Mayor Bob Gonzales: Criminal behavior detailed at Housing Element hearing

March 28, 2008
Santa Paula News

After numerous speakers testified about their overcrowded living conditions at the March 19 Housing Element Update meeting, an elected official said that what was being described is criminal behavior that must not be allowed to continue.

By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesAfter numerous speakers testified about their overcrowded living conditions at the March 19 Housing Element Update meeting, an elected official said that what was being described is criminal behavior that must not be allowed to continue.In urging more low-income housing, speakers - utilizing a translator -described their own living conditions, including physically and emotionally abusive behavior towards their children, living in squalor, homes invested with mice and insects, and multiple families living in a single home. One speaker said that although she now lives in subsidized housing, while accompanying her son to sell school fundraising candy door-to-door they asked if he could use the restroom at one house... inside her son found seven or eight men lined up waiting to use the bathroom.Another speaker testified that it is the fear of being evicted that has led him to keep quiet when others that they share overcrowded housing with verbally and physically abuse his children. Others testified to their children witnessing substance abuse by other tenants.At the end of the hearing Mayor Bob Gonzales, the city’s former police chief, said the testimony troubled him. “The number of people that talked about quality of life issues” are actually describing “crimes being committed right under our nose,” said Gonzales. “If we don’t do something about that, we are as guilty” as the landlords “extorting” tenants by providing such inferior living conditions. “We can’t allow that,” or allow people to live in such substandard conditions.
Gonzales noted that in the future he would address strengthening the city’s code enforcement program. “It goes along with density, people taking pride in their property,” which is often linked to owner occupied households, Gonzales said in an interview Tuesday.As a police officer, “Many times when we would make referrals to Building and Safety it was rentals, a lot of people in them,” a situation ignored or even encouraged by the landlord. Gonzales said that those who testified during the hearing “are saying give us some of that type of housing,” much of it subsidized rental or rental versus homeowner.“That’s a concern for me for quality of life, some of these people were talking about crimes occurring because so many are living in that household.” The present and former Councils have “made quality of life issues a goal, and I can’t see how we can look the other way... one, because it is a goal, and two, because we have maybe 20 people” testifying at the March 19 hearing about the “terrible conditions they live in. There’s a cause and effect there... are we going to have more people being victims of crime? How do we fix it?”If an answer is more code enforcement, Gonzales said that funding options must be examined as well as seeing “what is we’re doing and not doing,” and crafting a plan to benefit the city overall, as “it’s not just the people in the homes that are the victims, but the surrounding neighborhood, too.” It’s up to the city to minimize the risks to the neighborhood and the community: “Some landlords are inviting a problem, and if the city does not do something about it we’re at fault. It’s not appropriate” not to correct a recognized problem.A rental inspection program could also be an option, but, either way, Gonzales said, “We cannot allow” the situation to continue, as it “continues to build slums... and the city and I don’t want to do that.”



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