‘Haven for Scum’ : Buyers Walk Out; Condos Turn to Slum : CONDOS: Drug Deals, Gunfire

Just three years ago, the building in the working-class Sepulveda neighborhood housed 22 new condominiums that contrasted sharply with many of the surrounding structures that had fallen into varying degrees of disrepair.

The one-and two-bedroom condos, valued at $98,000 to $141,000, sold quickly, with lenders from at least three financial institutions providing loans.

But today the vandalized building stands empty, except for illegal squatters and drug dealers who conduct their transactions within the littered hallways and stench-filled rooms.

The building, at 9038 Orion Ave., has become “an uncontrollable, safe haven for street scum,” said Detective Richard Jamieson of the Los Angeles Police Department.

In the last three months, police said, 37 felony arrests have been made in the building. In just two days last month, officers confiscated four rifles and three handguns, a cache of ammunition, a crossbow and four Molotov cocktails. Police arrested three men they said were packaging rock cocaine.

Poster Shows Where to Shoot

On another occasion, police found a poster depicting a man and describing where to aim to kill. The poster was on a bullet-riddled wall in one of the condos. One of the second-floor balconies had been fortified with stolen refrigerators, apparently in preparation for a gun battle with rival drug dealers.

The building’s devastating slide from middle-class condos to what Sgt. Tim Day calls “a battleground for control of street sales of narcotics” has frustrated neighbors and has caused headaches for the lending institutions stuck with the defaulted mortgages.

How the degeneration began is unclear. Many of those involved in the original transactions refused to be interviewed. Generally, representatives of the lending institutions blame the fact that the project was built in a neighborhood that already was the scene of drug deals and gang-related crimes. They said the buyers became frustrated with conditions and simply walked away from their investments, escalating the slide.

“It was a very nice project at first, but the whole area revolved around drugs,” said Terry Metrovich, President of California Heritage Bank, which made loans to four buyers, according to Los Angeles County property records. “After a while, nobody wanted to live there, so they just moved out and stopped paying us. That sort of thing happens every now and then. . . . People default and we have to go about selling it again.”

Foreclosures in 1983

Attorneys for Western Federal Savings & Loan Assn., which, according to county records, holds title to 12 of the units, said the company began foreclosing on buyers who defaulted in 1983. Attorney Annette Peterfy said the units on which her firm held mortgages were occupied for several months before the owners “became deadbeats” and the building became “an absolute disaster.”

The slide allegedly was hastened by a rent scam late last year. Unknown to the lending institutions, a man posed as landlord, renting the units to unwitting tenants who were forced to move out when the hoax was discovered, police said.

In January, police arrested Henry Richard Aguilar on suspicion of grand theft. He awaits trial on several charges in connection with the fraud, police said.

Once the tenants left, a nearby resident said, “that’s when the problems really began to escalate.”

Debbie King, 34, known as “Mother” along Orion Avenue because of her efforts to rid the street of drug dealers and other criminals, said:

“When the respectable people moved out, the garbage moved right in. It’s like a hiding place for them. If you want to escape the law, you go to 9038. It’s become a running joke and not a very funny one. Half the time I’m scared to death. Anything and everything happens over there.”

Gunshots are routinely heard coming from the building, street robberies in front of it are frequent and the sale of drugs from its front steps is constant, police and neighbors say.

Last December, a dispute in one of the condominiums led to the slaying of a man living in the building, police said. Earlier this year, a man attempting to purchase PCP in front of the building was shot and crippled from the waist down, they said. Last weekend, another man trying to buy drugs was shot in the cheek, Jamieson said.

‘Building Is Scandalous’

“Last weekend, I witnessed three robberies right out front,” said Richard Perez, an Orion Avenue resident. “The whole building is scandalous. I just wish they would tear the place down.”

The lending institutions are conferring with each other in hope of reaching a solution short of tearing the place down, said Joan Brogan, vice president of Guaranty National Mortgage Corp. in Canoga Park, which holds title to three of the abandoned condos.

“From what I’ve been told, all of us have had meetings with the goal of getting the place cleaned up and possibly renting it, but there hasn’t been much success yet,” Brogan said.

Ed Lynch, another attorney for Western Federal, said the firm tried hiring security guards to patrol the building for a few weeks earlier this year.

But LAPD Officer Richard Powers, a 17-year veteran assigned to patrol the neighborhood, said the guards stopped patrolling because there were too many shootings.

Lynch said a building-management firm occasionally visits the condos to board up windows and take other measures aimed at keeping the squatters out. “But as soon as something goes up, those people just tear it right down.”

“They threaten you. They slash your tires. We have no control over those people,” Lynch said of the drug dealers who illegally live at the building.

Meanwhile, King, who said she leads “what is left” of the Neighborhood Watch group, is considering calling the Guardian Angels in a last-ditch attempt to cut down on crime caused by the people who “homestead” in the building.

“I give the police credit. They’ve been stepping on the building pretty hard,” King said. “But every time they arrest someone, they get out on bail and just come right back like homing pigeons to 9038. . . . It’s really a tragedy. It was such a beautiful building.”