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| PASADENA WEEKLY FEATURE ARTICLE |
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CORRIDOR OF SHAME
No Exit
Once stately properties that Caltrans bought 30 years ago to complete the still unfinished Long Beach Freeway stand as a testament of neglect by one of the most powerful agencies in California
By Chip Jacobs
Defying repeated calls to fix its properties, Caltrans has allowed many of its rental homes along the un-built Long Beach (710) Freeway extension to wither into perpetual neglect and battered, mothballed shells that draw crime and a slum-like aura to their neighborhoods.
People renting state-owned housing face pest infestations, corroded plumbing,
leaky roofs, rotted floors, exposure to mold and, possibly, lead paint, among
other defects. Many renters complain their houses are unsafe and blame it on
either
slapdash repairs or California
Department of Transportation claims it exhausted its maintenance budget.
Altogether, about a quarter of the parcels the departments owns along the corridor
remain so dilapidated they can’t be leased or languish as empty lots, depriving
local government of several millions of dollars worth of yearly rental income,
property taxes or badly needed affordable housing, records show.
Forty or more Caltrans dwellings stand vacant in Pasadena alone, the majority
of them with landmark status within blocks of pricey Orange Grove Boulevard.
Often poorly secured, the houses have been vandalized by indigents, would-be
squatters,
contractors, even devil worshippers, according to neighbors and police.
Meanwhile, some historic homes that have undergone $500,000-plus renovations
are
still faulty, so they are boarded up and left unoccupied.
From grand Victorians and Spanish-style bungalows to nondescript apartment buildings,
the dwellings are part of 587 units the California Department of Transportation
owns through Pasadena, South Pasadena and the northeastern Los Angeles enclave
of El Sereno. Caltrans acquired the bulk of them from their original owners decades
ago in anticipation that the extension between the Long Beach (710) and Foothill
(210) freeways would be constructed, but fierce opposition, particularly from
the city of South Pasadena, has stretched it out into a heavily litigated, 40-year
fight. Trapped in limbo, all the state can do with the units is lease them.
Still in Caltrans’ possession are 21 homes valued at $5.7 million that
the
agency formally declared outside the proposed spur’s footprint in 1995
but have yet to sell, as state law requires. A number of groups, including Pasadena
City Hall, contend the number of “surplus” houses or potentially
unneeded
ones may be dramatically higher.
John DeSoto, a Caltrans tenant from El Sereno and that community’s former
honorary mayor, believes legal action is long overdue.
“At my house, I have faulty electrical connections, plumbing that doesn’t
work, drains that spill out into the carpet and mold on my walls,” he said. “You
slide the windows and they fall out. Caltrans attitude is, ‘If
you don’t like it, move!’ Bitching won’t make them fix it until
we can get them into court as slumlords, and that’s what they are.”
A new look
A number of tenants praised their rental agents as hardworking, resourceful public
servants who are often frustrated themselves by management decisions. the Weekly,
for example, found one case where a renter evicted from her Caltrans home for
allowing drug-dealing there was awarded nearly $200,000 in relocation benefits.
State upkeep of its real estate is etched into the law. The July 1999 federal
injunction won by South Pasadena halting significant freeway work requires that
Caltrans maintain their properties in “conditions of good repair.” It
also exhorts the department to keep them rented to preserve “community
standards” and deter vandalism.
The Federal Highway Administration’s “Record of Decision,” a
capstone document that spells out the $1 billion extension’s exact 4.5-mile
route and how it will be trenched to soften community damage, says the state
must “properly maintain” its homes.
Eight years ago, after a Los Angeles Times expose on Caltrans property lapses,
local elected officials and activists implored the department to tend to its
shoddiest
places or turn them over to someone who would. Since then, the state’s
progress doing that has been spotty at best, a Weekly investigation has found.
The biggest improvements appear to be some new paint jobs, locks and freshly
mowed lawns.
Plenty have been critical. Caltrans executives have been ripped in two state
audits, one that concluded they bumbled a $20-million renovation job of their
historic houses that overhauled only 39 of 92 dwellings. An agency-issued survey
of its own renters found 170 tenants responding they had maintenance issues,
and 27 who
didn’t.
