Code Crackdown on Residential Rental Units Postponed : Cleanup: At request of apartment owners, Santa Ana delays program of mandatory health and safety inspections.

SANTA ANA — The City Council on Monday postponed for 30 days a plan designed to clean up local neighborhoods by requiring health and safety code inspections of all residential rental properties.

The council’s action followed calls from apartment owners’ groups to delay consideration of the proposal.

Before Monday’s council meeting, representatives for local apartment owners met with Mayor Daniel H. Young and Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr. and asked them to delay the vote. The representatives said that the plan, which the owners would pay for through an annual occupancy fee, could bankrupt them or force them to raise rents for people who can barely afford them now.

After a brief public hearing, the council voted unanimously to postpone consideration of the plan.

Young made the motion to postpone the vote, saying that it would allow the city time to work with apartment owners. “They did ask for 60 days, but we’re trying to keep the pressure on,” he said.

However, Councilman Richards L. Norton blasted the plan as an unnecessary intrusion on businesses.

“I can’t even believe we are considering this,” he said. “It smacks of Big Brother climbing into business.”

Norton made a motion, supported by Councilman John Acosta, to scrape the plan entirely. The motion failed on a 5-2 vote.

Councilman Pulido supported the inspection plan saying: “I don’t think anyone will say there is no need for this ordinance. But there is concern about the fee, the amount of the fee and where the fee will go and what it’s going to do.”

Under the current proposal, all of the city’s estimated 37,000 residential rental units would be assessed an annual permit fee of $55 per dwelling and would be checked once every four years to assure that they meet state and city codes. If violations are found, owners could lose the permits and would be unable to rent the units until repairs were made and reinspection fees paid. Faced with a shrinking budget, the city could receive as much as $2 million a year from the program.

A recent memo to the council said that inspectors would target code violations that are “a threat to an occupant’s safety; a threat to a building’s structural integrity, including plumbing, heating and electrical systems, and a negative impact on the community.”

Before the council meeting, Jim Walker, chairman of the Neighborhood Linkage Committee, said he strongly supports the ordinance, saying: “It’s a big step in the right direction. It’s reassuring. This is a program that needs to happen now.”

He also said that he hoped the city would work with the apartment owners and come up with a fee both sides could be happy with. “My only opinion is that it be fair. As a resident and as an active community leader, I’m very concerned that the business community is given a fair deal in Santa Ana. Our futures are tied together.”

Before the meeting, Richard J. Lambros, public affairs director for the Apartment Assn. of Orange County, asked the council to delay consideration of the ordinance for 60 days, saying that the city has not sufficiently analyzed the need for, or the potential impact of, the program.

However, he said after the meeting that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the 30-day continuance.

Earlier, Lambros said that the program would unnecessarily penalize responsible apartment owners in its attempt to correct slum apartments, saying: “Candidly, we know there’s a problem out there, but might we not be swatting a fly with a shotgun?”

The city should more thoroughly analyze the program and consider apartment owners’ concerns before implementing it, he said. And the city has not studied whether such an inspection program would be the most efficient way to improve rental housing conditions, or whether the $55 fee is justified. Such a fee might bankrupt some owners and others would be forced to pass on higher costs to tenants, he said. Higher rents could also spark additional overcrowding, he added, which the city is now trying to curb.

“We’re not trying to kill this,” he said. “If it’s going to be done, let’s do it right.

“What we’re really saying is that if this thing is justified, it will bear out with the facts,” Lambros said. “We’ll pay our fair share, but without looking at the facts, for us to assume that $55 is the right amount, that is not an assumption we’re prepared to make.”