PERSPECTIVES ON REBUILDING : Someone Has to Pay for It : If landlords can’t raise rents to fix or maintain properties, Santa Monica may not have any places left to rent.

Beyond establishing new building codes in the aftermath of last week’s earthquake, what if the building to be repaired or replaced exceeded the zoning standards? Do we reduce the density of new housing and require more parking? Won’t this exacerbate the housing shortage? Will this penalize former tenants and persevering owners, and compromise rent control?

Don’t expect quick answers, certainly not in Santa Monica where a bumbling City Council takes decades to debate the simplest planning issues.

And what about the surviving housing stock? Isn’t it time to begin periodic housing and building inspections of all units in and about Los Angeles in anticipation of the next quake sure to come? But in addition to the substandard apartments, wouldn’t this also expose the estimated 100,000 illegal units, bootlegged apartments and converted garages that provide needed affordable housing?

Then there is the question of paying for all this repairing and rebuilding. That is if the owners don’t simply throw in the towel, collect what insurance they can and walk away from the property, as some are threatening to do.

Even with low- or no-interest federal disaster loans, the money to amortize the loans will have to come from somewhere. A rent increase would seem the obvious source. But that won’t be easy or simple, especially in Santa Monica. There, rents are calculated not on the size, condition or location of the apartment, but rather on what was charged for it in April, 1978, plus an arbitrary annual adjustment, which, given the politics of the rent-control board, has been miserly. Various studies have put rents in Santa Monica at 30% to 50% below fair market value, when compared to, say, neighboring Brentwood.

Because of the tenant-dominated board and a compliant council, it also has been near impossible for landlords to get rent increases to cover such maintenance items as roof repairs, termite treatment and plumbing replacements. According to some landlords, the deferred maintenance has compromised the structural integrity of the buildings, and was one of the reasons the city’s apartment stock was so badly damaged in the quake, despite the distance from the epicenter. More than 3,100 of the city’s estimated 28,000 units so far have been declared unsafe and vacated.

That it had to take a mean, costly earthquake to expose the fallacy and failure of rent control is unfortunate, particularly in Santa Monica where its enforcement was so pernicious. But perhaps now, faced with the urgent need to serve its tenant constituency, or lose them, the city will at long last recognize the reality and rights of landlords and make the obvious needed repairs to a damaged rent-control program.

If Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Los Angeles and other quake-damaged cities are to be repaired and rebuilt, they are going to need landlords. Political rhetoric won’t pay the bills.