Rent Strike Highlights Lack of Options for the Poor in a Tight Housing Market
Mothers everywhere know the routine: Wake up in the middle of the night, feed the baby, rock the baby, put the baby back to sleep. But mothers at one apartment building in Maywood have one more late-night task: Check the baby for roaches.
The women of this 26-unit building on Maywood Avenue know that roaches cause rashes--and that rodents carry disease, that mold can lead to infection, and that tap water the color of apple juice is not safe. For two years, they say, they tried to get the owner to fix the problems. Finally in September, they launched a salvo all their own: They declared a rent strike.
“At City Hall they told us, why don’t you guys move?” said Norma Diaz, 34, a resident and organizer of the tenants, who have been paying rent into a special joint bank account. “That is not the point. If some other people come in, it’s the same thing. We want to fight this man so he can’t have people living this way.”
In the world of landlord-tenant conflicts, rent strikes and lawsuits are hardly novelties. But as Los Angeles County’s housing crunch becomes more severe, moving is no longer an option for most low-income tenants. Instead, many more might be inclined to stay and fight rather than hedge their bets in a market with few vacancies and even fewer that they can afford.
“It’s a kind of layperson’s instinct,” said Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor who has studied housing in Los Angeles. “If the person selling housing isn’t holding up their end of the bargain, maybe you shouldn’t have to hold up yours. There’s a two-way obligation.”
At the Maywood building, each side claims the other has failed to meet an obligation.
The owner, Arthur Shapiro, said poor housekeeping by residents caused some of the problems. He added that only one tenant had complained about needed repairs, which were quickly made. In fact, the building is undergoing repairs which, according to Shapiro, began 45 days ago.
“I’m working really hard at this,” he said. “I’m here every single day. We have done numerous repairs, about 250 different things.”
These days, Shapiro is working against the clock. City and county building, health and fire inspectors all have examined the complex and found numerous violations: rodents, cockroaches, plumbing problems, mold, missing screens, damaged floors and walls, nonfunctioning smoke alarms.
Frustrated by the lack of repairs, county health officials said they are preparing to ask the district attorney’s office to consider criminal prosecution.
With money they pooled, the tenants have hired an attorney and filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the owner, accusing him of maintaining an uninhabitable building. Investigators sent by the lawyers said they have found asbestos and mold.
As the rent strike continues, relations between tenants and Shapiro have deteriorated. Accusations and tempers sometimes fly.
“What these people have to live with is abysmal,” said Felipe Aguirre of Comite Pro Uno, a Maywood group that has helped the tenants.
The strike has turned ordinary tenants like Diaz into organizers who sometimes miss work to rally neighbors, show up at City Council meetings and tell their story to reporters.
“We want to live in a clean place and a safe place for our children,” said Diaz, who works in a clinic and is the mother of two, including a 6-month-old.
Rumblings at the building, where tenants say two-bedroom apartments rent for $650 to $675, came to a head about four months ago when Shapiro tried to raise rents, Diaz said.
Several tenants say the owner has entered their apartments and kept them there while he demanded the rent--a charge repeated in their lawsuit. Shapiro could not be reached for comment on that allegation.
Photographs of Trapped Mice
One tenant has a collection of photographs showing mice she says were caught in traps in her apartment. Many tenants readily allow visitors into their apartments to show them why they are striking.
Jose Sigala, district director for Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angeles), spent five hours visiting the complex.
“Things were pretty awful,” he said. “One unit had a hole in the bathroom I could put my head through. There were vermin--rodents--backed-up plumbing. There was a lot of wear and tear.”
Sigala also heard the concerns of tenants who worry that the owner has no motivation to repair the building because Maywood has rezoned it to revert to industrial use in two years.
Firebaugh’s office has been a mediator in the dispute, Sigala said, calling appropriate county and city agencies.
Sigala said he has sometimes been stumped. For example, there was no record of the city’s director of building and planning ordering the owner this year to make emergency plumbing repairs, although Director David Mango said he issued that order.
Mango visited the building several months later, found numerous violations and ordered additional repairs. The latest inspection showed that “considerable progress had been made,” he said.
Inspectors from the county Department of Health Services visited several times from June to October and also found numerous violations. Subsequently, the department began preparing a case for the district attorney’s office.
The ceiling in Julia Martinez’s bathroom has fallen in twice, flooding a room in the apartment she shares with her five children. On a recent visit, there are signs that workers have been here. There is no working toilet; it has been pulled out and is sitting in the bathtub. The wall is open, exposing the water pipes. There is no way to shower.
Most of the family’s furniture and clothing is piled in the living room; the rest sits outside, wrapped in plastic.
“We don’t have any money [to relocate] because we’re still paying the rent” into the fund, Martinez explained.
So she and the children maneuver around the apartment and use the bathroom of neighbors. But she is worried about her children, especially the baby, who has been ill twice.
“I’m desperate with this situation,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay like this.”
Toward the end of the evening, Martinez collapses. Paramedics are called and the owner offers to pay for a hotel room.
Shapiro says he has made several efforts to rid the building of pests, including the use of traps. “There are fewer and fewer and fewer” roaches, he said. But he said his efforts have been hindered because many tenants “aren’t cleaning up after themselves.” Some refuse to allow workers to recover and dispose of trapped pests, he said.
“They want to make it look [bad],” he said. “If you see the place, it’s really an OK place, considering the neighborhood.”
Some tenants will not let workers into their units to repair them, Shapiro said. Still, no one has been evicted.
“My goal is to get that thing in tiptop shape and make the tenants live up to those standards,” he said.
Tenants have complained that the city has done little to help them. Maywood Mayor Samuel Pena said the city is trying to remain neutral. “We hear from the tenants he’s not doing anything. We hear from the owner that he’s trying.”
Maywood, with a population of 28,000 and 6,000 rental units, has only one code enforcement officer. Apartments are inspected when there is a complaint or a permit is needed.
Yet attorneys for Shapiro’s tenants say what they have seen justifies the decision to withhold rent.
“I can pretty well predict that the conditions are so hideous that most judges would give a substantial rent reduction,” said attorney Andrew Krzemuski.
As a result of the strike, Firebaugh’s office is discussing ways to develop a regional service center for tenants to mediate such disputes.
“There isn’t anything like that in the southeast” part of the county, Sigala said. “That’s a positive that’s come out of it.”
Says Diaz, the tenant organizer: “I don’t know how I’m going to manage to be a mom, to be a leader and to be a worker, but I don’t have a choice. I don’t think I would sleep good at night if I didn’t. I have to help.”
