Closing of Faded Residential Motels Draws Cheers and Jeers : Housing: San Bernardino officials say inns on Route 66 were a breeding ground for crime. The lodges’ owners say action was unfair, and low-income tenants must find new homes.

SAN BERNARDINO —  . . . Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino. Won’t you get hip to this timely tip When you make that California trip Get your kicks on Route 66. --”Route 66” by Bobby Troup

Three decades ago, weary travelers passing through town were warmly greeted by the neon lights of motels with such evocative names as the Desert Inn, the Sahara and the Golden Eagle.

But with the advent of interstate highways and the deepening cycle of inner-city poverty, the clientele of downtown motels changed markedly.

In recent years, city officials say, vacationing families on their way to Big Bear or Las Vegas have given way to welfare families with few dreams and no destination. Drug dealers have taken the place of traveling salesmen. And prostitutes have replaced Midwesterners bound for Hollywood, giving new meaning to the lyrics of Bobby Troup’s 1946 pop classic.

Tired of the glaring signs of despair and decadence in a redevelopment area already wracked by urban blight, the city government has launched a series of sweeps against downtown motels catering to long-term tenants. Citing building and health-code violations, the city has closed 11 lodges in the past year, most of them just off the path of the old roadway that was long known as “America’s Main Street.”

The crackdown has brought cheers from local business owners hoping it marks a new beginning for their neighborhood. But it also has raised troubling questions about how to provide adequate housing for ex-cons, minimum-wage workers, former patients at mental hospitals and senior citizens--all people with one thing in common: thin wallets.

“It’s a tough issue,” says City Councilwoman Valerie Pope-Ludlam. “Closing the motels just puts more people on the streets. There’s already a housing shortage and the cost of housing is too high.”

With tall chain-link fencing surrounding a series of brightly colored two-story stucco structures around 5th Street--including the Budget, Golden Eagle and Super 7--the City Council is now considering whether to permanently revoke the operating permits of many of the closed-down lodges. A decision is expected later this summer.

The city’s actions have provoked a battery of lawsuits from motel owners who say they have been unfairly squeezed out of business.

“I know a lot of motels don’t function anymore as tourist-type places,” says Frank A. Weiser, a Los Angeles attorney representing several of the owners. “But our position is that we have a right by law to bring our properties up to code, and if they are going to take away the permits for us to run motels, then the city should give us fair compensation.”

Weiser has filed inverse condemnation suits on behalf of three motel owners, charging that the city has made it impossible for them to use their property or sell it at fair market value.

And in the case of one of the few motels that has been allowed to reopen after repairs were made, Weiser is seeking to reverse a court stipulation stating that rooms cannot be rented to local residents.

Downtown motel owners--mainly immigrants from India and Taiwan--say the city is plotting to take over the land cheaply for redevelopment. They also accuse the city of discrimination.

“It’s just harassment . . . against foreigners,” says Amrut Patel, a 20-year resident of the United States who owns the Super 7 Motel, which has been closed by the city. “We had signs posted that said we didn’t allow prostitution. . . . And sometimes when we called police for help, they didn’t show up or they were not cooperative.”

Such allegations are roundly disputed by City Atty. James F. Penman, who launched the crackdown.

“We have an overabundance of empty land downtown and we don’t need any more,” Penman says. “Route 66 went through San Bernardino, and for years it was the main thoroughfare east. When the freeway was built, there were dozens and dozens of motels that no longer had clientele, so they began to change hands. The people who ran clean, respectable motels ended up selling them to people who basically were here to make a quick buck.

“They put very little money in maintenance and they rented rooms to people with families far too large. You had people living in squalor.”

Penman says that after years of problems, the city has merely closed the worst offenders while offering to relocate the handful of motel residents who sought assistance.

“At least half the people had been in the San Bernardino area for less than six months and (went back) where they came from,” he says. “And many wanted nothing to do with us. . . . Many were involved in criminal activity.”

Citing police statistics showing that felony crime reports have plunged 12.2% downtown, Penman, who has also spearheaded efforts to close substandard apartment complexes, says the neighborhood is now safer.

Police Lt. William Smith agrees that the decrease in crime reports is significant, but he adds that the neighborhood’s problems are far from solved.

“It was a mini-Beirut for quite a while and now it’s improving. But it’s still an area that needs a lot of work because the whole social structure has broken down,” says Smith, who heads the department’s research unit.

On the other hand, Ed Bohn, a Salvation Army volunteer, says the police statistics do not jibe with reality.

Bohn, a five-year Budget Motel resident, said he has moved to another motel after the Budget was shut down in September. “The rooms at the Budget were good,” says Bohn, 69, who paid the seniors’ rate of $350 a month. “Now, I can seldom sleep all night the way people go in and out. A couple of women will rent a room and there will be constant traffic all night.”

Nick Nickdouplaus, pointing to his dilapidated bathroom, says the apartment complex he now lives in at the outskirts of town is in far worse shape than his former home in a downtown motel.

But other former motel dwellers are happier with their new surroundings.

“I liked the Budget Motel pretty good, but I like this better,” said Myrtle McAlpine, 86, who now lives in the same down-in-the-tooth apartment complex as Nickdouplaus. “It just wasn’t in a good location.”

Years ago, McAlpine, who uses a walker to get around, had lived at the motel with her husband, Donald Ray, a trucker. After his death, she moved back in and stayed for seven years.

“I didn’t intend to live there too long,” she said. “But it kind of seemed a little bit like home after a while. I liked the thought of my husband having been there. It kind of helped me get by.”