D.A. Won’t Charge Latino Leader in Rent Case : Oxnard: Official says teacher William Terrazas Jr. did not break laws when allegedly collecting side payments from a dozen tenants.

An Oxnard high school teacher and Latino leader, expelled from a federal rent-subsidy program for allegedly exploiting poor tenants, will not be charged criminally by county prosecutors, authorities said Thursday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. William Redmond said William Terrazas Jr., 44, did not break state theft or extortion laws when allegedly collecting side payments from a dozen tenants in El Rio and Nyeland Acres.

Renters who maintained that Terrazas solicited payments beyond those allowed in federal contracts told investigators that the landlord either was non-threatening or that they were unsure about whether he threatened them with eviction, Redmond said.

Terrazas, a Channel Islands High School teacher and El Rio resident, did not return telephone calls Thursday.

But a top official for a Latino advocacy group that honored Terrazas as an educator last year, welcomed the district attorney’s decision.

“I think it’s a positive move in that it puts this behind him and allows him to continue his good work with young people and in developing leadership in our community,” said Marcos Vargas, executive director at El Concilio del Condado de Ventura. “He has continued to be very vigilant in his work with young people.”

Terrazas denied last year ever soliciting side payments and said state and federal inquiries were the result of racial bias and jealousy stemming from his success as an activist teacher and real estate developer in the unincorporated communities of El Rio and Nyeland Acres.

“You get a successful Chicano doing good and everybody wants to screw you over,” he said. “And they find every technicality to get you. . . . I feel racially harassed on this.”

While local prosecutors said they had no viable criminal case, a federal investigation of Terrazas’ rental practices is proceeding, according to Gale Galvan, assistant regional inspector general for investigations in San Francisco.

Galvan said his office delayed action against Terrazas until county prosecutors made a decision on state charges. “We didn’t want to run into a dual prosecution,” he said.

Federal investigators--accompanied by Redmond--submitted their case to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles on Thursday. A decision on whether to charge Terrazas with housing law violations probably will not be made for several weeks, Galvan said.

It is a felony for a landlord in a federally subsidized housing program to accept payments greater than stipulated in lease contracts, unless the side payments are disclosed to housing authorities, Galvan said.

Side payments undercut the government’s goal of subsidizing the rent of poor people so they have more money for other essentials, federal officials said.

Officials at the Area Housing Authority of Ventura County, with which Terrazas enrolled up to 17 houses until mid-1993, said all of Terrazas’ dwellings have been purged from the program because of repeated complaints of side payments.

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Terrazas was the first landlord to be expelled in the authority’s 20-year history, officials said.

Meanwhile, a tenants’ lawyer confirmed that Terrazas has paid an undisclosed amount to four former renters who claimed he collected nearly $20,000 in side payments over six years ending in 1992.

In a lawsuit settled in September, four former tenants claimed that they had paid Terrazas $8,294, $7,826, $2,303 and $950, respectively, in side payments.

Three former tenants paid the extra rents “under duress and threat of eviction,” the lawsuit contended. The fourth tenant neither read nor spoke English and believed Terrazas when he said the extra payments were required under rental contracts, the lawsuit claimed.

“The lawsuit’s been settled and the terms are confidential,” said the tenants’ lawyer, Barbara Macri-Ortiz, of Channel Counties Legal Services in Oxnard.

She confirmed payments to her clients, but declined to say whether they were large or small. Terrazas’ attorney in the case, David L. Shain, could not be reached Thursday for comment.

Terrazas has said he became a landlord by buying or building about 30 houses worth $5 million since 1978. He said he bought his first house for $27,000 just after getting a general contractor’s license 16 years ago.

County records show that Terrazas still owns six houses even after a series of forced sales and foreclosures during the last two years.

Some of Terrazas’ houses have drawn attention from county code enforcement officers, who said he illegally converted garages into rentals and added rooms to existing houses without permits. Terrazas has said those alterations already existed when he bought the properties.

To forestall the filing of misdemeanor criminal charges by the county counsel’s office last year, Terrazas agreed to eliminate the illegal dwellings and bring all of his houses up to county standards, officials said. He has since lost three of the five houses with code violations to foreclosure, said county zoning enforcement officer Joan Neuhaus.

The allegations against Terrazas run counter to his reputation as an innovative educator at Channel Islands High School in Oxnard, where he teaches English-as-a-Second-Language students to have pride in their native culture and language.

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Terrazas, in fact, was one of five Ventura County Latinos honored a year ago by El Concilio for leadership

Terrazas, a Channel Islands teacher since 1973, was praised for starting a student group that serves as a statewide model for improving the academic success of minority students, and for involving parents in their children’s education.