Target of City Slum Suit Says He’s Scapegoat

Who is Lance Jay Robbins? Is he:

A--L.A.’s biggest slumlord?

B--A tough but well-meaning front man for property owners who are striving to upgrade sadly neglected housing?

C--Some combination of the above?

City officials and nonprofit lawyers for tenants say Robbins, a Westside lawyer, is indisputably A. They cite violation after violation, lawsuit after lawsuit, the most recent of which was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. That suit accuses Robbins of bilking the Department of Water and Power of millions of dollars and evading responsibility through a complex web of dummy corporations and other strategies.

Robbins says he is B, and the scapegoat of a politically ambitious City Atty. James K. Hahn, among others.

“This is all about politics,” he insisted Wednesday afternoon in an on-the-fly interview that wound through one of the buildings he is accused of neglecting. “Politicians of the city running for office--that is what this is all about.”

A fireplug of a man who once played guard on the University High School football team, Robbins described himself as tough but scrupulous, a man whose life work is saving old buildings from decay.

“I take properties that no one else will handle and I clean them up and make repairs,” he said.

That has been his contention for years.

In a 1985 interview with The Times, while awaiting criminal arraignment, he said he resented being described as a slumlord by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.

At the time, he was facing civil and criminal charges for operating substandard housing at various low-income apartment buildings. He insisted that he was in the business of “buying bad buildings and turning them around.”

Eventually, he was fined $500 for a misdemeanor health code violation, the first of at least a half-dozen fines he would pay over the years for health and safety violations that included rat and cockroach infestations and fire safety violations. He also was sentenced to a 30-day jail term in 1987 after pleading no contest in two slum cases and admitting that he violated parole in an earlier one.

The most recent case was initiated by Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a nonprofit organization that represents low-income clients, in this case tenant Laura Ochoa and Inquilinos Unidos, a tenants rights group. Initially filed under seal last March, the suit was joined Tuesday by the city attorney.

Bet Tzedek housing attorney Lauren Saunders said the lawsuit came after years of shadow-boxing with Robbins, who she said camouflaged himself behind a web of dummy corporations that frustrated efforts by the city’s Slum Housing Task Force to make him comply.

“He outmaneuvers the city,” she said. “He’s managed to hide himself behind dummy corporations and court-appointed receivers in ways that his involvement is not apparent.”

“We’re trying to get to pierce those veils so we can get to the person we believe is responsible,” she said.

Hahn, a candidate for mayor, said much the same thing.

“A guy like Robbins is typical--title is never held in his name,” the city attorney said. “I don’t think there is anybody better than Mr. Robbins at this shell game of sham transfers and corporations. He always acts like he’s not the one who controls the property. It makes it very difficult to prosecute the case. Just when the cases are brought, he’ll sell or transfer, and we have to start all over again. And that’s very frustrating.”

But Robbins, who lives in Playa del Rey, insisted that the allegations are wrong.

“I don’t own any apartment buildings,” he said as he strolled through 2892 W. 7th St., an 80-year-old, 60-unit building. “I only represent the owners.”

“But you are the owner,” said Talia Green, a 24-year-old writer who was carrying a stereo speaker down a stairwell as she moved out of the building. “You are the landlord.”

Turning to a reporter, she ticked off complaints about the building that included leaks, mold and falling plaster.

“He is a slumlord, and he’s the owner,” she insisted.

“I can’t explain my relationship with clients,” Robbins said. “They come after me because I’m the guy who shows up.”

Saunders, the Bet Tzedek lawyer, said she heard of Robbins on her first day in the office seven years ago.

“When I talked to people about who are the problem landlords in Los Angeles, he was the first name off of everyone’s lips,” Saunders said.

Pinning Robbins down was not so easy. Saunders believes Robbins owns 30 buildings in Pico Union, Mid-Wilshire and Hollywood, but each building lists a different partnership as owner, she said.

“It’s been a moving target,” Saunders said. “When you find out about one building that has horrible conditions and you focus on that one building, you can eventually get the conditions fixed in that one building.

“But you don’t know what’s going on in other buildings that he controls and there’s nothing that stops him from letting the same kind of conditions reappear in other buildings,” she said. “It doesn’t stop the cycle.”

And typically, the insurance companies assumed responsibility for the damages, she said.

“What we’re trying to go after in this lawsuit is not the conditions in one building, but rather the business practices that allow this to flourish,” she said.

Robbins’ most bizarre practice, she said, is what she believes is his control of receiverships that take over his foreclosed buildings.

In a typical foreclosure, lenders don’t want owners to collect rent, she said. So they appoint a receiver, a neutral third party who holds the rent as an officer of the court.

“In this case, we’ve alleged that Robbins is using one alter ego company to file foreclosure against another alter ego company so the court can’t see that the two companies are, we believe, controlled by the same person,” Saunders said.

“We still don’t know. It’s one of the things we hope to find out in this lawsuit.”

Robbins insisted that he is merely a contractor who does maintenance work on buildings owned by others.

“There are a million legitimate reasons for what people call a shell game,” he said.

Robbins described himself as a complex person. On the side, he said, he counsels drug addicts once a week. Authorities have targeted him, he said, because “I have a reputation of being a tough guy, because I don’t run, because I could be an interior lineman. You know how much I bench press? 450 pounds . . . I bench double my weight and have since I was 14 years old. And I have a brown belt. I am a guy who, when his mind is determined, I know two speeds, and that is zero and 100%.”

Walking through the 7th Street building, he pointed to bullet holes that, he said, “add a bit of sentimentality to the place from the bad old days.”

“Watching this go from a drug-infested hellhole to the kind of place people really want to live in is rewarding.”

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Times staff writers Mitchell Landsberg and Josh Meyer contributed to this story.