City Revises Code Enforcement but Adds No Staff

Confronted by a deep backlog of apartments that need to be inspected, Los Angeles City Council members reorganized their code enforcement program Tuesday--but did not hire any more inspectors.

Officials had pledged that each of the city’s 750,000 apartments would be inspected every three years for the hazards of substandard housing. But in September, officials acknowledged that they have reviewed only one-fourth of the city’s apartments in the last two years and said it could take up to six years to check them all.

Violations and lax enforcement in some poor neighborhoods have resulted in fire hazards, rodent infestations and trash problems.

Council members said they could not grant the Housing Department’s $1-million request for 18 more staff members, including eight inspectors, because of a pending lawsuit.

The suit was filed by landlords who are trying to block the city from collecting fees that pay for the inspection program. The state Supreme Court is expected to rule by Jan. 11.

That could mean the Housing Department will have to make do with its available staff until next July, when a new budget and fiscal year begins.

“We do not give the Housing Department the resources that it would take to do the things that we ask them to do,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. “This is the beginning of identifying that, but this is not the end.”

Goldberg admonished her colleagues to include the anti-slum program in the spring budget process.

The council first asked the Housing Department to work on code-enforcement reorganization in September. As approved Tuesday, the department’s alphabet soup of enforcement programs will be grouped under one unit reporting to one director, said Garry Pinney, general manager for the city’s Housing Department.

Those services include the Rent Escrow Account Program, through which residents pay rent into an escrow account instead of to the landlord when repairs are overdue; the Urgent Repair Program, under which the city will make emergency repairs if a landlord fails to take action after 48 hours, and a Property Management Training Program, which trains landlords.

Reorganizing those programs into one division will help the department track inspections and complaints, Pinney said, “working as a team from the penalties [phase] to criminal filing.”

Before 1998, apartments were inspected only after complaints were received. The department handles about 150,000 new inspections a year, plus 120,000 reinspections, Pinney said. To speed things up, officials want to cut advance notices of complete inspections to 10 days instead of 30.

The department has made progress in handling complaints, said Ken Simmons, assistant general manager. In October 1999, there was a backlog of 2,800 complaints; that is down to 400. About 1,000 complaints are filed each month, Simmons said.

But improvement boils down to the need for more staffing, said Councilwoman Laura Chick.

“Truth be known, we are patching Band-Aids on things right now because this program was not properly resourced from the beginning,” she said.