Caltrans has also been tagged with health code violations in spite of the department’s
staunch immunity assertions. Pasadena code inspectors, for example, cited eight
Caltrans’ houses for problems that included leaks, vermin, inadequate water
pressure, overgrown vegetation, missing smoke detectors and exposed basement
asbestos, records show. The eight cases, five of them deemed major violations,
have since
been resolved.
Some critics, including Pasadena-based attorney Chris Sutton, believe the department
would have “hundreds” of health and building-code violations if cities
got aggressive about prosecuting them.
Just this spring the department was sued by a renter who claimed she developed
acute asthma and other ailments as a result of being exposed to “extensive
mold growth” and other toxins at her Pasadena Avenue rental. Lizz Wolf
claims in her Los Angeles Superior Court suit that she pleaded with Caltrans
to remove the growths in August 2001 but the agency responded weakly or not all.
Caltrans
officials say they don’t comment on pending litigation.
One South Pasadena tenant who previously won a judgment against the department
for wrecking her possessions with dripping hot tar during a re-roofing job has
been living for four months with improperly draining toilets and hot water and
a hungry rat on the loose.
Tired of the agency’s excuses, she finally called the county Department
of Health Services. It has issued Caltrans a notice of violation for plumbing,
cracked surfaces and rodent abatement.
“We respond to all complaints concerning residential sanitation,” said
Terrance Powell, the county’s chief environmental health specialist. “It
doesn’t matter who the landlord is.”
Douglas Failing, Caltrans’ top official in the corridor, acknowledged improvements
needed to be made when he took over the post about seven months ago. Under his
guidance, he said, maintenance has been bolstered to ensure the houses are “safe
and sanitary.”
“I think we are getting to be a better landlord,” Failing said. “There
were predecessors before me that weren’t as focused, and didn’t have
staff as focused. … That’s why we are spending as much as we can.”
The majority of the renters’ complaints, he said, do not involve habitability
issues. His staff responded to about 4,500 repair orders last year.
Exit strategy
Newly obtained records are shedding light on Caltrans’ real estate finances.
In 2001 and 2002 it took in $7.9 million in rent from its 710-extension tenants,
plowing back $4.49 million on maintenance such as plumbing, carpentry and flooring.
This year Caltrans is on track to earn a record amount of rent. The differential
between revenues and expenditures is returned to state and local government coffers.
Historically, many longtime tenants have lived with the problems, spending as
much as $10,000 of their own money on repairs, because their rents were priced
in the affordable range. Some hoped to purchase the houses at steep discounts
under state law giving them that option if their place was declared surplus or
the entire project was scotched.
But when Caltrans decided to raise those rents to fair-market levels, in some
cases increasing them 25 percent a year, howls of protest arose. Tenant activists
accused the agency of employing a ham-handed eviction strategy to “depopulate” the
area so the houses would command higher sales prices. Caltrans, they said, tried
justifying their new rents by comparing them with housing costs from upscale
neighborhoods without their chronic traffic, crime and upkeep issues.
Failing countered that the department was only doing along the corridor what
it had done throughout California: charge market rates to achieve neighborhood
parity.
For reasons he wouldn’t elaborate on, Failing said his district “fell
behind” in implementing that policy, and said even with the hike, more
than
half the houses would remain in the affordable category.
Ironically, tenants’ dreams of buying their houses — affectionately
known as “the promise” in the tenants’ lexicon — may
be
closer to pay dirt than it ever has been.
Caltrans executives have drafted a document called the “exit strategy” that
outlines abandoning the roadway for more feasible alternatives, be it the recently
proposed tunnel concept under the same route or a series of street-level traffic-softening
measures, multiple sources have told the Weekly. Agency managers are purportedly
waiting for the green light from Gov. Gray Davis and Caltrans Director Jeff Morales
to announce what would amount to a delirious liberation day for many and a betrayal
to others.
Why the change? Years of bitter wrangling, lawsuits, the prospect of having to
acquire another 500-plus homes and the uncertainty of securing a huge amount
of money for such a controversial spur in a lean, post 9-11 federal funding climate
have congealed into a potent deterrent.
“I had a conversation with Jeff Morales and he said let’s either
find
a way to move forward or drop it …” said Mark Pisano, executive director
of the Southern California Association of Governments. And “I have heard
the rumor about the exit strategy. Have I been able to substantiate it? No.” Pisano
cautioned that the 710-extension remains the number one unfinished transportation
project in the SCAG clean-air plan, and doing nothing about north-south traffic
and a resurgent smog problem is a nonstarter.
