Tangle Over Tenants in Condemned Building Grows

Two tenants of a condemned Pasadena apartment complex said Friday that the former owner of the building knew people were living and working there because he was paid rent as recently as last month.

Walter Brent, 46, said he paid $535 a month to developer Raymond C. Jones from July, 1991, until last month for office space for his house cleaning business. Sometimes Jones collected the rent at the building, in the 800 block of North Orange Grove Boulevard, and on other occasions Brent dropped money off at Jones’ Pasadena home, Brent said. Jones was aware that people were living and working in the condemned building, the house cleaner said.

“He would ask me how things were going, and I told him, ‘There’s a lot of people coming in,’ ” Brent said. “He knew.”

Jones has declined comment since early this week, when Pasadena officials discovered that more than 40 people were living in the building, which was declared unfit for occupancy last November. Jones had been trying to convert the apartments into an office complex, but never was able to bring the run-down building up to city standards.

Utilities were shut off when the structure was condemned, but it later was outfitted with bootlegged electrical and water systems that were a “major safety hazard,” city officials said.

Pasadena officials are seeking long-term housing for the tenants, who have been temporarily relocated.

City officials also are sorting through a tangled maze of paperwork and statements in an effort to figure out who encouraged families to move into the building, as well as who profited.

County property tax records show that Broadway Federal Savings and Loan foreclosed and became the legal owner of the property in July, 1991. But a property manager working with the savings firm has said that Jones was left to supervise the property. Broadway Federal officials have not returned numerous phone calls.

On Tuesday, Pasadena police arrested Anthony Banks, a 32-year-old paralegal, who was allegedly recruiting tenants and collecting several hundred dollars in rent from them each month. He was released from custody after the district attorney’s office declined to press charges, saying there was no evidence that he knew the building was condemned.

At a press conference in front of the condemned building Friday, Banks said Jones hired him two years ago to manage the property in exchange for free rent. Jones never told him the building had been declared unfit to occupy, or that he had defaulted on his mortgage, Banks said.

In the absence of any other instructions, Banks said he continued to do what he believed Jones wanted. He said he was finding tenants to fill the units and using their rent money to repair and upgrade the building.

But he said Jones continued to collect rent from a few of the tenants--including Brent and Alfred Jackson.

Jackson, who is unemployed, said he paid Jones a few hundred dollars “when he could” for a unit in the building over the past two years.

Laura Santos, an attorney representing Banks, said the paralegal is “being used as a scapegoat” by Broadway Savings and Jones.

Broadway Savings officials are “claiming that they didn’t know he had tenants here,” Santos said. “If they didn’t know, they should have known, and Jones certainly should have known because he was collecting rent also.”