Owners Face Charges in Slumlord Case

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office filed misdemeanor criminal charges Tuesday against the landlords of a dilapidated downtown building that has become a symbol of urban decay for reformers trying to beef up city code enforcement.

Raul Avila and Miriam Escobar, both of Whittier, are charged with 28 counts of violating building and health codes at their property at 1979 Estrella Avenue near the Convention Center.

After The Times described conditions in the building in July, Mayor Richard Riordan visited the site and announced a plan to add 14 inspectors to the Department of Building and Safety.

The Times report found that conditions at the 24-unit building had continued to deteriorate despite repeated but mostly ineffectual visits by city and county inspectors. The story showed how piecemeal inspections of slum buildings were common in the Department of Building and Safety.

At the mayor’s news conference in July, Avila told city officials he would sell the building to a nonprofit community housing corporation, which promised to fix it.

The proposed sale fell through, however--the prospective buyers said Avila demanded significantly more money than he paid for it. Now the owner and his wife face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each of the counts against them.

The complaint filed in Los Angeles Municipal Court alleged, among other things, that the landlords had allowed conditions permitting “the breeding and harborage of rodents, fleas, bedbugs, cockroaches, lice, mosquitoes and other vermin.”

Other charges list a variety of code violations, from deteriorated floor to missing fire hoses and accumulated trash.

The city attorney’s office called the violations “potentially life threatening.”

Avila and Escobar did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment. Both are scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 13 in Los Angeles Municipal Court Division 83.

Neighborhood residents and activists have long complained about the building, which, by last summer, had deteriorated to the point that all but a handful of units, some of which rented for $350 a month, were empty.

City inspectors cited the property for a dizzying variety of code violations nearly every year since 1986. And yet the structure continued to decay. When a Times reporter visited last summer, half the units were boarded up and residents complained of drug users camping out in the basement.

Members of the Blue Ribbon Citizens’ Committee on Slum Housing have used the building as a symbol of what’s wrong with the city’s code enforcement system. The committee, a group of community and business leaders, is pushing for routine annual inspections of all apartments in the city.

Last month, one panel member exhorted the mayor and City Council to approve the reforms and “send a message to the Raul Avilas of the world.”

Such characterizations may not have been entirely fair, because Avila has only owned the building since May. Records show a procession of owners dating to 1986, most of whom appear to have sold the building before making repairs.

Current conditions at the building are such that six residents have been accepted into a program of the city Housing Department and are receiving an 80% rent reduction until the owner performs repairs.