Finding Room Under the Law : Housing: A judge will rule whether a Santa Ana law to prohibit overcrowding discriminates against the poor.

From the outside, the one-bedroom apartment on South Minnie Street looks like any other among the rows of buildings located in the densely populated section of the city, home to many newly arrived immigrants.

But photographs and other memorabilia in the living room--used at night as a bedroom--tell the story of a family that is not just passing through. For almost seven years, the five members of Ascension Briseno’s family have made this small apartment their home.

Now, under a city ordinance scheduled to take effect next Tuesday that prohibits overcrowded residences, the Brisenos may be forced to remove one family member from the apartment, face eviction or live under the threat that they could be fined or jailed for violating the new law.

Briseno, 50, is angry. A Southern California resident for almost 24 years--the last 15 in Santa Ana--he believes that the ordinance is an attempt by city officials to force him, his wife, three children and other Latinos out of Santa Ana.

“They don’t want us in the city,” he said Thursday after a court hearing on a lawsuit challenging the new housing restrictions. “They want to throw us out.”

As an active member of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, an immigrant rights group, Briseno is carrying the banner in the legal fight against the city and his landlord by being the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

During a preliminary hearing Thursday, Richard L. Spix, attorney for the group’s legal center, asked the court to overturn the ordinance or issue a restraining order that would delay enforcement of the law until a trial can be held.

Superior Court Judge Floyd H. Schenk said he would issue a ruling Monday, a day before the law is scheduled to take effect.

If the ordinance is upheld, the decision would be a major victory for the City Council and homeowners associations that sought to establish “neighborhood standards” through a series of ordinances that also included the regulation of pushcarts and open-air swap meets.

City residents have said that the overcrowded residences place stress on police and fire services, and are breeding grounds for criminal activities.

Mike Brajdic, president of the Historic French Park Assn., said his group favored the ordinance because neighborhood residents could see that overcrowded homes were gradually deteriorating.

One three-bedroom house on his street, he said, had at least 20 residents and perhaps as many as 40. Some were sleeping in campers in the back yard, others were in the basement, and most rooms throughout the house had been set up as individual housing units, complete with refrigerators, Brajdic said.

“When you have that many people in a residence, I don’t care how well meaning or how well they attempt to maintain it, you cannot have that many people in a dwelling and not have it run down just by the sheer numbers,” Brajdic said.

Under the new law, the first of its kind in Orange County, the city has established square footage requirements for “living space,” which excludes stairwells, halls, closets, bathrooms and kitchens. Any dwelling with two occupants must have at least 150 square feet of living space, and another 100 square feet is required for each additional resident.

Residents and landlords who violate the new ordinance would face a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine or a year in jail.

The housing law is the city’s second attempt in recent years to control residential overcrowding.

Last fall, Briseno and Spix won an appellate court decision that required the city to count rooms other than bedrooms as sleeping quarters, effectively allowing up to 10 people to live in a one-bedroom apartment. Previously, city officials said that only bedrooms qualified as sleeping quarters.

But instead of gingerly tailoring a new ordinance to meet the appellate court ruling, Spix said, the city enacted stricter regulations, which he said resulted in “a meat-cleaver reduction of 50% of the population.”

When the new ordinance was approved in April, city staffers estimated that the occupancy limit for the average one-bedroom apartment in Santa Ana would be five people.

But Spix argued in court that the average size of apartments in blue-collar neighborhoods is smaller, so that thousands of families like the Brisenos will be in violation of the law. He estimated that as many as two-thirds of the families in the poorer neighborhoods of the city would be affected.

Briseno’s apartment has approximately 395 square feet of livable space, but the new law would require 450 square feet.

“What Latino does not have two or three kids?” Briseno said outside the courtroom as he discussed the difficulty in meeting the new standard.

The ordinance, Spix added, would have a “grave impact” on families who live together in order to pool resources to make the monthly rental payments.

He also claimed during the hearing that the city’s motivation behind the new law was to force Latinos out of Santa Ana.

“I think, superficially, we never say, ‘We don’t want Hispanics in our neighborhoods,’ ” Spix told the judge. “We just say, ‘We don’t want crime in our neighborhoods.’ ”

But homeowners association president Brajdic said in an interview the ordinance is not an attempt to discriminate against Latinos.

“Unfortunately, that argument is used all too often,” he said. “Because a lot of them are new residents in the county and in the state, it’s going to affect them more than anyone else. There’s not an easy answer to the problem.”

The cornerstone of Spix’s attack of the new law was his claim that the city did not meet state guidelines to modify the housing code, making the ordinance unenforceable.

But City Atty. Edward J. Cooper argued that the state law applies only to building code standards, and not to occupancy levels.

“The state of California has not prevented the city of Santa Ana or any other city, for that matter, from setting the occupancy levels for residential property,” Cooper said during the hearing.

The city attorney limited his defense of the ordinance to brief comments, relying instead on legal documents to be reviewed by the judge.

The city attorney said after the hearing that other Orange County cities are poised to enact similar laws if the court upholds the Santa Ana ordinance.

Briseno said afterward that if law is upheld in the first round, the legal battle probably will continue.

“I think we are going to fight because it is not just for me, it is for the whole community,” he said.

Full House Santa Ana stands well above the county average for households of 7 or more people. Also, a majority of the city’s dwellings have 3 or more people, again above the county average. Santa Ana 1-2 people: 38% 3-4 people: 27% 5-6 people: 18% 7 or more people: 17% Orange County 1-2 people: 53% 3-4 people: 33% 5-6 people: 10% 7 or more people: 4% Source: U.S. Census Bureau