Residential Overcrowding Puts Squeeze on O.C. Cities : Housing: Neighborhoods decline while officials search for the means to control household density.

The first to notice are usually the neighbors, who see more and more cars being parked on their streets.

Trash haulers suddenly find that a route that used to yield three garbage cans per stop now has four.

City sewer lines are more frequently clogged, and crews find themselves having to work faster to prevent effluent from bubbling out of manholes.

“You know that sewage facility in Costa Mesa at the mouth of the Santa Ana River?” Santa Ana Building Safety Manager Jim Lindgren said last week. “It’s grossly overloaded because there’s too many people using it.”

These are signs of the residential overcrowding that has long frustrated city officials, homeowners, landlords and tenants in Santa Ana--where U.S. Census figures reveal no fewer than 26 of the county’s most crowded neighborhoods. But it is a problem that is spreading to other Orange County communities--a problem with no visible long-term solution.

In the wake of a Border Patrol raid last week that brought attention to conditions in a crowded east Orange apartment complex, the issue of overcrowding was Topic A at a Friday meeting in Santa Ana of 146 building inspectors from throughout Southern California.

And two days before, the issue came up at a meeting of Santa Ana’s Wilshire Square Neighborhood Assn., where Mayor Daniel H. Young acknowledged that city officials are stumped.

“We’re getting smeared in court,” said Young, shaking his head as he discussed the city’s second attempt to win legal approval of an ordinance that would limit the number of residents per household. “We are frustrated and sick of losing in court, and it’s costing us a bunch of money.”

Young’s frustration is shared by citizens across Orange County who have watched neighborhoods slowly deteriorate as overcrowding strains the environment and infrastructure and fosters crime.

With the courts limiting Santa Ana’s power to restrict the number of people who can live in a home, cities are left with only building or health and safety codes to control crowding. And those cities that do use city codes to regulate dwellings lay themselves open to charges of racism because newly arrived Latino immigrants most frequently occupy the overcrowded building.

Santa Ana City Atty. Edward J. Cooper is scheduled back in court next week to defend the city’s latest residential overcrowding ordinance, which requires any dwelling with two occupants to have at least 150 square feet of living space, excluding bathrooms, kitchens, hallways and stairwells. Another 100 square feet of living space is required for each additional tenant.

A civil suit challenges the ordinance on grounds the city did not meet state requirements for modifying housing codes. Cooper is expected to argue, as he has in previous hearings, that state law cited by the plaintiffs applies only to building codes, not occupancy rates.

Because of previous setbacks, Young and other City Council members are pessimistic about their chances in court and are already considering their options. One plan envisions a political coalition of cities to lobby for changes in state law so that local governments can enact and enforce overcrowding ordinances.

Young said the city would seek statewide legislative support by going to cities such as San Diego, where the overcrowding problem is centered near college campuses.

San Diego Deputy Planning Director Joe Flynn said that in his city, groups of students have moved into three-bedroom homes, causing parking and traffic congestion and disruption of neighborhoods.

“If you plug that into units for 2.8 families, or whatever family size you are using, and run that up to 12 adults, it just really blows your planning out of the water,” Flynn said.

Costa Mesa Mayor Mary Hornbuckle and Anaheim City Atty. Jack L. White are among Orange County officials who said they would support stronger state laws on residential overcrowding.

Although the problem has not reached a crisis point in Costa Mesa, Hornbuckle said preventive measures are being considered, such as tightening up building and planning codes. An early draft of the revisions was thrown out, however, because it was similar to Santa Ana’s ordinance being challenged in court, she said.

Also because of the Santa Ana case, Anaheim has not attempted to draft its own overcrowding ordinance and instead is relying on existing code laws, White said.

“I think it’s very frustrating and my counterparts in other cities feel the same type of frustration,” White said. “You try to find a way to deal with the problem, and at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a way to deal with it, and it’s one that’s not going away. It’s becoming more prevalent.”

The Dana Point City Council has given preliminary approval to its own overcrowding measure, drafted with the help of the Apartment Assn. of Orange County, and also asked the group to provide financial support if the ordinance is taken to court. In an effort to ward off a lawsuit, officials are conducting a public education campaign before the ordinance is enacted.

While pockets of overcrowded apartments or single-family homes can be found throughout the county, Santa Ana is the city facing the greatest challenge.

According to the 1990 Census, an average of four people live in each Santa Ana household, compared to the countywide average of 2.87. But in some areas of the city, where two or three families or groups of unrelated adults have crammed into apartments in order to afford the rent, reports of a dozen residents in a two-bedroom apartment are not uncommon.

