Council Postpones Action on Law to Require Fire Sprinkler Systems : Safety: The cost could be more than $300 a month per unit. Some fear it would force elderly and low-income residents out of their homes.

A committee of the Los Angeles City Council voted this week to ask for more information about the cost to apartment renters and condominium owners before requiring that all high-rise residential buildings be equipped with fire-prevention sprinkler systems.

Confronted with warnings that it could cost more than $300 a month per unit to finance the complex job in existing residential high-rise buildings, almost all of which are located on the Westside, the Public Safety Committee postponed action for four months on a draft ordinance submitted by the Fire Department and the Department of Building and Safety.

Buildings erected since 1974 are not affected, because sprinklers have been required in all new construction since then.

“There is no right way and no wrong way” to handle the problem, one of the hardest policy questions to confront the City Council in recent years, Councilman Richard Alatorre, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said before Monday’s 3-0 vote.

“None of us are trying to force anything down anybody’s throat,” he said. “We’re trying to guarantee the safety of people who live in Los Angeles buildings, and also to balance the economic impact.”

An audience of several hundred apartment dwellers who crowded into the City Council chambers booed, hooted and groaned about the costs, which would be enough to price many low-income elderly people out of their homes, according to city housing officials.

Fire Department officials said there is no substitute for sprinkler systems in high-rise buildings, where the sheer distance from the ground makes it hard for fire-fighters to get to a blaze.

Councilman Nate Holden, who supports the Fire Department’s proposal, told the audience that without sprinklers, “guess what’ll happen--some of you are going to get a little toasted.”

The proposal would require that the public areas of high-rise residential buildings be outfitted with sprinkler systems within three years, and individual apartments within seven years. Individual units would be retrofitted earlier in cases when a tenant moved out or a condominium was sold.

Hotels would have six years to install sprinklers in their living areas.

Charles F. Elsesser, president of the city’s Affordable Housing Commission, expressed concern about the costs of such an ordinance. Some apartment dwellers, he said, “are just holding on to their apartments by their fingernails,” he said.

“Stress, pain and travail will kill more people than any fires,” one resident added, as speaker after speaker denounced the Fire Department’s latest proposals.

The problem is that the demolition, plumbing and installation required to equip an existing building is complicated and expensive.

So much so, according to Barbara Zeidman, the city’s director of rent stabilization, that the cost of retrofitting a typical apartment in the Park Labrea complex has been estimated at $12,701.

Tenants may be charged for the full cost of the work plus interest, which would add up to $257.58 a month when computed over five years as provided by the city’s rent stabilization ordinance. However, the fees would continue in perpetuity.

At some condominiums, the cost could go as high as $26,058, or $528.46 a month. There would also be charges for asbestos removal and putting walls back together after the sprinklers are installed.

Even though the Fire Department’s latest proposal includes changes that cut 9% off the previously estimated costs, the higher rents would mean that an unknown number of people would soon flood the moderately priced apartment market, Zeidman said.

As a result, apartments in the $600-a-month range would soon disappear, making it even harder for working-class people to find places to live in the city, she said.

The biggest cheers came for a suggestion that no sprinklers be required.

Councilman Hal Bernson joined in the 3-0 vote, although he said that he would press for passage of the sprinkler ordinance when it comes back before the committee within four months.

At that time, city staffers are expected to suggest ways to reduce the financial impact of installing sprinklers in older high-rise residential buildings.

Since the fire at the First Interstate Building in downtown Los Angeles in 1988, and another conflagration at the Wilshire Terrace luxury co-op in Westwood in 1989, pressure has been growing to require the sprinklers in older buildings.

Fire Marshal Davis R. Parsons said there are 138 pre-1974 high-rises in the city, including 42 hotels, 74 apartment houses and 22 condominiums and co-op buildings.

Of these, 20 hotels have had sprinklers installed, along with 16 apartment houses and two condominium towers. Two more apartment houses and five more condominiums are now being retrofitted, he said, leaving 93 buildings that would be affected by the new legislation.