Codes for Urban Living

Like other laws, municipal codes are in place to protect us--sometimes from others, sometimes from ourselves. In large measure, they properly serve to make urban life more pleasant. A drive down many Los Angeles streets, however, will reveal no shortage of code violations: cars on lawns, sofas on sidewalks, signs for last year’s garage sale.

Cleaning up those small signatures of decay is the idea behind a pilot program backed by City Hall. Volunteers in Neighborhood Codewatch--launched last week in parts of the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles and South-Central Los Angeles--essentially seek out minor building code violations, inform property owners of the problem and help them find a solution without bringing in city inspectors.

Ideally, property owners will fix the problem on their own and get a thank-you note from the volunteers. But if property owners fail to respond positively, city inspectors can then be called in to issue citations and levy fines.

Executed properly, the program can go a long way toward helping residents improve neighborhoods by giving them the power and confidence to work with businesses or neighbors who flout the law. In San Diego, where a similar program was started two years ago, 75% of property owners alerted by the volunteer patrols remedied violations without city intervention.

Volunteers are trained in codes, work in groups and, to prevent personal vendettas, are not allowed to inspect properties within three blocks of their homes. Nor can they trespass on private property. Those safeguards are important; there is a fine line between aggressive neighborhood protection and petty oppression. As long as volunteers remember that their job is to enforce the law and not their personal tastes, Neighborhood Codewatch has the potential to do some real good.