State Seeks Charges Over Trailer Park

State housing officials said Monday that they will seek criminal charges against the owner of a Pacoima trailer park housing mostly poor Latinos that has been cited 230 times this year for violations of health, safety and building regulations.

An assemblyman who toured the crowded facility with state inspectors Monday said its tenants live in “conditions you wouldn’t let animals live in.”

Since March, the Pacoima Trailer Park has been inspected four times by state and county officials, who cited it for such violations as leaking sewage, electrical wires running through water puddles, and trash and feces lying in piles outdoors.

The park, at San Fernando Road and Pierce Street, contains 28 small trailers and 11 cabins. On Monday, children ran and bicycled along its two streets while older tenants sat outside their homes, seeking relief from the sweltering, midsummer heat.

Two state inspectors, checking to see if 24 “life-threatening” violations found during a visit last week had been corrected, were accompanied by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) and Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, in whose districts the park is located.

Travis Pitts, deputy director of the state Housing and Community Development Department, said inspectors found that 14 life-threatening violations still had not been corrected, including several in a lean-to used by an 82-year-old man who breathes oxygen from a tank for medical reasons.

Pitts said state officials will ask the Los Angeles city attorney’s office to file a misdemeanor criminal complaint against the owner of the park, identified by officials as Stuart Glazer of Westlake Village. Glazer could not be reached for comment Monday.

Pitts said that if convicted, Glazer could face a $400 fine or 30 days in jail or both. If the violations were not quickly fixed after that, Pitts said, Glazer could also be found in contempt of court, which could mean more serious penalties.

“That beats me standing out in the street and huffing and puffing and giving five-day notices” to fix code violations, Pitts said. “Obviously, we need some help. This isn’t going to be cleaned up quickly by inspections.”

Katz toured the park after initially being refused entrance by a woman who identified herself as the manager. The assemblyman was allowed in after he summoned a Los Angeles police sergeant to the scene and told the woman that as a state lawmaker, he was entitled to check for infractions of state regulations. News reporters and photographers were ordered off the property by three men accompanying the manager.

The manager later said park operators have cleaned up virtually all of the violations cited earlier by inspectors. She also said Glazer has spent considerable sums on improving the facility and blamed many of the problems on tenants, who officials said pay $385 to $540 a month in rent.

“The money that man puts into this place is ridiculous,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “But people don’t take care of it.

“People let their children run all over the place. . . . This is the only home that a lot of them are going to be able to get into, financial-wise and children-wise,” she said.

But Katz described Glazer as a “classic slumlord.”

“Mr. Glazer is out in Westlake Village making money off people who are living in conditions you wouldn’t let animals live in. . . . We’d like Mr. Glazer to live here awhile,” he said.

Local homeowners have repeatedly complained that the park is an eyesore and a magnet for prostitution and drug sales. Tenants have complained of broken toilets, cracked flooring and other problems.

One tenant, who declined to give her name because she fears reprisals from park managers, said the government inspections have prompted a cleanup of trash around the trailers. But much of the facility remains in disrepair, with ongoing plumbing and electrical problems inside the trailers, she said.

“They have cleaned up, but fixed nothing,” she said.

She said the toilet in her trailer, where she lives with her children, has been broken for months. She said she stopped asking for repairs because her numerous requests went unanswered by the park’s managers.

Thelma Reyes, president of a homeowners association in the neighborhood, said several tenants told her that their rents were increased recently and that managers hold residents responsible for the squalid conditions. Reyes said tenants have said managers yelled at them and told them to fix things themselves.

But another tenant said the rent hikes, which took place last month, were merely the usual annual increase and were not punitive.

Justino Pimentel, the 82-year-old tenant dependent on an oxygen tank, said he has lived in the park for 17 years and “never did have any problems.” He said he pays $255 per month to live in a trailer with an attached lean-to, which contains the large oxygen tank he must breathe from because of asthma and heart trouble.

But Pitts said inspectors found seven uncorrected life-threatening violations in Pimentel’s unit, including electrical wires running through puddles.

He also said Pimentel was recently given a three-day eviction notice by the park’s managers “for failing to correct the problems himself.”

Times staff writer Michael Connelly contributed to this story.