City Accused at Hearing of Anti-Latino Bias : Civil rights: Committee investigates whether officials selectively enforced housing codes in an effort to force out minorities.

A state civil rights board is investigating allegations that city leaders have conducted a systematic campaign of harassment and discrimination against Latino residents.

The California advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Wednesday held a daylong hearing into allegations that the city leaders--nearly all of whom are Anglo--are seeking to drive out Latinos through oppressive housing-code policies.

Members will gather evidence this week and present it to the full 11-member committee, which will make a recommendation to the federal commission.

On Wednesday, two of the four committee members who sat through the full day’s testimony harshly criticized city officials and said they believed there were improprieties in some of the city’s policies.

“It is really appalling to think that in this day and age this kind of repression can still occur,” committee member Grace Davis said after the hearing. “I do believe that in order for them to achieve their goals of a model American city, they want to get rid of the Mexicans.”

Furious city officials accused the committee of bias, saying that committee members and Philip Montez, the Western Regional Director for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, had spurned offers to look over city books and files, or to discuss city policy. City Manager Claude Booker said Montez refused to discuss the allegations with the city, tell city officials the focus of the investigation or disclose who made the allegations until Monday, two days before the hearing.

“We were tried and convicted before we had an opportunity to give testimony,” Booker said. “This has been the most irresponsibly handled thing I have ever seen. If this is a commission that is to protect civil rights, it’s a poor example of our system.”

Booker also said the investigation is a political maneuver by opponents of the City Council. Four of the five council members face a recall election in December, and Booker said he believed that the investigation was timed to make city officials look bad.

Montez denied that the commission had any political motives for looking into the allegations, and he would not comment on charges that he refused to look at city documents.

“The committee is here because they could not believe the complaints of harassment they were hearing,” he said.

On Wednesday, about a dozen property owners testified before the committee and told how city code-enforcement officers would appear at their homes and recite a list of problems.

They cited such violations as clotheslines in front yards, inadequate grading, overgrown landscaping, broken windows, missing screens and deteriorating foundations.

Witnesses said that once they corrected the problems, a city inspector would be back with another list, then another list, then another, often threatening the property owner with jail.

Nine-year resident Graciella Garcia told the committee that she was first visited by a city code inspector two years ago. She said he gave her a list of 35 code violations and told her to correct them. They were small things, she recalled, and she said she quickly fixed them. But the inspector came back again with another list, told her that she did everything wrong and threatened her with jail if she did not fix things, she said.

“I was very sick, very nervous,” Garcia told the committee. “I said, ‘You don’t like anything I do. What do you want me to do?’ And he said, ‘Sell.’

“I bought that property with these hands. I worked hard. I lived in a humble little house and bought secondhand clothes to buy this home for my children. . . . I didn’t buy it by stealing or drugs. I bought it with 20 years of hard work, and this is the crime I have been accused of--hard work.”

Lawyer Alan Gross, who is representing several residents in battling city code officers, said his research has shown that the city is filing substandard notices against property owners at a rate 10 times that of the city of Los Angeles. Responding to a committee question, Gross said he did not notice a pattern of certain ethnic groups being singled out for the notices. But he also pointed out that almost 90% of the 42,000 Bell Gardens’ residents are Latino.

For much of the last year, a small group of Latino residents has been complaining that city leaders were ignoring their needs. The group began a recall campaign after the city overhauled its general plan and passed a new zoning map designed to limit housing density in the crowded city. Officials said zoning revisions were necessary because the city’s sewer system, streets and parks, among other things, could not handle the strain of additional housing.

But critics said the zoning changes would send housing prices soaring and drive out low-income residents, mostly Latinos.

On Wednesday, several witnesses said after the hearing that they believe the harassment by code-enforcement officers is part of a campaign to force residents to sell and leave the city. They alleged that the city wants the property in order to build more-expensive homes or more commercial development.

“This used to be a hick town with nothing but white people, and that is still who is in power,” said resident Rosa Ramirez. “These people don’t want Mexicans here.”

Three Anglos also testified Wednesday about the city’s code-enforcement policies, contending they had been targeted unfairly.

“We’ve all asked why, why is this going on?” resident and landlord Victor Vaillette said. “We’ve all come up with different answers. I believe that what is happening is a logical extension of what happens when you don’t have a representative government. The powers that be here are part of the past, and they are being controlled by a group of voters who are white senior citizens.”

City Manager Booker said city officials are not trying to drive anyone out of Bell Gardens and called the theory “stupid.” He said that the city usually handles about 250 housing rehabilitation cases a year. Nearly all of the cases are closed after the city first notifies the owner of a problem, he said. City Atty. Peter Wallin said that in the last five years 110 cases have gone to court, but only six property owners have been prosecuted.

“Most of the people (who testified) are ones who chose to fight rather than to clean up their property,” Booker said.

Booker said that 78% of the homes in the city are owned by absentee landlords and that the city’s goal is to encourage ownership of homes by buying land, consolidating it and then building houses.

“We are not trying to make a Beverly Hills here. We are just trying to make it a reasonably clean place to live,” he said.

The advisory committee is expected to take all evidence to the full committee in December. In the meantime, committee members will continue to gather information.

“The good-old-boy network seems to be operating strongly here,” Committee Chairman Michael C. Carney said. “I think there are improprieties here. The question is whether they are significant enough to warrant further action.”

BACKGROUND

The 11 Californians on the state advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are appointed by Washington commissioners to serve two-year terms. Last Wednesday, four members of the committee held a hearing into charges that Bell Gardens city officials practice selective code-enforcement policies. The four were Chairman Michael C. Carney, a criminal attorney in Los Angeles; Ted Cooper, a specialist with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office in San Francisco; Grace Davis, a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, and J. Arnoldo Beltran, a Los Angeles real estate lawyer. The state advisory committee acts under the guidance of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Western Division, which covers California, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. The commission is responsible for investigating complaints of discrimination because of race, color, creed, national origin, sex, handicap and age, and ensuring that there are no violations in the administration of justice and voting rights.