Slumlord’s Rentals Show Little Improvement : Antelope Valley: One year after citation, many repairs remain undone. Some call county enforcement methods ineffective.

A year after Los Angeles County inspectors swept through a decrepit Antelope Valley neighborhood, most of the 72 rental houses owned by a convicted slumlord show little sign of improvement and residents say the area in some ways has gotten worse.

Although Dr. Milton Avol corrected many health code violations after last year’s crackdown, the man once dubbed “the most recalcitrant slumlord in Los Angeles” has done little to remedy numerous building code violations in at least 36 of his houses, county officials say.

The saga of Avol’s Antelope Valley property illustrates what tenant advocates argue remains a largely ineffective system for combatting slum conditions in the county, especially in smaller buildings and housing in outlying areas.

The case also highlights the different approaches the city and county of Los Angeles take to combat slum conditions.

For example, Los Angeles city prosecutors recently filed a new criminal case against the 69-year-old retired Beverly Hills neurosurgeon over a Hollywood apartment building.

But county building officials say they rarely seek such criminal charges because threatening to demolish problem buildings is a better way to gain compliance than prosecuting owners.

And although the city of Los Angeles has a decade-old task force praised by legal aide attorneys and tenant advocates for targeting major city slumlords, the county has no comparable unit to attack substandard housing in unincorporated areas.

“This man has gotten away with this stuff for so many years, it’s wrong,” said Diane Schull, an Avol tenant whose Palmdale-area house has mice, cockroaches and a failed sewage system. “If I did something like this, would they let me get away with it?”

Avol repeatedly refused to comment to The Times.

Deputy City Atty. Richard Bobb, a task force member in Los Angeles--where Avol gained notoriety as the first slumlord sentenced to live in one of his own apartments--said Avol probably would be in jail now if the city had jurisdiction over the Antelope Valley houses instead of the county.

County officials counter that they have been trying to work with Avol on the houses situated on an island of unincorporated county territory within Palmdale. They said Avol deserves more time, in part, because of the large number of houses involved, despite his lack of progress in the past year.

Avol, meanwhile, has accused county building officials of harassment, claiming they have exaggerated allegations of faulty plumbing and wiring, leaky roofs, holes in walls and other problems in the houses. “It’s a matter of cosmetics,” Avol told a county building panel at a recent hearing.

Avol was forced out of the landlord business in Los Angeles by the late 1980s after a decade of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits. But the 72 houses he bought in 1964 in the Antelope Valley--known then as “Leisure Park Homes”--never drew much attention until tenants and Palmdale city officials complained in late 1991.

After The Times reported those concerns and the county swept the area early last year, many tenants were either evicted--some because they withheld rent to protest the poor conditions--or fled the neighborhood, increasing its already high vacancy rate. Now, about half of the houses, built 35 years ago, sit crudely boarded up.

The vacant houses account for the majority of those cited by county building officials, although others are occupied by tenants like Schull. Residents say the abandoned houses, often littered with debris, draw rodents and bugs and attract transients and youngsters.

Because Avol and his property managers have not been able to keep the vacant houses securely boarded up, county building officials say those houses must be repaired or demolished, the same as the occupied ones. But at the county’s current rate, officials concede, that could be a very long process.

As in his Los Angeles days, Avol has repeatedly promised but failed to repair the Palmdale-area houses, and then blamed his managers, firing them earlier this month. The managers countered that Avol was late in paying bills and would not spend the money to hire licensed contractors.

Avol’s newest manager, meanwhile, has had legal problems himself. Court records show Ralph Riperto was convicted of unlawfully repairing a building in Los Angeles--the work was performed in 1984--and sentenced to 10 days in jail for violating his probation.

Riperto acknowledged spending several days in jail, but said he was “railroaded” by city inspectors who went after a Pico-Union area apartment building he co-owned. “I’m just working for this guy,” he said of his job with Avol. “What I did in the past is forgotten.”

As repairs on the Palmdale-area houses have languished, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office in November filed a new 27-count criminal slumlord complaint against Avol over a 93-unit Hollywood apartment building owned by one of his companies. A hearing is set for Tuesday.

In an ironic twist, the building at 1658 N. Western Ave. is the one where Avol in July, 1987, finally served his 30-day house arrest sentence from his 1985 conviction. Avol later sold that and his four other Los Angeles buildings, but got the one back last year in a default, Bobb said.

Prosecutors who have dealt with Avol in Los Angeles say he excels at dragging out the code enforcement process, making such criminal prosecutions necessary. “He knows what the game is like. He knows how to play it better than anybody does,” Bobb said.

Avol’s experiences in the Antelope Valley provide an example of why the city of Los Angeles has a respected slumlord unit but the county is viewed as ineffectual, tenant and legal aid attorneys say.

