Ads Target Landlords of Illegal Apartments

Worried that owners of illegal garage apartments will hear of a proposed crackdown and evict their mostly poor tenants, city housing officials have begun a series of appearances on Spanish-language radio and television to remind landlords and tenants that the measure has not yet been passed.

The public service interviews were to begin Wednesday night in response to a query by KVEA Channel 52 and continue today as word spread of potentially strict enforcement of building and zoning codes.

“We’re telling people that this is a proposal, that it’s not the law,” said Sally Richman, the head of policy and planning for the Los Angeles Housing Department.

However, Councilman Hal Bernson hastened action on the plan by introducing three motions Wednesday that would indeed make renting out an illegally converted garage a criminal offense.

The City Council put the motions on a fast track, asking that the city attorney’s office draft a proposed ordinance within 60 days.

Bernson’s actions quickly followed a decision Tuesday by three City Council committees to reject a proposal to bring some of the city’s about 50,000 to 100,000 garage apartments up to minimum safety standards, and in some cases legalize them. The members of the public safety, planning and land use management committees concluded that the recommendations by a City Hall task force were not in the best interest of the public, particularly in light of the deaths of eight people since December in garage apartment fires.

“Nobody will be thrown out immediately,” said Greig Smith, Bernson’s chief of staff. “They will be forced to relocate eventually, but it’s for their own benefit because this is unsafe housing.”

Bernson’s proposals, which would make it a misdemeanor to rent out an illegally converted apartment, would force landlords to pay their tenants’ relocation costs. One of Bernson’s proposed measures calls on state legislators to make landlords guilty of a felony if someone is injured or dies in an illegally converted garage apartment.

Under Bernson’s plan, landlords would have a 90-day grace period in which they could come forward without penalty, admit that they have illegal apartments on their property and make plans to relocate tenants. After that, property owners found to have such units could be fined $1,000. The possibility of jail is not addressed.

That plan is the opposite of a course of action recommended by a task force of the city’s top housing, building and safety, planning and fire officials. The task force, saying that illegal garage apartments make up a substantial portion of the city’s housing stock, proposed allowing landlords to fix up some of the units and make them safer, so tenants are not forced out.

“You’ve got to have both the carrot and the stick,” said William Fulton, the publisher of the California Planning and Policy Report.

Just cracking down, he said, is meaningless unless the city can find affordable alternatives for tenants--and find the resources to enforce the new laws in the first place.