Razing of Shacks Will Evict 100 in Escondido : City Officials Look at Alternatives for Helping Poor Tenants to Relocate

Escondido’s crackdown on substandard housing has left the city with a knotty problem: Where to house the 100 or so poor and elderly tenants who now live in the shacks.

The crackdown, a “pro-active” code-enforcement effort that started about two weeks ago, has led to condemnation of five ramshackle sheds and lean-tos on East 2nd Avenue, and an old store and several outbuildings at 5th Avenue and Maple Street, which housed 67 people.

Dan McFarland, city building department director, said the city can draw on about $2 million in redevelopment funds to aid in relocating the 15 families now renting the ramshackle buildings. A $4,000 allotment has been approved by the council to aid the 2nd Avenue group--four Latino families and an elderly man--and another $8,000 will be sought for the Maple Street group.

Manpower Increase

McFarland said that, until recently, city code enforcement officers only responded to complaints of neighbors or police in investigating substandard housing. But a council-directed increase in enforcement officers allowed the city to do a “windshield survey” of the city’s aging central core that spotted about 75 deteriorated structures.

The first of the city-initiated inspections on 2nd Avenue led to condemnation of all five structures on the lot owned by the adjacent Graybill Medical Group clinic. A spokesman for the property owners said the land was purchased about 2 1/2 years ago as a site for a clinic building, and plans are on the boards to tear down the existing structures.

Pat Getzel, city housing and human services manager, said the task of finding alternate housing for the 2nd Avenue tenants has already begun.

One family, given only 24 hours to vacate the old barn in which they were living because of “life-threatening” electrical wiring violations, has refused any aid, saying they will not accept welfare and will remain in the unsafe dwelling, she said.

“It’s really sad,” Getzel said. “The others were all given help in signing up for (subsidized) housing with the county Housing Authority, but Mr. (Rojelio) Jimenez refused, saying he would never let his family be on welfare.”

Getzel said that, although she speaks little Spanish, she tried to convince Jimenez to change his mind because of the children, but was unsuccessful.

The elderly 2nd Avenue tenant, Orville Deal, is being helped by the North County Seniors in Action, but his circumstances pose a problem, Getzel said. Because Deal is a swap-meet addict, Getzel said, he must have a place large enough to house his collection of bargains.

Getzel said she is still “sorting out the problem” at the Maple Street site with the help of an interpreter and will ask the City Council to allocate $800 to each family that has been served an eviction notice.

Interior inspections of the buildings, and of buildings at a third site on East Pennsylvania Avenue, turned up myriad building code violations, including unsafe wiring, holes in the roofs and walls, cockroach infestations, rats, lack of indoor plumbing, malfunctioning toilets and crowding. Thirteen members of one family are living in one run-down unit, according to reports filed by Jon Schmidt, a code-enforcement officer.

The East Pennsylvania Avenue residences were not condemned, Schmidt said, and the owner of the property is working with the city to bring the buildings up to standard.

McFarland said most of the substandard housing in the city’s central core, where the code enforcement action is now concentrated, is on property that is not zoned for residential use. Property owners are collecting rents--some of which are exorbitant--until a development opportunity comes along, he said, “and the City Council feels that they, the owners, should be made to pay the costs of relocating the tenants.”

City Atty. David Chapman said existing redevelopment law limits what the city can charge property owners. The city can turn to a levy only if property owners refuse to tear down their substandard structures, which would force the city to do the job.

The council asked Chapman to determine whether legislation is needed to force the property owners to pay tenant relocation costs.

A council subcommittee, composed of Councilman Jerry Harmon and Mayor Doris Thurston, is looking into the long-range possibility of using funds to aid displaced tenants in renting or buying homes elsewhere in the city.

Thurston said recently that the city has “any number of options” to explore but warned that the $2 million in redevelopment funds allocated to low-income housing needs “could be used up very quickly” if the city merely used it to pay the rents of displaced tenants.

She said the city is “looking at building ourselves” but that “my philosophy is not to build ghettos” as cities in the East have done.

Getzel said her boss, Jerry Van Leeuwen, assistant community services director, proposed during a brainstorming session that the city buy up houses that are in the path of street widenings, park construction and other public improvement and use the houses as transitional residences until the evicted tenants of substandard housing can find permanent homes.

These and other proposals “to help the innocent victims of this enforcement program” will be presented to the City Council on July 13, Getzel said.