L.A. Revamps Housing Inspection Program
Mired in a deep backlog of apartments that need to be inspected, the Los Angeles City Council reorganized its code enforcement program Tuesday but did not hire more inspectors to do the job.
City officials had pledged that each of the 750,000 apartments in Los Angeles would be inspected every three years for hazards of substandard housing.
But in September, officials acknowledged that in the last two years they have reviewed only a quarter of the city’s apartments and that it could take up to six years to inspect them all.
Violations and lax enforcement have combined in portions of the northeast San Fernando Valley to produce Third World living conditions, including unsafe housing, rodent infestation and trash problems.
While the council acknowledged the Housing Department’s $1-million request for 18 more staff members, including eight inspectors, it said it could not act because of a pending lawsuit.
The suit was filed by a group of landlords trying to block the city from collecting fees that pay for the apartment 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 current staff until as late as July, when a new 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,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said. “This is the beginning of identifying that, but this is not the end.”
Goldberg admonished her fellow lawmakers to include the anti-slum program in the spring budget process.
Housing officials already have moved forward with the reorganization, as requested by the council in September. On Tuesday, the council voted 12 to 0 to formally approve the reorganization.
To streamline operations, 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, where residents pay rent into an escrow account instead of to the landlord to fund overdue repairs; the Urgent Repair Program, where 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 an additional 120,000 re-inspections, Pinney said. There are currently 53 inspectors funded by the disputed apartment fees, and an additional 24 who handle complaints and are paid out of the general fund.
To speed up inspections, officials want to reduce the 30-day notice given a building owner to seven to 10 days before they make a complete review of a property.
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, and that is down to 400. About 1,000 complaints a month are filed, Simmons said.
But improvement boils down to the need for more staffing, Councilwoman Laura Chick said.
“Truth be known, we are patching Band-Aids on things right now because this program was not properly resourced from the beginning,” she said.
The request for additional clerks and other personnel to handle the extensive caseload and criminal filings can’t be ignored, Chick said.
If the inspection fees are deemed illegal by the state Supreme Court, then the earliest the council could address adding more code enforcement staff would be late winter as part of a midyear budget adjustment, she said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Chick said. “We have got to get the resources. We are in a horrific housing shortage.”
