Slum Citations Mount in 4 Cities Against Landlords : Tenants Say Owners Refuse to Repair Shoddy Living Conditions

When the Whittier Narrows earthquake hit, Frank Cortez watched helplessly as the kitchen sink and counter broke away from the wall and sank several inches into the rotting floor of the Bell Gardens house where he lives.

The temblor on Oct. 1, 1987, also opened a foot-wide hole in an outside wall, allowing slugs and cockroaches to gather among the water-soaked timbers and rusting pipes.

Cortez said he and his wife have been forced to live with the decrepit conditions ever since because of a stalemate with their landlords, Stanford G. and Cleo M. Goulding.

“(Goulding) told me that he would raise the rent” of the small one-bedroom house on Garfield Boulevard, which now leases for $525 a month, “if I wanted him to fix it,” Cortez told two Bell Gardens building inspectors, who on Tuesday morning were investigating complaints of slum-like conditions.

“I kept trying to talk to him, but it got ridiculous,” Cortez continued. “I’m just going to do it myself,” he said, pointing to a new sink he bought recently and was planning to install over the weekend. “They haven’t fixed nothing.”

The Gouldings have been cited more than two dozen times since 1983 by city officials in Bell, Bell Gardens, Paramount and Downey for allowing rental property to fall into shoddy condition.

The Huntington Harbor couple also own rental property in Lakewood, Huntington Beach and Palm Springs, according to county records, but have not been the subject of complaints in those cities.

Coincidentally, they also are the owners of a converted garage in Bell where three young children died in a fire earlier this month.

Los Angeles County Fire Inspector William Franklin said that an investigation into the cause of the April 9 blaze was continuing. He initially ruled that the fire had been caused by overheated television and video cassette recorder power cables.

Fire investigators say the fire was not caused by poor property maintenance. But several anonymous calls to local building departments after the fire prompted city officials in Bell, Bell Gardens and Paramount to look into charges of poor conditions at other property owned by the Gouldings.

Officials in those cities and in Downey say that the Gouldings have allowed much of the rental property they own to become unsafe.

“I’m surprised nothing has happened here,” said Bell Gardens inspector Carlos Levarios, who scribbled notes and took photographs of the house occupied by Cortez.

The Gouldings are under investigation for renting six substandard properties in Bell Gardens and six substandard properties in Paramount, according to city building inspectors in those cities.

And they are the defendants in two small claims suits brought by former tenants who want to recoup a portion of money they spent trying to make necessary repairs to plumbing and electrical systems.

“These landlords obviously don’t care,” said Levarios as he recorded more than two dozen building code violations, which included loose and dangling electrical wiring, illegal plumbing, stagnant water and rotting eaves.

After the inspection, Levarios requested county health officials to make their own inspection of the property, and said he would instruct City Prosecutor Cary Reisman to file criminal misdemeanor charges against the Gouldings for a variety of alleged health and safety code violations that he said appeared to have remained uncorrected for years.

Levarios said the living conditions at the three rental units on Garfield Avenue and three others on Florence Place are among the worst he has ever seen.

Won’t Return Calls

Cleo Goulding, when reached last week, declined to answer any questions during a short telephone interview. The couple have since failed to respond to numerous telephone messages.

Cortez’s story is nearly identical to those of a number of former and current tenants of the Gouldings.

In interviews this week, eight former and current tenants said they rented substandard houses and duplexes from the Gouldings after they were promised that the deficiencies would be corrected immediately. Many of them said they viewed the rental property at night or when others were moving out and did not realize the extent of the problems. Several said they met Cleo Goulding in the parking lot of a Seal Beach bank or in the lobby of a Long Beach hotel to sign papers and pay deposits.

When they moved in, they said, the Gouldings refused to fix the problems.

“I was told that I had to be responsible for my own plumbing,” said Andrea McKeehan, 18, who moved into the small duplex on 5th Street in Downey two months ago. In fact, she even signed a rental agreement saying she would take care of the plumbing. “I didn’t know that it was this bad, though,” McKeehan said.

