Longtime Neighborhood Nuisances Are Razed

For 15 years, a dozen bungalows and a commercial structure at Temple and Robinson streets have been an eyesore in the Temple-Beverly neighborhood.

So it was with a sigh of relief Wednesday that neighbors and business owners greeted the beginning of a city-funded project to demolish the buildings.

“We’ve been battling this for some time now,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said as she watched the first bungalow being torn down in 20 minutes by a city-paid crew.

Goldberg says she has been trying to clean up the property since she took office three years ago and remembered it as a problem from her days as a staff member of former Councilwoman Gloria Molina.

The buildings are being razed after years of failed negotiations between city officials and the owner that cost the city about $30,000, Goldberg said.

The city acted under an ordinance passed earlier this year that allows it to demolish properties that have been officially identified as public nuisances.

The bungalows have long been “a magnet for criminal activity,” Goldberg said. Even after the buildings were boarded up three years ago, constituents continued to complain about muggings, drug use and dealing, and squatting. She said her office has received more than 100 complaints about the bungalows in the last three years.

The owner of the properties, Raejeane Brewer, who died earlier this year, had refused to negotiate with the city, even when a nonprofit group offered to buy the site, Goldberg’s office said.

Sandra Farrington-Domingue, building and safety liaison at Goldberg’s office, said Brewer had demanded $2 million for the structures, which the nonprofit Search to Involve Pilipino Americans could not offer.

The money that the city has spent to fence off the bungalows, and now to demolish them, will be reimbursed through a lien that has been placed on the property, officials said.

In March, Goldberg, together with council members Rita Walters and Laura Chick, helped pass a series of ordinances to streamline the process of getting property owners to clean up their buildings or face having them demolished.

The ordinances also allow the city to impose fees on owners of properties designated as nuisances to pay for inspections, officials said.