Tenants Ordered to Vacate Bel Air Apartment Building
by Don Farkas
Public Safety Committee
Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council

June 11, 2003

Bel Air, California - Tenants of a multi-unit apartment building located at 2301 Roscomare Road in the Los Angeles community of Bel Air, were surprised on the afternoon of Friday, June 6, 2003, to find their entire apartment building being cordoned off and notices to vacate the premises being issued. Occupancy of the entire building, called the "Bel Air Summit" apartments, was declared unsafe and an immediate threat to health and safety. Tenants of the approximately 30 unit building were told of the order by representatives of the City of Los Angeles Housing Department and then given a short amount of time to go back to their apartments to retrieve any essential belongings immediately needed for relocating. They were reportedly told that arrangements for removing the rest of their belongings would be scheduled at a later time to be agreed. None of the tenants were allowed to remain in the apartments over night.

The decision by authorities to order the apartment building to be vacated was apparently made within a very short time frame. At approximately 2:30 PM, on June 5, 2003, a supervisor of the City of Los Angeles Housing Department, Michael Gruett, received a telephone call from David Chang, an employee of the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, Training and Emergency Management Division, alerting him about an urgent structural problem currently existing at the location of the Bel Air Summit apartment building. Chang told him that the Department of Building and Safety had received a report from a private structural engineer hired by the building's owner, regarding the structural problem. In response, Gruett immediately dispatched a Housing Department inspector, Calvin Oglesby, to inspect the building. Oglesby said he arrived at the Bel Air Summit apartment building around 3:30 PM on June 5, and met David Chang and the private structural engineer who were already there.

After personally inspecting the building and observing the same conditions that Chang had reported, Oglesby called his supervisor, Michael Gruett, and told him that he concurred with Chang and the private structural engineer, that the building's condition made it an immediate and urgent hazard. He could see that some of the building's columns located at the ground level car port area, which support several of the apartment units located above, were leaning five to six inches out of plumb. Further inspection revealed there had been apparent settlement of a significant portion of the Bel Air Summit apartment building's footing system, which serves as the structural foundation supporting the building. The settlement had caused the entire structure to have a noticeable downward tilt towards the direction of the south facing, ground level, carport area.

After hearing Oglesby's report, Gruett then came out to the location to look at the condition of the building, himself. "You could already see the building had begun to rotate", he said, referring to structural twisting caused by a pivoting effect that may occur when there are unequal degrees of stability or instability affecting different parts of a foundation of a building. The decision to declare the building unfit for occupancy was made the very same day.

The Los Angeles City Housing Department, the agency which made the decision to order the building vacated, took over enforcement authority for laws and regulations relating to multi-family dwellings around 1999. Prior to that time, enforcement was the responsibility of the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. Under the new division of authority, the Housing Department is the lead agency responsible for inspecting multi-family dwellings, such as the Bel Air Summit apartment building, for compliance with health and safety requirements. The Department of Building and Safety still retains responsibility for issuing building permits and for inspections during construction to bring structures into compliance with Building Code requirements.

As news of the order to vacate spread in the community in the afternoon on June 6, the mostly residential neighborhood near the apartment building quickly attracted a number of spectators and several news media vans with a small forest of radio transmission masts extended. Reporters could be seen milling around in front of the building with microphones looking for Bel Air Summit apartment tenants and City officials they could interview, or were otherwise seen sitting inside their news vans busily teletyping their stories, presumably trying to make their deadlines. A Los Angeles Police Department patrol car, and three Bel Air Patrol private security company cars with officers on hand were also seen parked nearby, as well as two official L.A. City vehicles and at least two field deputies from Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss' (5th District) office. Councilmember Weiss himself was reported by News Radio Stations KFWB and KNX to have been conducting meetings with many of the displaced tenants that same afternoon.

The apartment building, called the "Bel Air Summit", was later entirely surrounded with chain link fencing and several "No Trespassing" signs spaced at regular intervals. Additionally, several large diameter, steel crossbeams were later installed diagonally to serve as apparent strengthening supports for the apartment units built above the covered car port parking stalls. These crossbeams were connected, on one end, to the base of the walls of the car port near their slab foundations and, at the other end, to the upper portions of several concrete covered, partially exposed metal support pillars. The newly added diagonal crossbeams effectively blocked all but a few of the covered automobile parking spaces in the carport located at the ground level of the building. At the main entrance of the apartment building, taped to a picture window next to a large glass door, an official City notice, dated June 5, 2003, said with large, red colored, block letters, "UNSAFE", "Do not enter by order of the Housing Department, City of Los Angeles. It is a misdemeanor to enter or occupy this building."

