ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Keeping Landlords Honest

Housing advocates receive thousands of complaints annually from tenants who have been unable to recover rent deposits from recalcitrant landlords. Some of these renters are the very people who can least afford to lose even a few hundred dollars, which to them may be the difference between affording new quarters and becoming homeless in pricey Orange County.

That’s why it’s important that the district attorney’s office has just sent such a strong and welcome signal of its willingness to vigorously protect the rights of aggrieved tenants.

Elerding Properties, a Garden Grove property management company, agreed last week under pressure of civil prosecution to return $600,000 in security deposits ranging from $300 to $650 that it had withheld from about 600 former tenants at 10 apartment complexes in Orange County. The total in deposits to be refunded amounts to the largest settlement ever in an Orange County consumer protection case.

The firm has denied wrongdoing, saying it settled to avoid costly litigation.

But the message from the district attorney’s office was clear: Landlords throughout Orange County face strong penalties for failure to make good on deposits.

A number of Elerding tenants had filed small claims suits against the company, and the U.S. Marine Corps had taken the extraordinary step of removing the firm’s complexes from its list of approved housing. The pursuit of consumer protection complaints is good news for hard-pressed military families, who are expected to make great sacrifices in time of war but who may live on shoestring budgets at home.

There are many in Orange County in this situation. The Orange County Fair Housing Council says that during its last fiscal year alone, it received 5,278 complaints of unrefunded security deposits totaling about $2.85 million.

That’s a lot of renters with the same complaint. And it shows the importance of this settlement in establishing an example for others. Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi was right to have pursued this matter so vigorously.