In the beginning, the residents of Cambria Apartments were no different from tenants in other slum buildings in Los Angeles.

They slept in cramped apartments amid roaches and rats. They breathed the stench of urine and feces that wafted from vacant rooms and hallways teeming with acrid trash. They bathed with pails of water in bathtubs with broken plumbing.

The 30 tenant families--most of them poor working Latinos who spoke little English--were frustrated, but they didn't move out or vandalize the building.

Instead they mobilized. With moxie and guidance from a tenants rights group and public interest lawyers, they helped form Communidad Cambria, a nonprofit association that bought the building with federal funding.

They are the first tenants in Los Angeles involved in buying a privately owned slum dwelling, according to Barbara Zeidman, assistant general manager of the city Housing Department. City officials hope the transaction will become a model for other purchases.

The tenants, several of whom are on welfare or out of work, could not contribute any of their own money to acquire the building. All of the $600,000 for the purchase was provided by the city Housing Department through federal community development block grant money.

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The experience still amazes the tenant leaders, four single mothers who sat nervous and insecure at initial meetings, but who have grown into astute advocates, aware of their rights and the law.

"\o7 Somos los duenos\f7 ! (We're the landlords!) \o7 Los duenos\f7 !" exclaimed Teresa Marcial after escrow papers were signed at a May 31 tenant meeting.

At first, Marcial had doubts. "We're Hispanic people without much money, without experience in these things," she said. "We're looked at as little people with no sense."

In her native Mexico, getting involved in protests was never part of Marcial's life. A petite woman with a raspy voice, she needed an inhaler during the first tenant meetings to ease her asthma attacks when she got too angry. Now, she leaves the inhaler at home and serves as board president of the group that owns the building.

There are a handful of tenant purchases under way in the city, but all involve buildings where the rents are subsidized by the federal government. And these buildings are in much better shape than the Cambria Apartments, which are still plagued by graffiti-scarred walls, garbage-strewn vacant apartments and drug-dealing \o7 cholos.\f7