Time Runs Out for Malibu Family Just Before Chance of Halting Eviction
That she is about to become the first casualty of a controversial crackdown on illegal houses in Malibu is bad enough for Debbie Campbell.
What is more frustrating is that today’s expected eviction of the single mother of three and her children from their tiny trailer-and-shed home on Point Dume comes just as help seemed to be on its way.
Four days from now a newly composed City Council--whose majority was elected in April on campaign platforms calling for changes in building code enforcement--is expected to consider a possible moratorium on prosecuting code violations.
In less than two weeks, a city-appointed citizens task force is supposed to wrap up four months of study and recommend ways that structures built without permits before the city was created can be grandfathered into the city’s permit system.
And the Campbells’ ouster deadline comes on the one weekend in Malibu’s nine-year incorporated history that it doesn’t have a city manager on the payroll who could rescind the ouster order.
The former city manager retired Friday. The new one doesn’t start until Monday.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Campbell, who works as an office manager and bookkeeper. “I haven’t found another place to move to. There really isn’t any affordable housing in Malibu except places like this.”
Backers of a moratorium on enforcing Malibu’s building and zoning codes suggest that as many as 1,200 “non-comforming” structures--guest houses, home offices, storage sheds and the like--are scattered among the city’s canyons and bluffs.
They say most were built while Malibu was unincorporated and building code enforcement was sporadic. They contend that some allegedly illegal buildings were actually built with county permits that were lost when the county turned its records over to the city.
Homeowners with old guest houses on their property complain it is too expensive to retroactively apply for city permits to make their structures legal because current procedures require extensive soil tests and correction of any other code violations.
Allegations that city inspectors were on the lookout for violations and were preparing to crack down on those living in nonconforming structures played a role in the defeat of two longtime incumbent City Council members April 11.
A group called Malibu Homeowners for Reform asserted that inspectors were entering property without permission. The group pointed to a Point Dume family living in a hand-built cottage as an example of those threatened by code-enforcement practices.
An anonymous person complained to the city that John Purucker, his wife and their four children were living illegally in the cottage, at the back of his parents’ 1 1/4-acre lot. When the couple declined to let a city inspector on their property, officials got a warrant and returned with sheriff’s deputies, the city prosecutor and dog catchers. Months later the city ordered the family to tear down their house. They refused.
The city’s chief code-enforcement officer, Gail Sumpter, in April defended Malibu’s efforts on public safety grounds. “Would I rather see a newspaper headline that says ‘City Evicts Family of Six’ or ‘Electrical Fire Kills Family of Six’?” she asked. “I’d have to go with the former.”
Sumpter could not be reached Thursday or Friday for comment about Campbell’s case.
City officials stress that Campbell is being evicted by her landlord, not by them. On May 15, Sumpter gave property owner Paul Major 60 days to remove Campbell and her children.
In a letter, Sumpter advised Major that the trailer Campbell uses as the bedroom and kitchen area of her home “has no likelihood of being affected by any change” in code enforcement laws.
“I don’t want to evict her,” said Major, a landscape contractor who has lived 40 years in Malibu. “The city’s forcing me to. I could face a $1,000 a day fine if I don’t.”
He said Campbell’s dwelling is at least 25 years old. “It was here in 1977 when we bought this place. Nobody wants anything unsafe or unhealthy. But this isn’t unsafe or unhealthy. I think what the city is doing is heavy-handed.”
Campbell, 40, pays Major $1,000 a month in rent. She said that after a divorce she lived in several other Malibu guest houses before moving into Major’s place. She said she has sought to stay in the coastal city because of its safe environment for her children, as well as to be near her job.
Outgoing City Manager Harry Peacock declined to comment on the case. The incoming city manager is Marilyn Leuck, a former administrative services director for Ventura..
Malibu Mayor Tom Hasse said he briefed Leuck on Thursday. But he said the City Council cannot interfere in individual enforcement cases after they are opened.
“It’s a very difficult position for elected officials,” he said.
