FRONT-YARD faux pas : Pasadena officials, seeking to preserve the town’s ‘history and reputation’ as a bastion of manicured lawns and tidy bungalows, have proposed a municipal ordinance that would raise the standard of property maintenance citywide.
Clothes drying on balconies. Cars on blocks. Broken-down sofas. Overgrown weeds. Abandoned refrigerators. Busted steps.
These are the some of the front-yard uglies that Pasadena wants to outlaw under a new property maintenance ordinance to be considered by the Board of Directors on Sept. 25.
The ordinance consolidates current health and safety and zoning and land-use codes that have been on the books for years. By putting them together in a new ordinance, board members hope to focus homeowners’ attention on keeping up their property.
“Hopefully, we’re not talking about crabgrass fascism here,” Director Rick Cole said. “There are private property rights, but there’s also such a thing as pride in the neighborhood and pride as a city.”
But some Pasadena residents say the 21-page ordinance does violate property rights.
“I think it’s too much,” said David Gilmore, a member of the Bungalow Heaven Neighborhood Assn. “If rules like this are going to be made, they should be made by the neighborhood associations and not the city.”
In proposing the ordinance, Pasadena joins about 60 cities statewide that are devising property maintenance ordinances or already have them in place.
Existing property maintenance and nuisance abatement measures have been enforced only occasionally, said Donald Morrin, an administrator with Pasadena’s Housing and Neighborhood Services Department. Now, cities statewide--including a number in the San Gabriel Valley--are taking new interest in such ordinances and are hiring enough code officers to enforce them, he said.
The reasons are varied, Morrin said. “Quality-of-life issues have come to the forefront. People are recognizing that they are paying lots and lots of money for property, and many cities are getting old and the housing stock is deteriorating.”
Such issues prompted Azusa to pass a property maintenance ordinance a year ago and institute a mandatory yearly inspection of all rental properties, said David Rudisel, Azusa’s community improvement manager.
The result was a dramatic turnaround in conditions at Atlantis Gardens, a 39-building apartment complex at 6th Street and Rockvale Avenue. Property values for some of the buildings rose by $50,000--reaching $300,000--after owners complied with the new rules, Rudisel said.
“The whole idea is to maintain the buildings and not let them deteriorate into slums,” Rudisel said.
Similarly, Alhambra city officials recognized that they had an aesthetic problem after more than 300 vehicles were ticketed last year for illegal front-yard parking, Alhambra code enforcement officer MaryJane Alston said. Some homeowners paved over their front yards or kept them as dirt parking lots, Alston said.
“We’ve always had complaints about dirt front yards, but we had nothing in the ordinances that would make people have a front yard,” she said.
So, on Aug. 27, the Alhambra City Council passed an ordinance requiring that all front yards in the city contain 50% live vegetation. Outlawed are concrete, artificial turf and asphalt, Alston said. The ordinance takes effect in October, and homeowners with illegal front yards will have one year to make the change.
Although some homeowners may protest that ordinances such as those in Alhambra and Azusa--and the one proposed in Pasadena--violate private property rights, Pasadena officials say the law is on their side.
“It’s certainly a proper use of the powers of local government to ensure property is clean and well maintained,” Director William Thomson said.
Language used in two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases upholds the right of cities to specify how yards and buildings should be maintained, Pasadena Deputy City Atty. Carolyn Williams said.
Williams quoted a decision in a 1989 Los Angeles case involving the posting of signs. The Supreme Court said a city government “may legitimately exercise its police powers to enhance aesthetic values.” In a 1984 case, she said, the Supreme Court determined that cities have the authority to protect “spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary” values.
“That is some very good language for use if anyone attempts to challenge the (Pasadena) ordinance,” Williams said.
The Pasadena ordinance was proposed after city officials became concerned two years ago about decline in the city’s housing stock.
“The theory was to put in one ordinance all of the things we were trying to avoid or abate,” Cole said. “Then we would have a much stronger basis for knowing what’s legal and what’s not.”
City staff members contacted 342 California cities regarding property maintenance laws and received copies of 161 ordinances regulating the appearance of buildings, Morrin said.
