City says Fresno council candidate is a slumlord. He says city inspections are petty

Fresno's anti-slum enforcement team has issued nearly 1,300 violations since 2017 to property owner Sean Sanchez, who is running for the District 3 city council seat.

In a presentation at Thursday's city council meeting, staff reported inspecting Sanchez's 16-unit property in the 5000 block of East Lane Avenue and finding significant substandard conditions and health and safety issues. Staff also reported a high number of calls for police service at the property, including calls reporting gunshots.

The East Lane Avenue property faced 330 exterior and 960 interior violations that ranged from broken windows, cockroach infestation, missing smoke detectors and egress violations. City staff conducted a compliance check on March 15, and while some issues were resolved, many violations remained, the report said.

Out of the properties highlighted by Christina Roberson, deputy city attorney, Sanchez's property received the most violations.

The city entered a settlement agreement with Sanchez, but the deadline for compliance passed and violations remained when an inspection team visited the property on March 15. The settlement was reached by attorneys representing Sanchez and the city and called for complete rehabilitation of the property, Roberson said.

"I find it interesting that I’m the No. 1 target of the city of Fresno. I’ve never been painted as slumlord," Sanchez said in a phone interview with The Bee after the meeting. "They say you have 30 days in the notice and order, but just to read the notice would probably take 30 days. It's pretty overwhelming."

Sanchez said the enforcement team came to the property on the "pretense" of looking for indicators of substandard housing, but cited him for any code violation.

So far, he's spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting new stucco on the outside of the property, replacing lighting, taking down popcorn ceilings, replacing interior doors and changing out drains and plumbing, Sanchez said.

He intends to rehabilitate the property to the city's standards, but it's impossible to meet the city's deadline without displacing tenants, he said.

ASET builds on a code enforcement strike team created at the end of 2015 by then-city manager Bruce Rudd to crack down on blight after residents at Summerset Village Apartments went without heat and hot water for weeks.

In May 2016, The Bee highlighted substandard housing in Fresno in a special investigative report called "Living in Misery." It found that units all over the city were unlivable, and landlords were going without penalty because of the city’s lack of oversight.

Sanchez said the way the city treats people who own under 100 properties motivated him to run for city council.

"The city is putting a boot on the neck of property owners in the name of saying they're helping tenants with substandard housing issues," he said. "In actuality, they're overwhelming property owners with petty violations so they can accumulate a crapload of fees."

And the expenses for property owners trickle down to tenants, he said. Previously, he charged tenants rents as low as $600. But after the rehabilitation work he's done, he's raised rents for new tenants to $950.

Instead, Sanchez said the city needs to adopt a bill of rights for tenants and property owners and quit overwhelming property owners with code violations for cosmetic issues.

This story was originally published April 5, 2018 at 5:26 PM with the headline "City says Fresno council candidate is a slumlord. He says city inspections are petty."