Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Inside a Southern California Rental Empire

I guess this is why so many live on the street. From LAist:
Many of Nijjar's tenants live in starkly different conditions, fighting off roaches, rats, bedbugs, bees, maggots and mold, all while struggling to get even minor issues fixed. At many of these rentals, low-income residents feel stuck in unsanitary, dangerous housing.The sprawling rental empire grew from modest beginnings in the 1970s into a behemoth. According to a KPCC/LAist analysis of government data and a review of public records, businesses connected to Nijjar account for at least:
  • an estimated 16,000 units spanning Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Kern counties, and reaching Sacramento, Fresno and Arlington, Texas
  • $1.3 billion in real estate
  • 4,400 parcels of land
  • 4,300 eviction lockouts in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties between 2010 and 2018
  • one in 20 evictions in San Bernardino County over the same time period
  • 170 business entities, including corporations, limited partnerships and limited liability corporations
Tens of thousands of California's poorest tenants -- many just a step away from homelessness -- have endured conditions in housing run by PAMA Management, which can be dirty, dilapidated and even deadly. That's according to code enforcement documents, lawsuits and public data, as well as interviews with plaintiffs' attorneys, fair-housing advocates, tenants and ex-employees. Those sources point to alarming issues at properties run by Nijjar's company.
At a Pomona trailer park owned by a Nijjar entity since 2005, typhus broke out in 2015. The medieval, flea-borne disease can kill if left untreated. Public health officials came in, trapping feral cats and opossums. On one opossum, they counted 1,087 fleas. It was L.A. County's first typhus outbreak since 2009. Since the outbreak, the state has twice suspended PAMA Management's permit to operate the Pomona park, citing electrical hazards and sewage leaks.
At another PAMA property, a manager testified that rats would swim in garbage water, walls would "bubble up" with mold and roaches "would fall over your body." At a third property, a lawsuit said a cockroach infestation was so severe that one of the insects climbed into a girl's ear, requiring surgery for the bug to be removed. At yet another complex, crime was so rampant that LAPD officers were afraid to patrol the property, leading the city attorney to file a lawsuit. (Read more.)
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