New Law Spurs 130 Crowding Complaints : Thousand Oaks: Fifty-two involve a Newbury Park condominium complex. The ordinance took effect last month.

Thousand Oaks has received 130 complaints of overcrowding since a new ordinance took effect last month, many of them from the Las Casitas condominium complex in Newbury Park.

Code enforcement officers received 52 complaints of overcrowding at Las Casitas since the ordinance went into effect Sept. 18, according to a report released Friday by the City Council’s code enforcement committee.

Another 26 complaints came from Conejo Country Homes, a single-family housing development east of Moorpark Road. The remainder of the complaints were scattered around Newbury Park and the rest of Thousand Oaks.

The report is the first to outline the extent of the overcrowding problem since the law was adopted March 3. The law requires landlords to obtain permits when renting houses to four or more adults.

To obtain the permit, which costs $35, a landlord must prove there is at least 300 square feet of space in the house for each occupant.

City planners can reject the application if it’s determined that the house is too small for the number of occupants.

Las Casitas, where housing is among the cheapest in Thousand Oaks, has long been suspected to be one of the city’s most crowded neighborhoods.

“That’s one of the areas of the city that needs to be investigated,” said Don LaVoie, code enforcement supervisor. “There are a lot of alleged violations over there. It’s a very large complex, and it’s very dense.”

LaVoie stressed that the complaints are still unverified. The city will investigate, and those who do not comply will be prosecuted, he said.

The city’s report also indicated that few landlords are complying with the permit requirement.

Only four landlords had filed applications for the permit, and only one permit has been granted, according to the report.

Councilwoman Judy Lazar, who heads the code enforcement committee, said she was not pleased with those figures.

“I certainly hoped we would have more applications for special use permits so we wouldn’t have to go through the enforcement situation,” she said. “Many times when there’s an overcrowding problem, the owner is not going to file a special use permit. They’re violating the law and they don’t really care.”

Beau Mann, manager of Hometown Property Management and a vocal critic of the ordinance, said many landlords are not complying because they believe the permit process takes too much time.

To obtain a permit, landlords must also provide details of their rental agreements to the city, including the number of renters and the size of the house.

“It’s such a hassle,” Mann said. “We’ve just had two families apply for a three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath house, and we rejected them because the owner didn’t want to apply for a special use permit.”

Mann’s firm recently received a letter of complaint from city code enforcement officers about a condominium it manages in Las Casitas.

“We had the additional person move out,” Mann said. “We didn’t know they were living there.”

Many of the residents at Las Casitas say they are forced to live in tight conditions because of the economy.

“I’d live alone if I could,” Juan Carlos Vasques said as he sat on a railing outside his residence. “I can’t live in a house with just one or two people. I’m unemployed, and there’s no work.”

Vasques pays $150 to live in a two-bedroom condominium at Las Casitas along with three other adults and two children. His bed is in the living room.

His housemate, Teresa Pineda, is also out of work, but is using savings to help pay the $900 rent.

“There’s a lot of people who can’t afford the rent,” she said.

Las Casitas condominium owners have complained to the city about overcrowded conditions in the complex. On nights and weekends, the complex erupts in fights, public drinking and gang activity, they said.

Recently, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department increased the number of patrols in the area and instituted a bike patrol.

“I think we’re probably the No. 1 overcrowded place in the city,” said Ken De Vries, president of the Las Casitas Homeowners Assn., which represents the 540-unit complex’s homeowners.