ANAHEIM : City Rejects Plan to Inspect Rental Units

A proposal to require inspections of rental properties every three years was rejected by the City Council this week.

Landlords would have been charged $18.75 annually per unit, which would have paid for seven new employees to inspect the 44,240 rental units in the city, the most in Orange County, officials said.

“I see this as just another tax that will make it more difficult for apartment owners to crack that nut each month” and make a profit, said Councilman Fred Hunter, who owns a four-unit apartment complex in the city. He was joined by Mayor Tom Daly and Councilman Frank Feldhaus in opposing the plan. “Now is especially not the time to be sticking it to apartment owners, many of whom are just getting by.”

Code Enforcement Manager John Poole said the plan--modeled after one Santa Ana adopted last year--would help combat the run-down and overcrowded conditions in some of the city’s apartment complexes. Such conditions were cited by a citizens commission last year as one of the leading causes of the city’s gang and drug problems.

“I never believed that property inspections are a cure-all or a quick fix, but they are a key element in alleviating deterioration,” Poole said.

But Daly said that state law regarding apartment overcrowding is so weak that the inspection program would be ineffective. Poole conceded that the city has never successfully prosecuted a landlord or a tenant for overcrowding. State courts have struck down other cities’ attempts to adopt their own overcrowding ordinances.

Before considering an inspection program, Daly said, the city should pressure the Legislature to pass a bill that would limit the number of people who can live in an apartment.

But opponents of such legislation say that often, two or three families must live together to afford an apartment.

“They say (such a bill) would discriminate against blacks and Latinos and other low-income people,” Hunter said. “Any time you try to put an overcrowding law together, they say ‘There you people go again, discriminating against Latinos.”