Whatever the catalyst, Pasadena officials have been maneuvering to buy some of
the Caltrans properties within city boundaries.
Just shameful
Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, City Manager Cynthia Kurtz, Planning and Development
Director Richard Bruckner and the city’s lobbyist, Ken Emanuels, met in
Sacramento in July with state housing officials and a lawyer from the advocate
group, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, documents show.
The city was testing the waters about modifying the landmark 1979 Roberti Act,
which governs the sale of state property no longer needed for highway construction
projects to low- and moderate-income tenants. By amending that law so they moved
ahead of other potential buyers, Pasadena officials hoped to purchase 41 homes
from Caltrans at their original price, relocate tenants from any occupied dwellings
in that batch, and then sell the houses at market rates. Proceeds estimated at
$12 million would have then seeded an affordable-housing trust fund.
Notified of that bid, Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-La Canada Flintridge, and tenants
contested it. Pasadena officials have since promised not to undercut the rights
of existing renters — unless they reside in large homes the city says would
saddle new owners with burdensome upkeep payments.
Besides the 41 targeted homes, there was some nervousness that Pasadena actually
coveted all 145 Caltrans homes, and there are indications that was in the city’s
plans. The city last December, for instance, packaged a glossy binder with digital
pictures and basic information for every Caltrans property within city limits.
A city real estate agent has also been lurking about.
“I think Caltrans acknowledges they are a terrible landlord,” Bogaard
said in an interview. “I’d hope something could be done to move the
houses out from their ownership. Some will choose to buy. Some of those houses
are suitable for affordable housing.” But, he said, “I’d be
hesitant to offer a 5,000-square-feet house to someone of modest means.”
The tenants were so rattled by the city’s actions it hired the law’s
author, former California Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti, to represent
them. Roberti is now in private legal practice.
“A lot have suffered through Caltrans ownership,” Roberti said. “This
problem has to be solved by the city as a whole, and not finding a group of victims
and achieving affordable housing on their backs.”
Bird-dogged by Liu, Caltrans agreed to extend a rent freeze until July but haven’t
participated in a rent task force because of disagreement over its mission. Since
then, Liu and fellow Assembly member Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, have kept
pushing on the rent issue.
In October they received an opinion from the state’s legislative counsel
that concluded the agency has the discretion but not the obligation to charge
market rent for the homes in question.
Liu, unable to extract property information from the agency, also introduced
legislation, Assembly Bill 21, to put a moratorium on the rent increases and
evictions until
2005 and establish a task force to hash out the situation.
“We wrote this bill out of frustration,” Liu said. “We ask
Caltrans for information and they stonewall us. Regardless of where this bill
goes, there
is a movement to take these properties from Caltrans’ control and let the
housing department or someone else manage them. I want to give them the benefit
of the doubt, but they haven’t shown too much ability managing their property.
It’s shameful.”
Down for the count
On an otherwise picturesque block of million-dollar homes,
the deserted structures on the eastern flank of Pasadena’s Wigmore Drive
have seen better days.
A vacuum cleaner extension hose serves as a makeshift downspout at one ranch-style
house and a palm tree grows between the steps of a splintering porch with boot-sized
holes in it. At least the front lawn has a purpose: a city garbage truck makes
U-turns on it.
Next door another empty Caltrans house shows the scorch marks under the roofline
from a 1997 fire — one of about a handful of blazes that started at 710-properties.
Out back, the overgrown yard is peppered with old shoes and cast-off piping.
On the north side of Wigmore, a 1924-circa abode designed by respected architect
Wallace Neff isn’t the showpiece it once was. The windows are boarded up.
The paint is chipped. Water is pooling on the floor. A former tenant says intruders
have trashed the place repeatedly.
Nestled up against the Neff house is another empty Caltrans house. Years after
the police staged a drug bust there, a vagrant once took up residence in a garden
shed piled high with dank clothes and rubbish. Within reach were the carcass
of
an old BMW and some chemicals. (Caltrans cleaned up the yard between the Weekly’s
visits there.)
South Pasadena, where officials say they have forced Caltrans to better manage
its homes, is hardly immune. A white Fairview Avenue house with boarded French
windows and dangling wires features a wide-open back door. A Glendon Way house
with peeling front steps has an easily accessible backyard and a pool whose bottom
stagnates with brackish water.