Some of the displaced tenants of the Bel Air Summit apartments reportedly complained to Councilmember Weiss, as well as apparently to several assembled members of the news media, their concerns that the apartment owners themselves had somehow arranged to have the City declare the apartment building an immediate threat to health and safety. They feared this was done so that the owners would benefit by having the City issue the order for tenants to immediately vacate, rather than just ordering the owners to abate whatever substandard conditions had been found to exist.

A provision of a new California law (AB 472), which amends Health and Safety Code Section 17980.6, and adds Health and Safety Code Chapter 6.1 (commencing with Section 50651) and Code of Civil Procedure Section 568.2 and 568.3, that came into effect on January 1, 2002, requires property owners to pay relocation benefits to their tenants who become displaced as a result of an order to vacate which is issued as a result of a housing condition violation determined to pose an immediate threat to health and safety and which is due to the failure of the property owners to abate substandard building conditions. The relocation benefits that are to be paid under this new law amount to two months of the fair market rent and also include an amount sufficient to pay for utility service deposits. Under the law, however, property owners will not be liable for paying the relocation benefits if the structure became unsafe or hazardous as a result of fire, flood, earthquake, or other event beyond the control of the owner. The reasons why a building became unsafe or hazardous may therefore affect the property owner's obligation to pay relocation benefits under State law. Other legal grounds for displaced tenants to qualify to receive relocation benefits from building owners in some circumstances may also exist under ordinances enacted by the City of Los Angeles.

According to Michael Gruett of the Housing Department, the Bel Air Summit apartment owners are currently denying that they have any responsibility under law to pay any relocation assistance benefits to their displaced tenants. However, Gruett said the City has various options for testing the interpretation of, and enforcing compliance with, tenant relocation assistance laws. For one thing, he said the City may elect to "advance" a payment of relocation benefits directly to the displaced tenants as an emergency measure, and then undertake legal action against the building owners in order to seek to recover the costs of providing those benefits. Inspector Calvin Oglesby, of the Housing Department, stated his agency is, in fact, currently processing applications from the displaced tenants for possibly providing such emergency assistance. In addition, he said, the City is attempting to contact all of the displaced tenants to let them know that a tenant relocation benefit service is available through the Los Angeles Family Housing Referral Service that might also be able to help provide assistance to them in finding new places to live.

A former resident of the Bel Air Summit apartments, as well as some other nearby community members, stated their impressions that the building did not seem to have undergone the same degree of extensive seismic repairs and retrofitting as had been seen for some other nearby apartment and condominium buildings shortly after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. They speculated that the owners of the Bel Air Summit apartments may not have completed the proper earthquake related repairs or done other required seismic safety retrofitting which may be the reason why the building is having structural problems. That possible explanation did not seem to be supported by the Housing Department's explanation that the dangerous condition had apparently occurred because the footings of the building's foundation had settled.

There was no word, however, explaining any of the possible underlying reasons why the building's foundation would suddenly undergo settling after so many years. Although the exact age of the building could not be obtained by this writer at the time of writing this article, nearby residents state that the Bel Air Summit apartment building was constructed at least a few decades ago. Employees of the City of Los Angeles Housing Department who were contacted for this article refused to speculate on what had caused the foundational settling to occur, stating only that it was a matter to be investigated and that a number of possible factors could have been involved. They did indicate, however, that although the Bel Air Summit apartment building is located along a ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking Hoag Canyon which slopes down immediately West of the building, the observed Southward leaning tilt of the building caused by the foundation settling strongly suggested that there was no land slide activity towards the canyon and that hillside instability was currently not considered a factor.

Some commentators about construction, earthquake, and geologic risk mitigation have noted that the degree of cooperation by a property owner in achieving Building Code compliance may sometimes tend to hinge on the owner's perceptions of the economics of making such repairs. Such economic considerations may include the amount of initial construction costs as well as the amount the building owners can expect to recover through subsequent rent increases or upon resale. In this case, the amount of possible subsequent rent increases that could be charged to the tenants was somewhat constrained by the Los Angeles City rent control ordinance which restricts the maximum amount of rent increase that may be imposed on existing tenants per year. Such restrictions on increasing rent apparently do not apply, however, if a building's tenants are displaced from their rental units by a City issued order to vacate.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Farkas is the current Chairman of the Public Safety Committee for the Bel Air - Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council. He's a former assistant co-chair of WLA C-PAB, former chair of the WLA C-PAB Crisis Response Committee, and a former RVA Disaster Preparedness Coordinator. A regular contributor to LACP, he welcomes your inquiries.

Feel free to contact Don by email at donfarkas@belairmail.com or by phone - (310) 472-4822.