City Council Approves Anti-Slum Housing Plan

The Los Angeles City Council approved a sweeping anti-slum plan Wednesday that will create the first routine inspection program for all apartments and could quintuple the number of city housing inspectors by next year.

Housing activists called the program the most important housing reform in Los Angeles in decades.

“This could reduce the number of substandard housing units in the city by half,” predicted Mark Adams of the nonprofit Southern California Housing Development Corp. “It’s going to catch housing before it dilapidates to slum status.”

Until now, Los Angeles has never carried out routine inspections of apartments and other multifamily rental units. City officials visit residential buildings only when they receive complaints.

Critics say this policy has contributed to the decay of entire neighborhoods, especially in heavily immigrant areas of the central city, where language and cultural differences make tenants distrustful of the authorities and fearful of landlords.

“This is a significant step forward by this city in the fight against slum and substandard housing,” Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. said.

The council must still approve a series of ordinances that will implement the plan’s many facets. And an initial survey of all apartment units in the city is expected to take about three years.

The plan’s key funding mechanism--a $1-a-month inspection fee on each apartment unit--has yet to win the support of Mayor Richard Riordan. But Wednesday’s 11-1 vote represented a strong commitment to thoroughly overhaul a discredited system.

Under the program approved Wednesday, the city will hire 60 to 80 new inspectors, all of whom will be assigned to a new code-enforcement unit to be created in the city Housing Department.

That change represents a strong rebuke to the Department of Building and Safety, which has been criticized for allowing apartment inspections to take a back seat to its chief responsibility, approving new construction.

The Times detailed in July how lax enforcement and bureaucratic apathy have allowed slum conditions to fester in the city’s poor neighborhoods. Even when Building and Safety officials find dozens of violations, they often fail to carry out follow-up inspections.

In some buildings, The Times found, several years can pass before needed repairs are completed. Official surveys have found rotting floors, rodent infestations and leaky plumbing in tens of thousands of Los Angeles apartments.

A subsequent report by the Blue Ribbon Citizens’ Committee on Slum Housing echoed the newspaper’s findings. The panel of community and business leaders charged that the Department of Building and Safety had abdicated much of its responsibility for inner-city housing.

The committee’s report was debated for months by the City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Substandard Housing, which in turn drafted the plan approved Wednesday. Nate Holden cast the lone dissenting vote. Three council members were absent.

The council voted 8 to 4 to fund the program with a $1 monthly fee that would be paid by landlords, who would collect it from their tenants.

Details of the fee--which a number of other cities impose to finance housing inspection--remained to be worked out.

Garry W. Pinney, general manager of the Housing Department, said the $1 fee would generate more than $7 million annually. In addition to the new inspectors in the Housing Department, the fee would provide the city attorney with an additional $1.6 million for the prosecution of slumlords.

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Deputy Mayor Kelly M. Martin said the program has Riordan’s full support.

“We’re pleased that this is going forward and that [inspections] will go to the Housing Department, where there will be a passion to solve this problem,” she said.

She noted that Riordan, who has yet to decide whether to support the $1 fee, has suggested instead that the city pay for the inspectors with existing revenues. Such an alternative may not guarantee continued funding for the inspection plan.

Martin said that up to 25 additional inspection positions could be created without resorting to a fee.

“It’s not always true that by putting in more resources you get better results,” she said.

Only one council member said Wednesday he would oppose the fee outright: Richard Alarcon, who represents the East San Fernando Valley. “I see it as a regressive tax that’s going to impose on the poor,” he said.

Still, activists said they believed most tenants would find the monthly fee a small price to pay for what amounts to an insurance policy for good housing conditions.

“It’s only a dollar a month,” said Lauren Saunders of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a nonprofit group that often represents poor tenants in legal actions. “Even the poorest family, if they’re getting regular inspections of their building, can see the benefit of that.”

One of the changes the council will have to make to create the new plan is modifying the city’s rent stabilization ordinance so that landlords can pass the fee on to their tenants. The city must also create a new city job classification of housing inspector.

The new inspectors will focus exclusively on residential apartments, and will be freed of the additional responsibilities--including inspections of commercial properties--that burdened their predecessors in the Department of Building and Safety.

And finally, the council must also work out the relationship between the Housing Department’s new “code enforcement” division and the rest of the department. A potential conflict of interest exists, since the Housing Department also disburses funds for building improvements.

“I’m pleased it’s moving along,” Saunders said. “But we still have a lot of work to do.”

The program will begin with the three-year survey of the city’s apartment units. After the initial survey, the department will conduct routine inspections of all apartments, the frequency of the inspections depending on the conditions found in the initial inspection.

Housing Department chief Pinney said he expects to begin work in January with a team of about 15 inspectors, with the rest of the inspectors coming on board in July.

In opposing the reforms, Holden questioned the need to move inspections out of Building and Safety. He said the new inspectors in the Housing Department would lack expertise.

“It’s going to be a Mickey Mouse approach,” Holden said.

Harold Greenberg, president-elect of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, said he too opposed much of the reform program.

“You’re going to be increasing costs,” Greenberg said. “The only person that’s going to pay for it is the tenant.” Routine inspections, he said, would create a “hostile environment” between landlords and tenants.

Still, Councilman Mike Feuer argued that landlords would share in the program’s benefits because they will be able to guarantee tenants “humane, decent and affordable housing.”