The state-owned homes a few miles south in El Sereno are a mélange of
contrasts. Most are densely packed Spanish-stucco homes that outwardly appear
tidy. Drive around, though, and there are blue tarps covering damaged roofs,
a soda machine propped on a lawn and the hulks of dead cars tamping down tawny
weeds.
There are also seemingly habitable properties that sit idle. A ground-floor unit
of a two-story apartment on Lowell Avenue has fresh paint, newer carpeting, yet
no renter. A tenant at the complex there said it’s been empty for years.
On nearby Maycrest Avenue, Caltrans’ eight-bungalow complex has slid from
being vacant to being brazenly vandalized in the years since the tenants left.
Gang markings adorn the sides of the houses, and someone has sliced a hole in
the chain-link fence. As with other Caltrans homes, the plywood boards nailed
over the windows haven’t repelled visitors.
One bungalow decimated by fallen stucco, a putrid toilet, reeking junk and heroin
paraphernalia was someone’s flophouse. A dazed homeless man with some of
his family was recently living in another unit.
By Caltrans’ tabulations, it owns 59 “non-rentable vacant properties” like
these, a decrease from 133 uninhabitable units in late 2000, according to a report
US District Judge Dean Pregerson requires the agency to submit every six months.
(The department was late filing the last report.)
Asked to explain the drop in vacancies, Caltrans spokeswoman Deborah Harris said
a number of historic houses and apartments have been fixed up and leased. The
agency has a marketing program to get other homes rented, as well, she said.
‘It’s not safe’
From trespassing and drug-use to gang parties and religious rituals, unoccupied
state-owned houses act as crime magnets. Some renters have grown so frustrated
about it they have written fact-chalked letters, called the police themselves,
shot videos and spoken at public hearings to get attention.
Pasadena Police responded to 296 incidents at agency houses during a 39-month
stretch ending in December of last year, records show. Many of the calls were
for false alarms or suspicious circumstances that never merited an arrest. Still,
one empty house in the 600 block of St. John Avenue drew officers 24 times in
2001 alone.
Acting Police Chief Wayne Hiltz disputed some tenants’ characterization
of the properties as a “high crime area,” but acknowledged empty
houses
invite troublemaking. “Any time you have vacant properties,” he said, “they
are potentially used for inappropriate activities, and it doesn’t matter
if it’s a Caltrans property or another. The fact there are a number in
a close proximity compounds it.”
Where the Foothill Freeway dead-ends at California Boulevard has been a particular
hotspot. Tenants have witnessed pie-eyed teenagers, prostitutes, runaways and
homeless staying in the empty houses or garages. One pony-tailed indigent who
locals call “Freeway Bob” because he panhandles near off-ramps was
blatant about his comings and goings into one of the historic houses.
Pasadena police in January 2002 apprehended a man and his newlywed bride who
had their own keys to a Caltrans duplex on the south side of California Boulevard.
Neighbors said the couple had moved in their furniture, staying there unnoticed
by authorities for months, under the belief they could attain squatter’s
rights.
When the police arrested them for trespassing, they turned up a shotgun, shotgun
shells, ammunition for a .45-caliber handgun and a knife, said police Commander
Marilyn Diaz. She said it appeared they were in legal possession of the weapons,
adding that Caltrans gave the couple a week to move out.
John Kvammen, a leader in the tenant group and a Caltrans renter for 30 years,
said one house near his dwelling on St. John had vagrants living there for two
years despite his insistence the agency oust them. Before they left, they created
waist-high trash, did hard drugs, shattered an antique mirror, among other damage.
Kvammen recalled stopping a homeless man in the late 1990s after the man had
tossed a chair through the living room plate-glass window of the property, which
has
since been rehabbed and rented.
“My son and I told him we were calling the police and the guy dropped his
pants and crapped on the sidewalk — it was an unexpected reaction,” he
said. “There are all kinds of seedy characters around here. It’s
not safe.”
Drive-thru pharmacy
Close to his rental is a vaulting, historic three-story Craftsman that has been
vacant since March 1990. For years it was known among neighbors as the “devil
house” because the nine in the street address had capsized to make it read “666.” Adding
to its legend, a band of youths a few years ago gained entry. Inside they did
drugs, lit candles and performed demonic rites, numerous
people recall.