After Avol lodged a written harassment complaint in January with county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the north county, Avol gained an unusual Feb. 8 meeting at his Antelope Valley houses with an Antonovich aide, the area’s building inspector and the inspector’s supervisor.

Although the Antonovich aide, Dave Vannatta, said in an interview he found Avol’s complaints groundless, he and building officials agreed to give Avol 30 days, until early March, to begin repairing two houses--the only two that had been ordered demolished.

The officials also agreed to delay enforcing orders calling for the repair of many other of Avol’s houses.

O. B. Thompson, the county’s building rehabilitation supervisor, acknowledged Avol has been “somewhat slow” on repairs and that the county has not “sped things along as rapidly as we can.”

Thompson said that by allowing Avol to repair two or three houses at a time it could take 18 more months to fix all 36 houses under the county’s approach.

Tim Grover, the area’s building inspector, said it would be unreasonable for the county, even after a year of trying, to expect Avol to repair all the houses at once. “We’re willing to give this man one more chance,” Grover said, saying the county prefers repair to demolition, which is viewed as a last resort.

Thompson said the county’s process often takes a long time, recalling one case involving a stripped apartment building in one community that weathered seven years of county orders until last fall when demolition finally began, only to be halted after the owner contacted a county supervisor.

Asked why the county doesn’t instead seek criminal charges against Avol, Thompson said, “We don’t really pursue the criminal approach against property owners.” Thompson said he could recall no more than three slumlord criminal cases out of his unit during his seven years in charge.

But Bobb, of the Los Angeles city slumlord task force, said the threat of jail is the best motivation for stubborn slumlords. The unit, through 52 criminal prosecutions last year, forced landlords to bring 1,628 housing units up to code and pay more than $350,000 in fines, contributions and costs.

Unlike the task force, the county district attorney’s office, which would handle such cases in unincorporated areas and for many smaller cities, does not have designated slumlord prosecutors. The office could provide no statistics on its slumlord prosecutions.

Sandi Gibbons, public information officer for new Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, said the office does not have a slumlord task force because the number of slumlord criminal cases sought by county inspectors “are few and far between.” Gibbons also said outlying areas may have fewer such problems.

But tenant attorneys said slum housing is present throughout the county, not just in central Los Angeles.

Gary Blasi, an acting professor at UCLA Law School and former legal aid attorney who battled Avol, said the county’s inspection system focuses mainly on clearing specific complaints rather than remedying broader problems with slum buildings. He said that system “creates the illusion of progress.”

Rod Field, the housing law coordinator for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, blamed the district attorney and county Board of Supervisors--dominated by conservatives during the past decade--for not getting tougher with slumlords. Both Blasi and Field support prosecuting slumlords.

Asked if taking several years to force Avol to repair his Antelope Valley houses would be adequate performance by the county, Vannatta said, “Given the arsenal we have, it may have to be. It may be the best we can do.”

At a Feb. 17 hearing of the county’s Building Rehabilitation Appeals Board, which sets deadlines for building citations, Avol complained he is “losing tons of money” because so many of his houses are vacant. He also argued that the county’s $251-per-house rehabilitation permit fees are too expensive.

The board agreed to go along with building officials’ plan for gradually seeking repairs on Avol’s houses. But board chairman Jerry Nathanson also objected to Avol’s complaints, telling him, “Nothing, nothing has been done on any of them. You haven’t started one.”

Avol’s two-bedroom, 800-square-foot houses--which rent for up to $500 a month, sit east of the Antelope Valley Freeway and north of Palmdale Boulevard. Although the rent would be considered cheap in Los Angeles, it’s the same charged for some plush corporate apartments nearby.

In the early 1992 crackdown, county health officials cited 56 of Avol’s 72 houses.

John Porter, the county Department of Health Services’ top environmental health official in the north county, said Avol corrected all those violations at the time, although he conceded that as many as 14 of the houses were deemed to be satisfactory simply because they were no longer occupied.

At present, Porter said Avol’s houses comply with health codes except for Schull’s house, because of its failed septic system and cockroaches, and another house that also has a failed septic tank.

But that judgment is based on unresolved complaints rather than a full reinspection of the houses.

Schull, a 40-year-old mother with three daughters who is attending Antelope Valley College, said she and her roommate have not paid their $475-a-month rent since last July, partly because Avol has failed to make proper repairs.

Schull, who receives welfare, said she still hasn’t been able to save enough to move to an apartment.

Meanwhile, her family alternates doing laundry, bathing and washing the dishes to avoid having sewage overflow in the back yard.

A year ago, Schull hoped the county would improve the neighborhood. But she and roommate Beth Schmidt said their neighborhood is becoming a ghost town.

“They keep on giving Avol more time,” Schull said. “I don’t think it’s ever going to change.”