New Front Opens in the Overcrowding Battle : Housing: Santa Ana takes its fight for lower occupancy limits to an international building officials association. The group’s rulings aren’t binding, but states use them to establish their own safety standards.

After failing in the courts and the Legislature, this city is bringing its case against residential overcrowding to an influential international organization that issues housing code standards.

At its annual meeting in Las Vegas, which begins today, the International Conference of Building Officials will consider a proposal offered by city officials to halve the number of people allowed in homes and apartments.

“This is not just a Santa Ana issue anymore,” said Jim Lindgren, Santa Ana’s building and safety manager, who will vote at the conference. “This has gone clear across the country.”

The organization’s standards are not binding, but states often use them as a guide when establishing their own housing codes. In California, state law requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to adopt the organization’s standards, but allows the agency to make amendments.

On average, Santa Ana has the highest number of residents per unit of any city in the county, according to a state survey. The city has argued that overcrowding makes it easy for fires to spread through homes and apartments, and difficult for residents to escape. Overcrowding also burdens schools, sewers, parks and other infrastructure, the city argues.

“There are several [Orange County] cities that have units with too many people in them to be safe,” said Robyn Uptegraff, Santa Ana’s executive director of planning and building.

Critics say that changing the code would discriminate against the poor, who squeeze into homes they cannot otherwise afford to rent, and would hit the city’s minority members especially hard. They also contend that landlords could use the new code to discriminate--looking the other way when renting out units, then using the code to evict people who ask for repairs.

“This is an attempt to criminalize poverty by exclusive Orange County, by seeking to displace its unwanted, poor families into surrounding, less affluent jurisdictions,” said Newport Beach attorney Richard Spix, who won a lawsuit against the city of Santa Ana in 1992 after it passed an ordinance limiting the number of people allowed in residential buildings.

In a one-bedroom apartment of just over 600 square feet, current codes allow for as many as 10 people. The proposed revisions would limit an apartment of the same size to five occupants.

The state fire marshal’s office keeps statistics on the number of home and apartment fires, but not their causes, said analyst Alta Widener.

In 1992, the last year for which statistics are available, 111 Californians were killed in home and apartment fires, according to the state fire marshal’s office. But the statistics do not show whether the deaths were caused by overcrowding or other factors.

But Spix noted that sofas, mattresses and other belongings--not people--contribute to fires. He used his own parents as an example, saying that although he had moved out of their home, they remained surrounded by possessions.

“This code change won’t affect [my parents],” Spix said. “Yet my barefoot client . . . does not have many possessions. And bodies don’t burn well.”

Spix said Latinos would be disproportionately affected because Santa Ana, for example, is about 80% Latino. But he added that Vietnamese and Cambodians, who often live with extended families, also would be adversely affected by a code change.

“If we were really interested in stopping fire deaths,” Spix said, “we’d be passing out smoke detectors.”

Lindgren said he believes the backing of the building officials organization may give Santa Ana and like-minded cities new clout in their attempts to fight overcrowding.

However, the state Department of Housing and Community Development has already said that it opposes the code revisions. In a letter Friday to Jon S. Traw , president of the Whittier-based building officials organization, the state agency says there is no empirical proof that current regulations are unsafe, and contends the new code would result in “a wave of evictions.”

“This outcome will be both taxing to existing and future housing providers and profoundly disruptive to local housing markets,” according to the letter, signed by the department’s manager of housing law, Bruce McKarley). “The arguments made by the proponents of this change fail to present compelling evidence that the existing occupancy standard is unhealthy or unsafe.”

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Lindgren said the revisions are not meant to discriminate, but to promote safe and sane living conditions. He cited a test burn conducted by the Santa Ana Fire Department that showed that a house packed with belongings burns more quickly--and hotly.

“That’s no way for people to have to live,” he said.

Spix dismissed the city’s 1994 test burn as anecdotal evidence.

A lobbying organization for builders and developers had filed a challenge against the proposed revisions, saying they are too lax. The National Multi-Housing Council argued that the revisions could still lead to overcrowding because they allow sleeping areas to include dens and living rooms.

An organization vice president, Ronald Nickson, said his group wants to specify only bedrooms as sleeping areas, effectively allowing two people in a one-bedroom apartment.

But Nickson said the organization has dropped its challenge because it realized the proposed revisions are better than none at all. The council’s challenge, if successful, would have maintained the status quo.

More than 1,000 members of the building officials organization are expected to cast a final vote on the revisions Wednesday or Thursday in Las Vegas.

In February, one of the organization’s subcommittees recommended by a vote of 6-4 that the revisions be approved. But Spix, who hopes to speak at the Las Vegas conference, said he has already lobbied 300 voting members to oppose the revisions. He said he believes sentiment is running 80% to 20% in his favor.

Spix won his case against Santa Ana when a state appellate court ruled that the city’s ordinance was in conflict with state guidelines. The state Supreme Court then refused a request by Santa Ana to review the appellate court’s decision.

In that case, the city ordinance also halved the number of residents allowed by the state in a one-bedroom apartment to five.

But Santa Ana did not give up, and city officials say that between December, 1991, and January, 1993, 13 fire deaths were due to overcrowding.

In 1994, then-Sen. Marian Bergeson carried a bill backed by Santa Ana to clamp down on overcrowding. But Bergeson, sensing defeat in the Legislature amid opposition from the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, eventually shelved the bill.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Occupancy Limits

Here’s an example of how Santa Ana would like to change state building code laws as they relate to occupancy:

Example residence: One-bedroom apartment, 600 square feet, 100 square feet reserved for hallways, kitchens and bathrooms

CURRENT STATE LAW

* First 150 square feet: 3 people allowed

* Each additional 50-square-foot area: 1 person allowed

* Maximum number allowed: 10

PROPOSED CHANGES

* First 150 square feet: 2 people allowed

* Each additional 100-square-foot area: 1 person allowed

* Maximum number allowed: 5

Sources: Santa Ana city officials and International Conference of Building Officials

Researched by JEFF KASS / For The Times