Apartments in Ill Repair

Eight-month-old Jasmine Terrazas has been sickly since the day she was born. Her mother worries constantly because the infant, so small and weak, has been afflicted by a string of illnesses, from fevers and painful ear infections to lung infections that leave her gasping for air.

Vanessa Terrazas can’t prove it, but the young mother suspects that the squalor she lived in during her pregnancy is to blame for her daughter’s ailments.

The Terrazas are among hundreds of impoverished residents living in the 148-unit Haster Gardens apartment complex in Garden Grove, where roofs leak, floors crumble and walls are covered with mold. Some apartments are without heat, hot water or electricity. But critics say there are plenty of roaches, rats and termites in the units where families eat and sleep and children play.

The city of Garden Grove filed a civil suit in Orange County Superior Court against more than two dozen parties, including past and present property owners and managers who have connections to Haster Gardens. The city turned to legal action after trying unsuccessfully since last February to force those in charge of the housing complex--considered the worst slum housing in the city--to address numerous health and safety violations.

City building inspectors have deemed 28 apartment units uninhabitable.

The controversy has captured the attention of county public health officials, who are investigating whether the apartments are making residents sick, said the county’s environmental health specialist, John Ralls.

In addition, residents from about 60 apartment units banded together recently, refusing to pay their rent until owners clean up the complex. Six families also filed civil suits, alleging that the units fail to meet various health and safety and building codes.

Many older tenants of Haster Gardens report respiratory problems, while several youngsters suffer from asthma, afflictions that some believe can be traced in part to substandard living conditions.

Many named in the lawsuit declined to comment about the legal proceedings or else blamed the poor conditions on other owners and managers.

Representatives for Equity Management 2000 say they are wrongly being blamed in the lawsuits for conditions that existed before they took over managing Haster Gardens in October and the buildings were sold to new owners.

In recent months, owners have spent about $100,000 on repairs, from fixing water heaters to repairing roofs and leaky pipes, working as quickly as they can to address residents’ complaints, they say.

“I understand the tenant situation,” said Equity employee Rose Nunez, who collects the rent each month. “But they have been fixing, they have been putting money into the complex. It would be different if we were just sitting down, collecting rents and nothing gets done.”

Vanessa Terrazas’ father, Tomas Del Rio, is organizing the residents in their fight for better living conditions. He said that the tenants initially welcomed the new owners and hoped things would improve.

But Del Rio said managers have been slow to follow through on their promises to address residents’ concerns, from replacing broken doors and smoke detectors to dealing with the roaches and the rats.

“People are just fed up,” said Del Rio, who said many of the residents living in the Haster Gardens apartments are too poor to move to a better place. “Some of these people struggle. They work hard all day to pay the rent on time. All we want is a decent place to live.”

Del Rio also says that some of the mostly Spanish-speaking residents at Haster Gardens have been recently threatened with deportation if they complain too much. But the manager, Alberto Freine, says those allegations are false.

Freine acknowledges that there are problems at Haster Gardens, but contends that poor conditions are being exaggerated, mostly by those who owe back rent.

Not true, says Tom Simon, a negotiator with the Eviction Protectors in Huntington Beach, a private agency that represents poor residents in their tenant disputes.

“This is the worst case I’ve seen in Orange County,” Simon said of the Haster Gardens apartments.

Simon said that it’s difficult to believe some residents are living without heat and hot water in one of the most affluent counties in the nation.

“In this country, you have to answer to this,” he said.

Simon said that just in the last week, four families had their water turned off and a 4-year-old boy was sent to an emergency room with an inflamed throat, ear infection and fever, symptoms his parents attribute to conditions in their apartment, where the carpeting is perpetually soaked due to a broken water pipe and a leaking roof. Other parents complained that their infant boy was asleep in his crib when a pipe in the adjoining bathroom burst, flooding the baby’s room.

Families who live in the worst units are being temporarily relocated to another Garden Grove residential complex that is assisting by offering reduced rates.

Other Haster Gardens tenants are refusing to pay rent. An Orange County Superior Court judge last week barred managers from evicting at least one family who withheld payment because of needed repairs in their apartment. The Rodriguezes do not have heat or hot water, and a leaky roof shorted the apartment’s electrical wiring, the judge was told.

In another apartment, Marco Martinez can’t get rid of his cough. He recently moved his bed into the living room because water leaking through the ceiling has left the bedroom ceiling and walls covered with spots and creeping mold.

“It’s crazy,” he said.