About 60 cities among the 161 have property maintenance ordinances or are writing them. Most of the others use typical nuisance abatement sections, which Morrin called a time-consuming and expensive method of resolving property maintenance issues.
Under abatement laws, property owners are given warning notices, a procedure that can take up to two months in Pasadena, Morrin said. If they ignore the notices, the city can file criminal charges, but judges are often reluctant to levy heavy fines and penalties on people who simply fail to clean their yards, Morrin said.
To avoid the abatement procedures, city staff members will devise a method like that used in Monterey Park, where civil procedures, such as citations and fines, are used without criminal prosecution.
In drafting Pasadena’s proposed ordinance, staff members met with more than 150 people from neighborhood associations. Overwhelmingly, the associations favored the ordinance, Morrin said.
But, at an Aug. 28 hearing, city directors were blasted by recreational-vehicle owners who were outraged about a section of the proposed ordinance that bans RV parking in front yards. The board dropped the provision temporarily and will consider it separately in the future.
The proposal still bans 35 categories of items considered too unsightly to be viewed from the street.
For low-income property owners who might be unable to comply with the new provisions, help is available from the city’s Maintenance Assistance and Service to Homeowners program. Workers in the city-funded program can paint houses, clean yards and haul away trash.
“We (will) have a hammer, but we also are able to soften the blow,” Morrin said.
Still, some property owners say the ordinance is too strict.
Pasadena homeowner Gilmore said he disagrees with a provision that would allow the city to clean up property and place a lien on the home to recover costs if the homeowner ignores city warnings.
The ordinance also fails to recognize that homeowners with corner lots and irregularly shaped lots may not be able to comply with regulations on screening clotheslines and garbage cans from street view, he said.
“In this ordinance, there’s no limitation, no leeway, and that’s not right,” Gilmore said.
Even Thomson and Cole say the ordinance needs to be trimmed before it is adopted.
“I’ve read the ordinance, and it bans practically everything,” Cole said. “Anything that anyone has not liked against any neighbor in any neighborhood has been put into this ordinance.”
Cole said he is also concerned about the city’s ability to enforce the new regulations when its four code enforcement officers already receive as many as 2,500 complaints a year.
But Morrin said many of the regulations are already on the books and are enforced under other sections of the Municipal Code.
“The purpose of this is to heighten the awareness of the community,” he said. “If you want the community to look a certain way, there are certain things that have to be done.”
HERE ARE SOME SAMPLES FROM THE 35 RULE ORDINANCE
1. No clotheslines or clothes hanging in front or side yards, on porches or balconies.
2. No garbage cans permanently stored visible from the street.
3. No non-operational vehicles and motorcycles or vehicles or motorcycles on blocks.
4. No graffiti or drawings on buildings for longer that 72 hours.
5. No peelng paint, broken windows, damaged porches or broken steps on structures.
6. No dead trees or weeds.
LOCAL LAWS ON APPEARANCE
San Gabriel Valley cities use a variety of ordinances to regulate the appearance of private property. Here is a look at some of their efforts.
Alhambra: real property nuisance and weed removal ordinances, as well as a new landscaping ordinance that requires front yards to contain 50% live vegetation.
Arcadia: a 9-year-old property maintenance ordinance similar to that being considered by Pasadena.
Azusa: a property maintenance ordinance, passed in February, 1989, similar to that being considered by Pasadena. The measure is used to evaluate housing under the city’s annual rental inspection program.
Covina: devising a property maintenance ordinance for presentation at a public hearing in about six weeks.
La Verne: a property maintenance ordinance may be devised next year as part of the city’s General Plan update; otherwise, only weed and vehicle abatement ordinances exist.
Pasadena: various health, zoning and land-use ordinances whose provisions may be incorporated under a property maintenance ordinance under consideration for adoption Sept. 25.
San Gabriel: has been working on consolidating laws into a property maintenance ordinance but currently uses nuisance abatement and fire hazard laws.
West Covina: a 5-year-old landscape maintenance ordinance and a structure maintenance ordinance passed last year.
