Police Sweeps of ‘Ghost Towns’ Proposed : Crime: City-installed barricades are also considered to keep vandals and squatters out of quake-damaged buildings.

Police sweeps of quake-damaged “ghost towns,” with workers following to seal the structures and bill owners for the costs, is one option under consideration by members of a special task force, officials said Thursday.

The unusual measure, one of several representing a tougher offensive against crime and blight brought on by earthquake damage in neighborhoods concentrated in the San Fernando Valley, will be discussed at a Los Angeles City Hall meeting today.

Squatters, vandals and prostitutes have plagued some areas, and city officials said Thursday that a program of barricading the buildings could be justified by the threat to public safety.

“The most dangerous part is (squatters) build a fire to keep warm and the building goes up in flames and the whole neighborhood is in danger,” said Andres Santamaria, a senior engineer for the Public Works Department.

In those areas dubbed ghost towns, nearby residents, merchants and community representatives reacted Thursday with alarm.

For many who feel threatened, the city is not moving fast enough to deal with the vacant buildings and the squatters, drug users and others who are spreading blight to adjacent neighborhoods.

“Unless something is done in Sherman Oaks and other communities, they are going to deteriorate quickly,” said Richard Close, president of the homeowners association in Sherman Oaks, where the city identified one of seven Valley ghost towns among a cluster of vacant apartment buildings along Kester Avenue and Ventura Boulevard.

Mounting levels of graffiti, residential break-ins and homeless people roaming through Sherman Oaks have combined to raise the anxiety levels of homeowners, Close said.

“To me the critical issue is, if 70% of a neighborhood is gone because of yellow and red tags (from earthquake damage), how do you keep the other 30% from moving out?” Close said. “These people are scared.”

In the area around Natick Avenue, a small Sherman Oaks street east of Kester Avenue and south of Camarillo Street, city officials have identified 11 vacant condo or apartment complexes.

“It’s so depressing,” said Joe Glantz, 72, who has lived on the street for 18 years.

Glantz pointed to a two-story dwelling with a caved-in roof that sagged mercilessly onto what was once the front lawn. “Look at here, they’ve torn down half of the stuff that’s collapsed and they haven’t taken it away yet.”

Gerald Arthur, 45, has other worries. His 15-year-old daughter and her mother live at the end of the street. One night a few weeks ago, as Arthur walked the dog, a carload full of young men threw eggs at him and yelled as they drove by.

“People are going to come in knowing people have left stuff behind,” Arthur said. “The people left behind are unprotected.”

Tara, Arthur’s daughter, looked up and down the quiet street as her father retold his story. “It’s kind of scary when you look around,” she said.

Jeff Brain, a board member for the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce, worries about the trespassers who are taking over the vacant buildings.

“If there are crime elements in the buildings, sooner or later they will look to prey on neighboring businesses,” he said.

In Northridge along the 17900 block of Schoenborn Street, a byway lined with ramshackle buildings across the athletic field from Northridge Middle School, Hazel Flagg, 59, said Thursday she is planning to move elsewhere in Northridge to get away from another ghost town.

Flagg’s apartment building, at the end of the block, is neat and well-kept. But all along the rest of the street, the hip-high, wheat-colored grass marks the ailing buildings that were abandoned after the quake. Piles of refuse line the back alley.

“There’s the feeling of insecurity here,” Flagg said. “Even though there was crime before, it seems to be greater now. And the way the area looks is a disgrace.”

Among the options likely to be discussed at the City Hall meeting, officials say, are the increased use of police, additional fencing and even private security guards.

But the security measures are only intended to protect the buildings on a short-term basis until landlords and city housing officials can find funding to rebuild and reopen the buildings, most of which are in the hardest hit areas of the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood.

Voters’ rejection of a $2-billion earthquake repair bond issue earlier this month has lead to the cancellation of a state program to loan apartment owners money to repair damaged buildings. Local housing officials said that without the $576-million program, they feared that many of the city’s 20,000 vacant apartment units would not be repaired.

On a long-term basis, the city officials are considering establishing “recovery areas,” similar to redevelopment areas, which use property taxes to back bond measures that provide loans to business and apartment owners. A report on the proposal is expected by the end of the month.

The Community Redevelopment Agency is meeting with council members who represent the hardest-hit areas to propose boundaries for the recovery areas. The areas would include 10 ghost town areas identified by housing officials in the Valley and Hollywood as well as commercial shopping districts hard hit by the quake.

Housing officials believe they can start to attack the problem with $20 million in discretionary funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to be used for loans, fencing, lighting and security.

But officials believe that will not be enough and an ad-hoc earthquake recovery committee instructed its staff to press the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pay for security measures, even though FEMA officials have indicated that the problem does not qualify for disaster funding.

“We are just trying to find a short-term fix until we can get some sort of commitment either from FEMA or Housing and Urban Development to allow us the use of some funds,” said Pat Bonino, a chief analyst for the city administrative officer’s department.

Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this story.