One census tract in the center of the city is so densely populated that an average of seven persons live in each dwelling. Of the 33,417 households throughout the county that have seven or more residents, more than one third are located in Santa Ana, according to Census figures.

To discourage overcrowding, city inspectors have cited property owners whenever they find code violations such as leaky plumbing, alterations to the electrical systems or original building plans, deteriorated floors and ceilings or unsanitary conditions related to backed-up toilets.

“We are playing the game, but we can’t take them to court,” he said. “Most of the time we are reasonably successful (with the notices), but when it comes time to shove, we can’t because we don’t have the law to back us up.”

The owner of Orange Park Villas--where Border Patrol agents arrested several residents last week--has felt the sting of building inspectors. John Micuda was convicted earlier this year of health and safety violations and given the choice of serving a six-month jail sentence and paying a fine or fixing the damaged carport that was the source of the problem.

Micuda spent $45,000 on the required repairs and is now in the process of selling the 260-unit complex for $18 million. He will walk away from monthly maintenance costs of $10,000 to $15,000, and the frustration of not being able to control residential overcrowding, Micuda said.

Evicting tenants is not a viable solution, Micuda said, because the court process for each case can take as long as four months and cost $1,000 in legal fees plus a loss in rental income for that period. And then, he said in resignation, he may not win the case.

“The courts make it so difficult to get rid of undesirable persons, so you are stymied,” he said. “Then they (tenants) start rent strikes and all that kind of crap.”

The Apartment Assn. has found through its own research that problems such as overcrowding, gangs and increasing crime are best handled when the owners, residents, citizens and city officials work together, spokesman Richard J. Lambros said.

For a model, Lambros pointed to a community-based effort in Tustin, near the Santa Ana border, where a management firm, the Schroeder Co., organized 62 apartment managers in the area to combat drug and gang problems. Residents have recently formed their own associations.

Program founder Maryanne Krueckeberg said that 11 months ago, many of the residents in one of her company’s complexes were Marines, and about half of the tenants were minorities. But the Persian Gulf crisis created an exodus; now Latinos make up two-thirds of the residential population, she added.

Although overcrowding has not been an issue, Krueckeberg said she became concerned when drugs and gangs began entering the complexes in the area.

With the support of Tustin police, bilingual “neighborhood watch” meetings were organized and residents--many unfamiliar with U.S. laws--learned that they could report crimes without fear of retaliation, Krueckeberg said.

“I was surprised to learn that the concerns the residents had were ones I had,” she said. “They were also afraid to go out in front of their buildings because gangs were loitering there.”

If officials, owners and residents learn to communicate, Krueckeberg said, culture clashes can be avoided. The Schroeder Co., she added, is now providing weekly English lessons at the apartments, and managers also will be learning to speak Spanish.

“We cannot ignore the fact that we don’t all speak the same language,” she said.

Maureen Lyons of the Times computer analysis department and Times staff writer Danny Sullivan contributed to this report.

A Sign of Overcrowding

Santa Ana is Orange County’s most crowded city, judging from the number of households with seven or more occupants.

Units with % of county’s Rank City 7 or more units in city 1 Santa Ana 12,264 37.5% 2 Anaheim 4,341 13.3% 3 Garden Grove 2,763 8.5% 4 Westminster 1,458 4.5% 5 Fullerton 1,300 4.0% 6 Orange 1,277 3.9% 7 Huntington Beach 1,219 3.7% 8 Costa Mesa 1,020 3.1% 9 Buena Park 826 2.5% 10 La Habra 671 2.1% 11 Stanton 661 2.0% 12 Placentia 625 1.9% 13 Fountain Valley 481 1.5% 14 Tustin 464 1.4% 15 El Toro 372 1.1% 16 San Juan 358 1.1% 17 Irvine 331 1.0% 18 Cypress 328 1.0% 19 Mission Viejo 290 0.9% 20 Yorba Linda 273 0.8% 21 Brea 220 0.7% 22 Dana Point 201 0.6% 23 San Clemente 196 0.6% 24 Laguna Hills 171 0.5% 25 Laguna Niguel 143 0.4% 26 La Palma 112 0.3% 27 Newport Beach 105 0.3% 28 Los Alamitos 66 0.2% 29 Laguna Beach 54 0.2% 30 Villa Park 48 0.1% 31 Seal Beach 32 0.1%

NOTE: Totals do not include unincorporated areas.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Compiled by: Maureen Lyons / Los Angeles Times