Fresno’s latest slumlord scandal shows rental housing oversight isn’t working
Water leaking from pipes into apartments below. Rampant mold growth. Stoves, heaters, air conditioners and other appliances not working. Infestations of mice, rats and cockroaches. A landlord promising repairs but not making good. Tenants afraid to say anything for fear of being evicted.
Those were the living conditions for thousands of tenants profiled in The Bee’s 2016 series, “Living in Misery.” The project, the result of a four-month investigation by a team of Bee reporters, resulted in 2017 in Fresno City Council passage of the Rental Housing Improvement Act. It set forth the requirement that city code enforcement staff would perform initial inspections at all of the more than 80,000 rental properties in the city — apartments, condominiums and single-family homes — to get a baseline of conditions at them. Code violators were to be given citations for repairs.
Now comes a new investigation by The Bee, this one by Fresnoland reporters Monica Vaughn and Cassandra Garibay. They looked into conditions at Manchester Arms, a 41-unit complex at 3935 Effie St. What did they discover? Tenants living with mold, water leaks, failing appliances, and a landlord who tenants say bullies and intimidates, pushing off repairs while hiking rents.
Worse yet, tenants say city code enforcement officers have been lax in responding to their complaints.
Fresno is the fifth-largest city in California, but is also its poorest big town. According to the Census Bureau, one in four residents lives in poverty. As long as there are poor people needing housing, there will be unscrupulous landlords trying to take advantage of them.
Who stands in defense of such tenants? City code enforcement. That is what the rental housing act intended, and that is what must happen. If improvements to the act and code enforcement are not made, this vicious cycle will just continue.
Known to code enforcement
The owner of Manchester Arms, Joel Gutierrez of Newark, is well known to Fresno code enforcement officers. They found violations at his units when the baseline inspection was done in January 2020, and habitability issues go back years.
“Parts of a building are literally crumbling at the 41-unit Manchester Arms apartment complex,” Vaughn and Garibay reported. “In at least three apartments, water leaks through tiles and floorboards in kitchens and bathrooms into the ceilings of apartments below. Hot water for 21 units was shut off without notification six times since December 2019, when it was off for nearly a week and tenants were told to shower in a vacant unit.”
A disabled Army veteran living in one of the apartments went more than two months without a working stove. Gutierrez stopped responding to code enforcement inquiries about a new one. The case was closed in January after the vet confirmed he finally got a stove that worked.
Other examples abound at Manchester Arms. The story was an eye-opener for Nelson Esparza, the City Council member whose District 7 includes the Manchester Arms neighborhood. A day after the story broke, a 50-person team from code enforcement went to the apartments for inspections.
“We learned a lesson this week — residents in our city are not always able to be their own best advocate,” Esparza said the day after the swarm of inspectors hit. “When we hear these stories, we have to step up and be there for them.”
Improving rental housing
How should the city move on from here? For starters, code enforcement needs to be on the same page with what the Rental Housing Improvement Act says. When it comes to issuing citations, the act is clear:
“Whenever it is determined by the Inspector that a violation of Health and Safety Standards exists, the Inspector shall issue a written correction notice.” In legal terms, the word shall means will, as in “will issue.”
But, another part of the act does offer some grayness, and the City Council should consider tightening it up. In terms of how long a landlord has to make repairs or improvements, the act says a corrective notice “shall provide a reasonable time for correction. The time shall depend on the time it would take a reasonably diligent person to complete the required action.”
As has been made abundantly clear, irresponsible landlords ignore what it means to be “reasonably diligent.” The city attorney should advise the council on specific time limits for compliance. Landlords turn into slumlords when they prolong the process of making repairs. Gutierrez is an example of that.
The act also calls for three things to happen: Metrics to measure success of the program are supposed to be developed; a tenant education plan is to be implemented to teach renters their rights; and annual reviews were to be held in the first three years after the measure took effect. Councilman Miguel Arias said none of these things have happened.
The City Council took over management of code enforcement from the mayor’s office in 2019. It is imperative that the council, through the office of the city attorney, improve the act and the follow through. Too often, Fresno leaders have great ideas that then wash out in effectiveness because implementation and sustained effort fall short.
Those who suffer for such failure in this instance are the low-income people living in Fresno’s worst housing.