Issue: Rent Escrow Accounts

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky has proposed expanding the city’s programs that allow renters who live in substandard housing to pay less rent and deposit the remainder in an escrow account until the landlord makes repairs. Will this plan work?

* Rosa Melendez, assistant shipping manager; Downtown

“It can work because a lot of the buildings really need repairs, they have cockroaches, and (the landlords) never do anything. They will be forced to repair the buildings, that’s for sure. I know a few people who live in this (situation.) They never complain, and they don’t have the money to move. (To move) they have to get the first month’s rent, the security . . . and it’s difficult to get that.”

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* Juan Mendoza, business owner

“The people that have the bad buildings are the ones who have had bad buildings for years. It’s a serious problem. It makes me sad. It’s a big problem. There’s no end to it. And it’s not just in Los Angeles, it’s all over the country. There are buildings that are 30 or 40 years old and if they make repairs, they do it one apartment at a time. You go to the Westside and there are good buildings. But I’ve seen some bad conditions there too. And we can’t do anything about it.”

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* Mercedes Marquez, Bilingual teacher, attorney, vice chairwoman of the city’s Rent Adjustment Commission

“There is a Rent Escrow Account Program (REAP), but it is a cumbersome process. We have been working with staff of the (city’s) Rent Stabilization Division and people have been participating . . . on the issue to expand the way things work. The whole thing that is driving this is there are a number of building landlords that even when they qualify for the REAP program, the conditions aren’t improved. Those landlords who are going to repair the conditions do so even before they are threatened with REAP. . . . The new changes--by making rent reduction work better, by streamlining the process and having the city look at receivership and forcing resident managers to be licensed--will help curb slums in the first place. Also, if you get thrown into REAP, make the landlords pay three years for building inspections. Good landlords don’t allow their buildings to become slums.”

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* Andre Vaughn, Leimert Park apartment building owner, president of Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles

“Blaming the apartment owners may be political and popular, but it doesn’t address the problem. The Burlington Avenue fire . . . with the fire doors nailed shut and the missing fire extinguishers--

these are transgressions committed by the tenants, not the owners. The owner can replace a fire door and fire extinguishers, and five minutes later the door will be nailed down and the extinguisher will be missing. This is the reality of the situation, and it’s frustrating. If they really want to do something that’s constructive and not just a political ploy, they could give the tenants responsibility. This is letting the tenant run wild and free, to do what they want to do because the laws that they set up have nothing in it to make the tenant responsible. . . . And there is a 12% to 40% vacancy factor, so why do we need rent control? Whatever these slumlords do, the Department of Building and Safety has laws that can take care of it.”