. In addition, the condominium conversion must be approved by the Board of Directors, a process that could take two years after 1991, he said. Finally, the profits from such a sale would not be great, because the 21-year-old apartments would have to be renovated before they could be sold.

Other complaints center on the behavior of security guards. The guards, employees of Gold Security Patrol, enforce an unofficial 10 p.m. curfew and accuse women walking outdoors after that hour of engaging in prostitution, Joe said.

Joe claims that “troublesome” tenants like herself are spied upon by the guards for possible project rule violations, such as a messy back yard, which would constitute grounds for eviction. She accused the guards of watching her through binoculars.

The guards also enforce a no-trespassing rule, police said. Under that rule, anyone walking through the project who is not a resident nor visiting a resident will be issued a warning and told to leave. If the guards spot the same person there after the warning, an arrest can be made.

On Jan. 18, Holloway, a part-time employee of the city Parks and Recreation Department, died after running afoul of that rule. According to police accounts, Holloway was chased on foot and caught about a block outside the project by four King’s Village security guards. The guards said Holloway had been trespassing, and they had caught him after a fight.

Pasadena police officers called to the scene found Holloway lying on the pavement, Pasadena Police Sgt. Monte Yancey said. After handcuffing him, they tried to lift him into a police car and noticed that he had stopped breathing. Holloway was taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital where he died, Yancey said.

The coroner’s office has yet to complete drug tests on Holloway and has not determined the cause of death, Yancey said. Once that report has been completed, the police investigation will be forwarded to the district attorney’s office, which will decide if any further action should be taken, he said.