Crackdown on Unsafe Housing Has Downside for Many Tenants

One fact could not be refuted by attorneys, or anyone else hoping to save 80-year-old Basilia Mejia from eviction.

That haunting fact rose from a dusty city file and, in the end, nothing mattered more.

“Not my age, not the years I’ve lived here,” Mejia said, standing in front of her Venice apartment building.

According to city records, the apartments Mejia and her neighbors had occupied should not exist. They are phantom units: home to the low-income residents who live there, but nonexistent in city records.

Last weekend, just days before her scheduled removal by sheriff’s deputies on Tuesday, Mejia moved out of her home of almost 12 years.

The eviction was the unintended byproduct of city inspections designed to protect tenants, particularly those living in unsafe or dilapidated units.

Since January 2000, inspectors with the city Housing Department’s Systematic Code Enforcement Program have discovered at least 4,447 illegal conversions. Often cited are garages, laundry rooms and attics illegally converted into living spaces.

The thousands of nonconforming units present code enforcement officials with a complex balancing act: how to provide families with safe housing without leaving them with no housing at all. Inspectors estimate that landlords eventually remove as many as 90% of the illegally converted units from the market.

In some neighborhoods, converted garages and illegal units are the only housing that poor families can afford. When those units are eliminated, many renters can be thrown into a tight housing market with little assistance.

“In terms of how extensive it is, we really don’t know,” said Sally Richman, manager of policy and planning for the Los Angeles Housing Department. “It’s a very informal market. But the bottom line is, this is unsafe housing.”

Many units have poor wiring, substandard plumbing and inadequate exits. Usually, inspections force owners to make repairs, with no penalties for tenants.

But with illegal conversions, “most owners choose to convert the building back to its approved use, even if it means having to evict all the tenants,” said Wayne Durand, principal inspector with the code enforcement program.

Occasionally since the late 1980s, the City Council has discussed the issue of illegal units and the plight of tenants who occupy them. But the city has not found a good way to improve the quality of inexpensive housing without eliminating many of the units poor people rely on.

Illegal Homes Called Necessary

Mejia’s plight drew the indignation of Oakwood residents and tenant advocates such as Jataun Valentine who say, illegal units or not, there should have been some way for Mejia to stay in Venice.

“The fact is that while some of these units may be unsafe or not up to code, they are providing an enormous number of housing [units] in this area,” said Larry Gross of the Coalition for Economic Survival. “Just evicting them or closing down the units doesn’t solve the problem.”

In Venice, community members became their sister’s keeper. They spread the word about Mejia’s plight at neighborhood meetings, pleaded with Councilwoman Ruth Galanter’s office on her behalf, and circulated fliers asking the owner for a reprieve.

“We’ve been trying to find a place for her; everybody has been out looking,” said Valentine. “Everybody has grown to really like this elderly lady.”

J.J. Martinez, another neighbor, lost his eviction case in court the same day and for the same reason.

“I can put my family into another place,” said Martinez, who for 16 years lived in an illegal apartment. “But at least think about Mrs. Basilia.”

The owner of the property, Daniel Ramirez, said he exhausted all avenues to keep Mejia in her unit. He said he faces prosecution if he doesn’t reduce the building to the authorized two units. “I had no choice,” Ramirez said.

Neighbors know Mejia from years of seeing her each morning, sweeping in front of her home or tending her herb garden. She uses the herbs to make medicinal remedies learned in her native Zacatecas, Mexico. In better times, before a stroke and other health problems, Mejia supplied local restaurants with handmade tortillas.

After nearly 12 years, her routine was her life. Her son works at a nearby bakery, and each day she prepared a meal for him. There were neighbors who stopped and spoke with her. Here she had independence.

As the eviction date neared, her days were filled with fear.

“Her worry worries us,” said Denise Mejia, one of her seven grandchildren. “We don’t want her to have a stroke.”

Shortly before Ramirez bought the property in 1999, city inspectors found scores of violations including electrical failures, a roach infestation and bad plumbing. Repairs were ordered. In fact, the building was in such dismal shape that it was recommended for placement in the Housing Department’s Rent Escrow Account Program in late 2000.

Under the program, tenants pay their rents into a city escrow account until repairs are made. In most cases they cannot be evicted while in the program. Although Ramirez contested the decision, the building remained in the program. And the pressure to leave continued, tenants said.

In a beach-side community where rents can exceed $1,700 for a one-bedroom, the Martinez family paid $344 for a single. Mejia paid $689 for her one-bedroom.

