Countywide : Overcrowding Law Gains Support

In a significant show of support for cities trying to control residential overcrowding, the California League of Cities has agreed to sponsor a legislative proposal calling for stricter state laws governing residential occupancy.

The league’s 41-member board of directors agreed last week to draft a proposal that would permit cities to restrict housing occupancy beyond the limits now set by the state.

Many city officials consider the current state restrictions too liberal and partly to blame for overcrowding, while some critics have denounced the tighter controls as discriminating against minorities and immigrants. Based on a proposal recently outlined by Santa Ana officials, new occupancy limits would exempt previously existing conditions, ensuring that no one will be displaced as a result of the law. But the tightened controls would prohibit presently uncrowded residences from becoming overcrowded in the future.

“This is a big milestone because, No. 1, it indicates that this condition is not confined to Santa Ana, and No. 2, it’s a reaffirmation that local communities are best suited to handle local problems,” Santa Ana City Councilman Robert L. Richardson said Tuesday.

Richardson, one of the city’s most ardent supporters of more restrictive occupancy regulations, has repeatedly lobbied state housing officials for more local control. He said overcrowded conditions create intolerable drains on limited city resources and can be life-threatening as well.

On Jan. 4, a woman and two children died in a fire at a five-bedroom home on South Alder Street. Fifteen people from five different families lived there, and fire officials said that overcrowding, although not directly responsible for their deaths, contributed to the tragedy.

“Our ability to provide those (police, fire and other) services are being stretched to the limit because we (don’t) . . . have the authority to govern the housing in our cities. Going to Sacramento to handle problems down the street doesn’t work very well,” Richardson said.

In an effort to go beyond the state housing code, which permits as many as 10 people to live in an average-size one-bedroom apartment, the Santa Ana City Council in 1991 passed an ordinance that would have effectively cut that number in half. The ordinance was eventually thrown out because it was in conflict with state law.

Proponents of the new plan to allow cities greater regulatory authority are optimistic about winning those powers. “It won’t be easy, (but) it definitely has a good chance of passage,” said Ronald Bates, president of the League of California Cities, Orange County Division.

Bates said the law would “help protect life. That’s the fundamental bottom line in this. City officials will have to worry a lot less about people dying in fires as a result of overcrowding.”

However, Richard L. Spix, the attorney who successfully fought the city in the 1991 overcrowding case, said that the proposed legislation discriminates against the poor and that the city’s concerns over health and safety are calculated to divert attention from feeble attempts to provide affordable housing.

“I see that the city of Santa Ana is doing a propaganda campaign whenever there’s someone dead in a fire. But the city has done very little in the last five years in production of additional places for the people to reside, especially for families,” he said.

He also warned that the legislation would backfire, intensifying the problems they are meant to alleviate. “This will create a new class of illegal citizens. . . . Now we’re going to say they are illegally occupying in Santa Ana because they can’t afford to rent the two- or three-bedroom unit required.”

As a consequence, he said, some landlords will permit overcrowding “with a wink and nod until people complain (about needed repairs) and the landlord will then kick them out, saying, ‘Look, overcrowding.’ This will condemn those areas to squalor.”