City Promises to Crack Down on Slumlords

After hearing complaints about slum conditions, top city housing officials promised tenants Saturday that the Housing Department will turn the heat up on owners of blighted apartment buildings.

Tenants cited problems such as apartments infested with rodents and roaches and buildings without working utilities during the meeting held in downtown Los Angeles and sponsored by the Inquilinos Unidos’ Organizing Committee, a nonprofit group that assists tenants with housing complaints.

“We want to do everything possible to make all housing in Los Angeles acceptable,” Domingo Sauceda, chief inspector of the Los Angeles Housing Department, told the audience of about 100 tenants, mostly Latinos.

Members of the audience had similar stories to tell.

One tenant, Zoila Grajeda, said she did not have gas in her apartment from January until last Monday. Grajeda has lived in the downtown Los Angeles apartment for six years, she said. Often, tenant complaints are ignored or the city’s building inspectors are slow to respond, she said.

“We need them to give us quick answers,” Grajeda said. “They have to do more for us. We need the city to work more.”

Garry Pinney, general manager of the Housing Department, said the city is working harder to provide safe and livable housing.

Last year, the Blue Ribbon Citizen’s Committee on Slum Housing, a panel of community and business leaders, found that many housing units were in substandard condition and that slum conditions had festered in some of the city’s more economically blighted neighborhoods.

Among the discoveries in some buildings were rotted floors, caved-in buildings, infrequent trash removal and damaged plumbing. Years could pass before repairs were made, the committee reported.

Since then, the city has stepped up its efforts to improve living conditions in housing units. With the help of a translator for the mostly Spanish-speaking audience, Sauceda and Pinney outlined for the audience various programs that the city has in place to force building owners to comply with health and safety codes and to keep rents in check.

This summer, Mayor Richard Riordan signed into law a code enforcement ordinance intended to ferret out rundown apartments. Over the next three years, every rental unit will be inspected. With 53 field inspectors examining more than 780,000 apartment units, that will be a monumental task, Sauceda said.

Prior to the new law, housing inspections were conducted only when tenants called the city with complaints. Inspectors will continue to respond to complaints in addition to their routine inspections.

Pinney said the Housing Department is committed to holding all owners accountable for their properties. “If it’s a slum building, we’re not going to give in,” he said.

But some tenants wanted more reassurances from the city.

“The city has not done anything for us,” said Delmy Delgado, who has lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with her husband and two children for 14 years. Her building has no hot water and minimal electricity, she told a reporter.

“You guys came and it’s still bad,” her neighbor Maria Luz Hernandez told the housing officials. Hernandez said building inspectors had looked at the one-bedroom apartment she has lived in for 20 years with her husband and two children.

Enrique Velasquez, one of the organizers of the meeting, said he plans to try to hold regular meetings between tenants and housing officials.