In July 2001, the landlord attempted to evict the Martinez family on the grounds that they maintained a nuisance by keeping a messy yard. The family won that case.

But by November, the two households faced eviction on the grounds that their units were illegal.

The city’s order to comply gives the landlord a choice: Return the property to its original two units or legally convert it to four.

But legal conversion can mean hiring architects, holding public hearings, mitigating parking problems and meeting other zoning requirements for the two extra units.

“It’s a lengthy and expensive process,” said Durand, the inspector.

In the case of the Venice building, one unit had been split into three, occupied by Martinez and Mejia. A third unit was vacant. The owner chose to return the property to its original state and evict the tenants.

‘This Is Not About Race’

When the case went to court, attorneys representing the tenants knew the Martinez family’s chances of winning were slim. They lived in the illegal part of the duplex: one room with no real kitchen, a leaking roof, and a space so tiny that only one bed fits. The couple and their oldest daughter sleep on the floor; the two youngest children share the bed.

But Mejia’s lawyers saw her space as the legal unit and believed that she should be allowed to stay. Instead, the judge ruled in favor of the landlord, evicting both families. A newer tenant in the building was allowed to stay.

“The question is why [evict] this 80-year-old woman who’s been there? Why the two lowest-paying Latino tenants and not the higher-paying tenant who is white? That’s really the big injustice,” said Elena Popp, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which helped Mejia.

Ramirez said his decision was an economic one. “If I could evict the other tenant to keep Mrs. Mejia, I would. I can’t. It’s not economically feasible,” he said.

“I’m Mexican American. This is not about race,” Ramirez said. “This is about what the city is forcing me to do.”

The decision means the loss of scarce affordable units in a tight housing market, Popp said.

The dilemma faced by Mejia is more likely to happen now than before.

Prior to the creation of the program, inspections were conducted by the Department of Building and Safety only after it received a complaint. The Systematic Code Enforcement Program was created in 1998 to routinely inspect every multifamily residential rental unit in the city so low-income units wouldn’t become slums.

But with increased inspections have come more discoveries of illegal conversions and more dilemmas for tenants. The issue surfaces at a time that is particularly tough for low-income and working-class tenants.

“There’s an affordable-housing shortage, so where are people going to live?” said Richman of the Housing Department.

Over the years, the city has debated the question of how to handle people living in illegal units--particularly those living in garages. But it is a complex issue, and planning rules lag behind the reality of how people live.

“If we were to sweep the city and evict them out of makeshift dwellings, we would have an astronomical homeless problem,” said Luke Zamperini, a senior inspector with the Department of Building and Safety.

The Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles would like the city to make it easier for the owners if they want to convert, said Charles Isham, executive vice president of the group.

In the Venice case, Galanter’s aides said they had been trying to get a variance so the owner could create a triplex--and allow Mejia to stay.

In the meantime, Ramirez paid Mejia and Martinez $5,000 apiece in relocation fees. But in Venice, the money will quickly disappear into deposits and high rents.

Landlords Refuse Federal Vouchers

Here, owners are converting Housing and Urban Development apartment buildings to market rate. Federal housing vouchers are being refused by landlords who can get higher rents on the open market. And rents are rising at an astounding rate.

“Oakwood is the last remaining community of color anywhere along the California coast,” said Popp. “In a community like that, there’s a huge pressure to move out low-income African American and Latino residents and convert those units into very, very high-rent units.”

After the Martinez eviction was final, the family began looking for an apartment.

As the days passed, the Martinezes found a house in South Los Angeles. The search for Mejia was more difficult.

“This lady is walking up and down the street, trying to see if someone will rent her a room,” Valentine said.

After seeing efforts to help Mejia fail again and again, the Martinez family offered a remedy.

“I said, ‘Would you like to come with us?’ ” Martinez said. “My oldest daughter is going to the Air Force; then we will be four. We can use one, and Mrs. Basilia can have her own room.”

Mejia also had the option of moving to Carson, to a three-bedroom house where 10 relatives live.

“She knows that it’s crowded in there,” Denise Mejia said. “She’s more comfortable around her own things.”

Neighbors had held out hope that Galanter’s office could help, or some fact would surface to counter the one that cost Mejia her home.

But their hope, and the worry on Mejia’s face, did not stop a sheriff’s deputy from showing up at her door last week with an eviction order.

In the end, the neighbors who fought for her could do little more than watch with sadness as relatives moved Mejia’s belongings over the weekend. Instead of moving in with the Martinezes, Mejia will live in an apartment her family has found for her in Torrance.

Said neighbor Jackie Smith: “Nobody should have to go through this.”