In her bathroom, metal pipes under the sink had been replaced with a flimsy plastic flexible hose and duct tape.

She said she was told recently that she would have to pay for fixing a leak that has damaged the bathroom wall.

“I just don’t know what goes on in these people’s minds,” McKeehan said. “We told (Cleo Goulding), ‘It’s a mess, it’s a mess,’ but she said we had to clean it up ourselves.”

Kathy Haftorson, 35, who has lived in a three-bedroom house on Lugo Avenue in Paramount for the past five years, said that she was also told to fix the plumbing in her kitchen.

Despite the rental agreements that McKeehan, Haftorson and other tenants signed, Bell Gardens inspector Levarios said that the landlord is legally responsible for paying for upkeep of plumbing and electrical systems.

“The tenants can’t make repairs because they are not the property owners,” Levarios said. “It’s the duty of the landlord. After all, it’s his investment.”

Bill Makshanoff, a Downey Building Department official, said the Gouldings have been cited 11 times since 1983 for violating health and safety codes at the 5th Street duplex where McKeehan lives and another house sitting on the same property.

“It looks like about every six months or so, they have a case against them,” Makshanoff said. The cases have been resolved, Makshanoff said, after the Gouldings were issued the city’s second complaint. “Things usually get corrected by then,” he said.

Case on Florence Place

Levarios said that the Gouldings have failed to make necessary repairs to another three units they own on Florence Place. In a November, 1988, letter, the Gouldings were informed that they had not complied with the orders of the city’s Board of Appeals, which rules on building violations.

“That case is still open,” Levarios said.

After the Gouldings were cited by Paramount officials last year for substandard conditions at the house where Haftorson lives, the Gouldings performed only perfunctory work, Haftorson said.

“They did just enough to make it look good,” Haftorson said. “It all went to hell later on.”

Four other houses on Lugo were cited for numerous violations last year. The Gouldings had ignored two initial requests to clean up their properties, and had been ordered to appear at that city’s Board of Appeals, said Paramount Building Inspector Patrick West.

In addition, the Gouldings face action by Paramount inspectors for poor conditions at a San Antonio Avenue house, West said.

Small Claims Filed

Two former tenants, Elizabeth and Douglas Jones, and Mary Myers, have filed small claims suits against the Gouldings.

The Jones family, who moved out of another Lugo Avenue home in March, have filed suit in South Gate Municipal Court. They are asking for $250 that was withheld from the couple’s initial cleaning deposit. That case is scheduled to be heard May 11, according to court records.

In the two years they lived in the home, they had repainted the interior, replaced old light fixtures, screens and doors and fixed plumbing problems--all at their own expense, they said.

In a letter denying the Jones family their deposit, Cleo Goulding warned the family not to remove any of the screens or fixtures the Joneses had installed.

The deposit was withheld, according to the letter written by Cleo Goulding, because of a variety of damage, including paint on the floors and water damage. Elizabeth Jones showed pictures of the painted floors that she said were taken when the family moved in.

Wants Deposit Back

And Mary Myers, who recently moved from a single-family house on Centralia Street in Lakewood, has filed a similar suit in Los Cerritos Municipal Court, asking for return of her $500 deposit.

“We did a lot of work,” Myers said. “I have receipts for the money we put into that place. All I want is my money back.”

But another former Lugo Avenue tenant, who said that she began withholding a portion of her rent when she made repairs, lost a court battle against the Gouldings recently. She now must pay her former landlords $1,060 in back rent.

Tenant Rachael Kidwell said in a telephone interview that the judge ruled that she could not deduct rent without the landlords’ permission. “We had to put new flooring in and paint the walls. They were filthy,” said Kidwell, who moved out last October after five months.

“They claimed that I wasn’t paying the rent,” Kidwell said. “I wasn’t. But paying $775, I thought I should have something decent to live in.”