Report Hits Apartment Inspections

Los Angeles County health officials are failing to perform tens of thousands of routine apartment inspections in buildings whose landlords pay mandatory inspection fees, a task force studying the department said Tuesday.

The Blue Ribbon Citizens’ Committee on Slum Housing also found that the health department is less likely to carry out inspections in poor neighborhoods where slum conditions fester.

“Systemic” problems at the Department of Health Services led officials to inspect just 44% of the 61,000 buildings from which they collected fees, said the report, which was presented to the county Board of Supervisors.

“If this were just another case of [government] resources stretched too thin [it] would be less troubling,” the report said. “But in this case, it is apartment owners themselves who pay . . . for all the costs of the program.”

Owners of apartment buildings with five or more units pay between $133 and $284 in licensing fees for health inspections.

To show the disparity in inspections, the task force said that 94% of Alhambra’s apartment buildings were visited this year, compared with only 30% of Hollywood’s.

“It’s untenable that we would have that kind of standard for one community and not another,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

The task force, a group of 23 distinguished business leaders, housing activists, landlords and attorneys, issued a similar report on the city Department of Building and Safety two weeks ago.

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On Tuesday, the task force recommended that the county establish a separate “housing inspection and enforcement section” to enforce codes in apartment buildings.

Health department director Mark Finucane promised “full cooperation” with the blue-ribbon committee and said his staff was already to working to implement some reforms.

County supervisors voted unanimously to adopt Yaroslavsky’s motion giving the department 30 days to respond to the report’s recommendations, which included compliance with the existing policy of annual inspections for all apartments, a better tracking system for complaints and tenant notification of dangerous conditions.

The report criticized a department policy that says when lead paint is discovered in an apartment, only the occupants of the unit--not those in the rest of the building--shall be notified.

“There should be accountability,” Yaroslavsky said. “Anybody who does not believe that we have a slum housing problem . . . had their eyes, ears and nose closed.”

The findings in Tuesday’s report were similar to that of a Times story last month which found that health inspectors often fail to detect, or take action to ameliorate, dangerous housing conditions.

The Department of Health Services, the report concluded, “functions on the principle that violations are not significant, provided there is eventual compliance.” Such a policy allows the worst landlords to escape punishment, even as their buildings deteriorate.

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Preventing slum conditions is not a priority for the department, the report said. Part of the problem is that the agency’s “district” inspectors are responsible for restaurants and hotels, in addition to apartments.

In sharp contrast to its record in apartment inspections, the department inspects 100% of restaurants, the report said.

While the report found that health department staff is “well trained and well qualified,” it also found wide discrepancies in how the department enforces codes.

“There are offices where people are gung-ho, and backwaters where people don’t care,” said UCLA law professor Gary Blasi, who directed the study. “Many of the places where [the department] is doing the worst job are places where there is a lot of bad housing.”

The only dissenting voice at Tuesday’s supervisors meeting came from James C. Fleck of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, who said the task force “overstated” the extent of slum housing. He also questioned the need for routine inspections of all apartments, when the vast majority of landlords comply with the law.