City Program Finds Way to Fight Blight

A new multidisciplinary program targeting the worst abandoned structures and nuisance properties in Los Angeles is getting high marks from city officials who say it is reducing blight and making neighborhoods safer from the criminals who hang around such buildings.

After two years in the planning stages, the Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program (CNAP) went into effect nine months ago, city officials said. Since then, the program’s staff has targeted 530 problem locations around the city and carried out 380 successful abatements--including 286 vacant and substandard properties and 94 narcotics locations.

“The bulk of these locations have been in the system for years but for a multitude of reasons they have just been stuck,” said Assistant City Atty. Mary Clare Molidor, who heads the program. She said it has “allowed us to speed up the process and find long-term solutions.”

The targets are vacant structures, substandard apartment buildings and single-family residences that serve as hangouts for vagrants, gangs and drug dealers.

The solutions include requiring that owners make repairs or board up abandoned buildings, evicting criminal tenants, hiring security guards and attending education classes.

Depending on the severity of the problems and the willingness of the property owners to cooperate, CNAP officials can also take actions that lead to fines, clean-up fees, criminal charges, or, as a last resort, a building’s demolition.

So far, more than 40 nuisance properties have been demolished or are scheduled for demolition. Another 111 properties are being rehabilitated and more than 130 structures where criminal activity was taking place have been closed up, officials said.

CNAP is more expedient and effective than past efforts dealing with troublesome properties because of teamwork, officials said.

The program brings together personnel from four city agencies: the Los Angeles Police Department, the city attorney’s office and the building and safety and housing departments.

“What happened before is, a variety of city agencies all had a hand in dealing with problem properties. Too often one agency wouldn’t know what the other was doing and the ball would be dropped,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the city’s Public Safety Committee and led efforts to secure funding for CNAP.

“Now, we’ve got everyone working together and that is not happening any more.”

In all, about 16 city employees have been assigned to the program.

In addition to targeting individual problem buildings, CNAP also initiated a Neighborhood Block Project in which CNAP teams work with community organizations to combat crime in specific neighborhoods. Four such projects are underway, including one in North Hills in the Valley.

Prior to beginning their work, CNAP officials identified about 200 “high-priority” sites around the city based on their criminal and code-violation histories.

Nearly all those properties were dealt with in the first nine months, Chick said.

“We are doing this with the goal of getting these buildings back to occupied, productive use,” said Chick. “We want to get the owners to deal with these problems on the front end, before things get out of hand.”

CNAP, which is believed to be the only program of its kind in the nation, was funded initially by $750,000 from the city and lesser amounts from state and federal grants. Next year’s city budget contains roughly the same amount for the program, officials said.

“The reason this has been successful is the multidisciplinary approach,” Molidor said.