Service or Nuisance? : Complaints Prompt Santa Ana to Consider Limiting Yard Sales

SANTA ANA — Margarita Navarro tended a heap of worn blouses and baby clothes, old kitchen utensils and a washing machine scattered across her tiny front yard Saturday--items she hoped would bring in a few extra dollars to make ends meet and help care for a sick son.

“I’m old. It’s not easy for me to find work. I need this,” said Navarro, 63, who had netted $6 by lunchtime from the steady trickle of neighbors who perused her wares. “These are all old things, of very little value. But the people who come to buy here also don’t have much money.”

On any given weekend, residents throughout Santa Ana’s poorest neighborhoods load front yards, driveways and empty parking lots with racks of clothing and a mishmash of appliances, furniture, tires and televisions.

For some, such as Navarro, the yard sales are an occasional practice that serves neighborhood shoppers who don’t have cars to get to swap meets or cannot afford the prices of even secondhand stores. Other residents have turned the sales into thriving, weekly enterprises as they buy new and used goods and resell them for profit.

City officials and neighborhood association activists complain that the garage sales are unsightly junk fests that create traffic jams and are unfair to those who seek out commercial licenses or pay to sell their goods at swap meets.

Code enforcement officials say the situation is so out of control they can’t possibly enforce existing city law, which allows only two garage sales at any address each year. So Monday night, the City Council will consider a revised ordinance: one that allows yard sales just four weekends a year, twice in May and twice in October.

Council members and neighborhood association activists have overwhelmingly welcomed the move, which they say would clean up the city and channel business activity back where it belongs--into regulated commercial areas.

“I grew up in the city and I just want it to look clean,” said Councilman Ted R. Moreno, who initiated the discussion of a stricter garage sale ordinance about 10 months ago. “I got tired of just seeing people throw their clothes around. When they started doing it as a business, I said, ‘This is getting to be too much.’ ”

The city’s current ordinance was adopted in 1990, limiting sales to two a year and restricting goods to those of a “household nature.”

But city officials say it has proved too cumbersome to enforce. While code enforcement officers generated a list in 1993 of almost 1,000 addresses that had met their two-sale limit, only 10 citations were issued. With more than 300 estimated sales on any given Saturday, city officials said enforcers can’t possibly track every one, and sales often move from house to house, further frustrating efforts.

The proposed ordinance would simplify matters: anyone holding a sale outside the four designated weekends could have their goods impounded by the city pending a hearing.

Other cities have tried similar tactics. In January, La Palma restricted sales to two a year and required residents to get permits. And last year, Dana Point limited sales to four a year after residents complained about the proliferation of signs advertising the events and the annoyance of having to sidestep wares piled on neighborhood sidewalks.

But in Santa Ana, the anger and frustration over yard sales also highlight a festering dispute between established middle-class residents and the burgeoning population of newer immigrants, many of whom live far below the poverty line. Many longtime residents say the new Santa Ana is not as attractive as the city they remember, and they cross their fingers that this and other new laws may help restore its former luster.

An ordinance adopted in January allows the city to slap a $50 fine on anyone who hangs laundry so it’s visible from the street, or stores anything other than lawn furniture on an apartment balcony or patio. The proposed garage sale ordinance targets the same perceived “unsightliness.”

“In the past, yard sales mean exactly that: You cleaned out what you have and traded with your neighbor or whatever. It’s not meant to be a residential business,” said Dave Lopez, a member of the Riverview West Neighborhood Assn., who said he feared the neighborhood was looking more and more like “Old Tijuana.”

“It’s as if somebody goes out there and just throws stuff. It’s hanging over balconies. It’s hanging over trees. Clothes everywhere!” said Betty Biner, an Eastside Neighborhood Assn. member who said she counted 26 sales on a stretch of Chestnut Avenue last Saturday.

“I’m ashamed of the area. It looks so bad,” said Biner, who has shared a house on Chestnut Avenue with her husband, Paul, for 28 years. “It’s not just the clothes and the yard sales,” she said. “It’s the music. It’s the filth. It’s the abandoned cars. It’s the number of people. It’s just too much of a bad thing. I hate the weekends because of the noise.”

But other residents insist that any crackdown would affect many hard working, honest people who rely on the yard sales to get by.

At her house on Baker Street, Margarita Navarro said the city’s priorities confounded her.

“Why are they focusing this attention on us? Why don’t they do something about the people who constantly sell drugs on this street corner?” she said. “Sure, if you’re reselling new merchandise you should have a permit, but these are old things. If they don’t want people to rob, then let us do this. There is no work for us. We have to eat.”

“It’s not easy for us,” said Guadalupe Escovedo, 39, who tended a thriving sale at her home on McFadden Avenue Saturday. “If we spend $5 on something we no longer need, we want to get $1 back.”

Escovedo said she only tries to sell things a few times a year, and would gladly get a permit from the city if it were required. But to restrict the sales to four specific weekends would be a hardship for those who can’t afford to shop any other way. The competition among sales on those days would be too fierce, she said.

“Maybe 10% of the people in this city are complaining. But 90% are not, because they need our service,” said Felipe Medina, 19, who helped with Escovedo’s garage sale Saturday. “By putting on a yard sale, we are offering a service to the area.”

Alicia Munroy, 25, said the city ordinance would hurt her family. On Saturday, she walked from Escovedo’s yard with two cooking pots and four blouses, all for $4. In even a second-hand store, one blouse would cost that much, she said, and she has no car to get to a swap meet.

“Things are very difficult for us economically,” said Marta Rincon, who pushed a shopping cart down McFadden Avenue filled with bags of children’s clothes purchased at three garage sales. The outings are regular Saturday and Sunday affairs for her, she said.

Other weekend sales are more commercial. In a parking lot in the 800 block of First Street, Cesar Castaneda was selling hundreds of pots and pans Saturday from an old yellow truck. Some of his offerings were new, others dented. A crowd of people clamored onto the truck and peered inside.

The interested buyers included Miguel Miranda, 57, who makes a living purchasing wares from Santa Ana yard sales and vendors such as Castaneda. He resells the items at a swap meet.

Miranda said the proposed ordinance would ruin him. “It goes against humanity,” he said “We do this out of necessity. It’s an honest living.”

City officials say they will consider alternative proposals, such as allowing the sales on one weekend every three months, rather than two weekends each in May and October, and there is a provision written into the ordinance that would roll the date to the next weekend in event of rain.

Bruce Dunams, the city’s coordinator for community preservation, sought to rally residents around the proposed law last week at an Eastside Neighborhood Assn. meeting. Dunams said it was the only way to clean up their city.