Caltrans officials could not confirm that report. The agency has spent $608,000
repairing that four-bedroom house and plans on trying to rent it this month.
“I remember being in there and being alarmed about the nature of the graffiti
because there were satanic images,” said Sue Mossman, executive director
of the preservationist group Pasadena Heritage.
“The intruders had [also] pulled out a bathtub and thrown it down the stairs.
Our fear is that after millions of dollars have been spent in these historic
houses,
if they are vacant all that mayhem could happen again,” Mossman said.
Trespassers last fall snuck into the childhood home of famed chef Julia Child
by crawling through a small entry. California Highway Patrol officers called
to the scene never arrested anyone but believe the entrants were in the elegant
brown
manse for a while.
Caltrans officials say they have hired a private security to watch over the empty
residences. Until recently, the agency did not prosecute trespassers.
On Pasadena’s Hurlbut Street, a two-bedroom Craftsman built in 1911 and
unoccupied for years sports a tangled yard, paint-splattered hardwood floors
and a dicey history. The woman who sold it to Caltrans later rented it back from
the agency. By the late 1990s, Pasadena police knew it well. They responded four
times
for outstanding warrants, public intoxication and a domestic dispute.
In June 1998, armed with a search warrant, police launched a SWAT-style raid,
arresting the mother, one of her sons and another person for selling methamphetamines,
among other charges, Commander Diaz said. One source said residents there used
to sell narcotics out the side window like a drive-thru fast-food restaurant
until
the arrests.
Citing that incident, Caltrans evicted the woman from the property. However,
because
she’d been renting prior to 1981, she was entitled to relocation benefits
for homeowners displaced as a result of federal projects that benefit the public.
The woman, whose name the Weekly agreed not to reveal, received $195,967 — the
difference between what she originally sold her house for and what it would cost
for her to buy a replacement in the market at the time of the eviction.
A neighbor who had previously complained to Caltrans about the drug pushing there,
as well as an earlier shooting he claimed was “hush-hush,” said the
state slapped a new roof on that house before the woman left. His house, meantime,
has been bedeviled by poor water pressure, a multiple-layer roof cracking the
walls and a wood-rotted back porch his wife’s foot recently fell through.
In his years there, this tenant said he has stomped out two fires set by vagrants
at nearby Caltrans properties, chased away scores of rats and witnessed a series
of “Mickey-Moused” repairs, including one where rain-gutter downspouts
were installed upside-down so they splashed anyone sitting on his back porch
during
rains.
“The problem is that Caltrans’ management is inept,” said the
tenant, who spoke on the condition his name not be used because he feared possible
retaliation by the agency. “It seems every time you get a decent right
of
way agent, they’re promoted or moved to another department and replaced
by somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing or doesn’t
seem to care. Nothing that is important seems to get done. What can you do? The
state
is the landlord.”
A re-emerging issue is whether that landlord is sitting on property it doesn’t
need anymore to build the extension. Selling unneeded land was supposed to be
a priority. A May 9, 1995 directive from former Caltrans Director James W. Van
Loben Sels obtained by the Weekly said: “It is imperative that Caltrans
divest itself of any property not absolutely required. We should be looking at
reasons to dispose, rather than retain property.”
But how many can be disposed? Caltrans itself has conflicting data depicting
between 21 to 38 unneeded properties, including four houses on Pasadena Avenue
that were supposed to be relocated during construction that are now up for sale,
freshly released records show. A reason for the variation could be the compression
and slight shifting of the freeway footprint that the agency agreed to in the
Record of Decision. Unchanged by that, though, are three Caltrans houses north
of California Boulevard in Pasadena that appear outside the pathway. The agency
asserts those structures will be demolished for a realigned access road should
the spur go through,
but the maps don’t signal that.
State law requires that Caltrans offer properties for sale within a year of the
time they are declared surplus; of the 56 parcels they announced in 1995 weren’t
needed anymore,
35 have been sold. Assemblywoman Liu and others have grumbled agency officials
have dragged their feet selling what they must.(Next week: Caltrans’ immunity.)
Week 2: The Untouchables—Corridor of Shame
Week 3: Tunnel Visions—Corridor of Shame
Week 4: Legislature Needs to Take Control of Caltrans
Week 5: No Place Like These Homes—Corridor of Shame
• Chip Jacobs can be reached at machimbo1@earthlink.net.
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