Uphill Fight Faces Families Living in Slum Conditions

OXNARD — Salvador Ferreira and his family live among cockroaches and mice. His home, like the dwellings next door, is heavy with the stench of rotting carpets and wood. The plumbing leaks out to the yard where the children play.

Ferreira and his neighbors say they have tried to get their landlord to fix the plumbing, refurbish the sagging ceilings and redo exposed electrical wiring--to no avail.

Nearly a year after the tenants took their complaints to the city, the case is stalled in a legal morass, and tenants say they have seen no improvements in their conditions.

“I’m angry,” said Ferreira, a farm worker who lives in a set of 1930s-style shacks off Hueneme Road. “I’m doing this for my children so they can live a decent life.”

The city, after citing the landlord for more than a dozen code violations last year, is seeking to condemn the property and tear down the 21 small, wooden houses.

And the property owner, who blames the tenants for the filth and many of the code problems found there, is trying to evict Ferreira’s family and three others.

“All I wish is for everybody to vacate the property,” said landlord Larry Rodarte, who said he has spent thousands of dollars on repairs in the last year. “If they don’t like living here, then simply move out.”

What this case illustrates is the dire need for affordable housing throughout the county, said Barbara Macri-Ortiz, a legal aid attorney representing the tenants in the eviction cases.

Farm worker families, which make on average $15,000 a year, cannot afford to live in most of the one- and two-bedroom apartments on the market, she said.

“There is a huge deficit of affordable housing for farm workers to live in Ventura County,” said Macri-Ortiz of Channel Islands Legal Services in Oxnard. “In most of these cases, you have very hard-working families who are trying to put a roof over their heads for their families. The wages they receive are not sufficient to make it. That is the economic reality.”

Another reality is that efforts to rid communities of substandard housing--like the recent raid on a run-down neighborhood in Thousand Oaks--often end up displacing the people with the most to lose: the tenants.

Oxnard housing officials are working to avoid that, trying to secure federal housing vouchers that will allow families to move to apartments they can afford.

“We want to make sure these people are not being put out on the street,” Assistant City Atty. Mark Manion said.

The city hopes to move quickly but acknowledges that it could be several more months before the families can be relocated.

“People shouldn’t live in those conditions,” said Sal Gonzalez, the city’s housing director. “It’s a process we have to go through, and unfortunately it takes time.”

The struggle began in July, when tenants Alfonso and Irma Villegas wrote a letter to Rodarte asking him to fix the plumbing, Macri-Ortiz said. They also sent the letter to code enforcement officials and the city manager.

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In mid-July, code enforcement officials came out to inspect the property but did not send a letter to Rodarte until Sept. 5, citing the landlord for several code violations, according to the city letter.

The violations included lack of general building maintenance including toilets and showers that were not draining properly.

Three days after the letter was sent out, four households including the Ferreira and Villegas families received eviction notices from Rodarte, records show.

Rodarte said he evicted those tenants for being “loud and abusive and urinating . . . in parking lots.”

But the tenants believe they are being kicked out for talking to the city’s code enforcement officers.

They sought help from Macri-Ortiz, asking if they would be thrown out if they did not pay their rent. She told them that they could withhold rent if their homes were uninhabitable. Since November, many of the tenants have not paid rent.

That month, Macri-Ortiz represented them in court, arguing that the eviction notices came in retaliation for complaints. A judge allowed Rodarte to continue with the evictions, but the families remain in their homes while appeals are pending.

Ferreira is hoping for the best.

“If we can get together, then we can do something about this,” said Ferreira, whom neighbors say they consider their leader. “Otherwise, [Rodarte] will just keep laughing at us.”

In an interview, Rodarte said he has fixed most of the violations, placing new roofs on most of the dwellings and repainting the facades, as well as adding heaters and smoke detectors.

City officials, however, say that they have seen little improvement and that Rodarte did not receive proper permits for the work he did.

“He has reroofed some of the homes improperly,” said Ray Mattley, senior code enforcement officer. “The plumbing backs up, the sewage is running all over the place outside where all the kids are running around. It’s deplorable.”

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The city filed a lawsuit in February seeking to condemn the property, but officials said Rodarte has never replied, and it has been a long and frustrating battle to even find him.

“That is the worst piece of property in the city of Oxnard without a doubt,” Mattley said. “The reason this has taken so long is that [Rodarte] has been very evasive. Since January we just can’t nail him down.”

Earlier this month, in a final effort to have Rodarte answer the complaints, the city of Oxnard delivered the lawsuit against his company, HR Inc., through the office of the secretary of state, which oversees California corporations, Assistant City Atty. Manion said.

If there is no reply within 40 days, the city will ask a judge for permission to board up or demolish the properties and relocate the tenants, Manion said.

Rodarte said that he had not seen the lawsuit and that the city’s action against him is part of a “conspiracy” to take his property.

“I truly feel that Mark Manion and Barbara Macri-Ortiz are conspiring together to achieve the taking of my property,” Rodarte stated in a letter to the Oxnard City Council.

But Manion said the property’s condition speaks for itself.

“There is no conspiracy,” he said. “All one has to do is to look at his property to realize there is no conspiracy. All we want is for HR Inc., Mr. Rodarte’s property, to comply with the applicable ordinances and state laws. We have given him ample opportunity to do this voluntarily.”

Said Macri-Ortiz: “My involvement in this started because of Rodarte’s failure to take care of his property.”

Rodarte defended his management, saying many of his tenants have rented from him for five years and support his efforts.

Now the families will probably have a hard time finding an affordable place to live, he said.

“Unfortunately, they are going to be kicked out, and I’m not going to rent to them again,” Rodarte said. “Unfortunately, there won’t be $400 housing for farm workers anymore. Not on this site.”

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City officials say that is why they are pushing to relocate the tenants.

Gonzalez, the city’s housing director, said that in the last three years more than 600 low-cost units for the elderly and young families have been built in the city. The families displaced from the south Oxnard homes will receive first priority for federal Section 8 certificates, paying the bulk of their rent at apartments they find.

Meanwhile, Evelia Morales lives with a kitchen sink she said has been clogged for two months--since she moved in. She said she has asked Rodarte to fix it, but nothing has been done. So, she tried to fix it herself with makeshift pipes to drain the brown, dirty water into a bucket. If that doesn’t work, she scoops the dishwater out with a cup.

Her neighbors a few doors down, Virginia and Rafael Elias, say they have bad plumbing and crumbling wooden pantries, destroyed from the moisture and rain. Virginia Elias says she must clean out the food pantries daily because every night, the mice creep in and leave droppings behind.

Still, the Eliases have tried to carve out a normal family life, displaying photos of their three children, decorating the dark dwelling with artificial roses and stickers from Mar Vista Elementary proclaiming them the “proud parents of the student of the month.”

“I framed my son’s poetry so the paper would not rot with all the wetness in the house,” Virginia Elias said, proudly pointing at the work hanging on the wall.

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Her father-in-law, Jesus Elias, who lives next door, said he occasionally sees sparks when he turns on the lights. At night, he said, he and his wife can feel the mice run across the bed.

He said he has lived in the dwelling since 1990, and the conditions keep getting worse. He said they have not had hot water for months.

“I came to this country to improve myself,” said Jesus Elias, a farm worker. “We never planned to live like this.”

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this story.