COPING WITH THE WATER SHORTAGE : PAYING THE BILLS : Rationing Penalties Could Increase Landlord-Tenant Tensions

The day after Los Angeles city officials ordered water rationing to begin on March 1, Los Feliz landlord Gwendolyn Horton was hand-lettering a sign to her tenants, asking them to “cooperate to save all the water that you can.”

But in Venice, renter Regina Hyman thought about all the leaky pipes in her apartment building that she says the landlord hasn’t fixed--and worried that she and other tenants will be asked to pay water fines.

In Brentwood, apartment owner Charles Isham said he wasn’t counting on extraordinary conservation efforts from his residents, so he sent off a check to a plumber for 30 “ultra low-flush” toilets.

On the eve of mandatory water rationing in Los Angeles, landlords and tenants around the city are bracing for acrimony. Most apartment buildings have only one central water meter, so it will be impossible for landlords to determine how much water each tenant is consuming--or conserving. And if any fines result from excessive water use, many landlords are likely to ask their renters to pay at least a portion of them, which is sure to ignite questions of fairness.

Some people expect the water situation to aggravate what one apartment dweller politely described as the “natural tension” between tenants and owners, while others fear it will turn tenants against each other if they are walloped with fines for overuse.

Landlords and tenants alike are “hysterical,” said Barbara Zeidman, director of the city’s Rent Stabilization Division, which fielded about 500 phone calls after last Tuesday’s City Council approval of the city’s first water rationing law since the drought of 1977.

The ordinance requires all residences and businesses to cut back water use 10% starting March 1 and another 5% beginning May 1, based on 1986 levels.

“Owners (have) serious concerns because they feel they do not have sufficient control over water usage to achieve the desired reductions,” Zeidman said. And tenants feel maintenance issues will cause them to pay penalties they don’t feel responsible for. “They are hysterical over whether they can do it (save enough water). We are saying, you can do it.”

The Department of Water and Power has established an appeals process for water customers who feel their allotments are unfair. But it is open to the property owner, who pays the bill, not to tenants.

“How will tenants know if they are having any impact?” asked Larry Gross, head of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a Hollywood-based tenants lobby. “They won’t know what they need to conserve until they are assessed a penalty. And they have no vehicle to raise objections if they have been conserving all along.”

The water rationing ordinance provides that owners of the city’s 480,000 rent-controlled apartments may pass on to tenants 50% of any penalties resulting from overuse. The city’s 650,000 apartments that were built after 1978 and are not bound by the rent control law may increase rents to cover the extra costs when leases are renegotiated, according to the city attorney’s office.

The ordinance forbids landlords from closing laundry rooms to save water. However, many apartment owners have capped outdoor spigots to prevent hosing of cars and have taken other measures, such as changing landscape maintenance habits and installing water-saving devices.

Dan Faller of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Southern California said many landlords will be hesitant to pass on fines to their tenants.

“Nobody wants to do that. It is a pain, a bookkeeping pain,” said Faller. “And it’s bad PR. A tenant is a client.”

Landlords will be afraid of losing tenants if they tack on a portion of a water fine to the monthly rent, Faller said. The decision to pass on a fine will depend on whether an apartment is being rented at market rates and how many vacancies the landlord has, he said.

Isham, the Brentwood landlord, said that if his building fails to conserve the required amount, he will not pass on any portion of fines that the rationing ordinance allows.

“I hate to pass on things to the tenant. It just creates ill will,” he said. “Tenants who try to conserve water will take out their hostilities on the landlord instead of on the tenants they know are wasting.”

Isham said he expects to avoid fines by installing low-flush toilets. He estimates that the new toilets--which use less than two gallons of water with each flush, compared to the five to seven gallons required by standard models--could cut his water bill by as much as 40%.

Once the new toilets are in place, he plans to apply for $100 rebates that the Department of Water and Power is offering for every standard toilet replaced by the conservation models.

In Venice’s Oakwood neighborhood, Hyman said she had not heard from her landlord about what types of conservation steps might be necessary when rationing begins. She complained that water was being wasted in several apartments because of poor plumbing and said she was concerned that tenants would be blamed if there was a violation.

“We are not responsible,” she said. “We don’t know if water is (wasted) by a tenant or because (management) hasn’t fixed things.”

The apartment owner, Alliance Housing Management Inc., did not return telephone calls from The Times.

At Park La Brea apartments, a 4,200-unit complex in the Mid-Wilshire area, the management already has taken a number of steps, such as reducing landscape watering times and performing “preventive maintenance,” said general manager Roger Winegar. Outdoor water spigots may be capped to discourage tenants from hosing off walkways and encourage the recycling of indoor water to moisten plants, he added.

David Hamlin, Park La Brea tenants association president, was contemplating other ways to encourage conservation among the 10,000 residents, such as contests between the various buildings in the complex to see which can save the most water.

Carol Berman, who lives in an apartment house on Venice beach, said she hopes that her fellow tenants will not turn against one another if their building goes over its water allotment.

“If (the person) upstairs persists in taking half-hour showers, and I’ve not been taking showers and not flushing the toilet as much, there might be some kind of problem,” she said. “On the other hand, we’re just going to have to trust our brothers. I’m certainly not going to turn into a water spy--unless I get fined.”