Housing Inspections

Bosnian Serbs, responding to mounting accusations that they are running brutal prison camps in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, have agreed to allow Red Cross inspection of 12 of the camps, according to a Red Cross spokesman in Belgrade.

A proposed law in Ojai that would require city building inspections of any home about to be sold has touched off strong protests from real estate brokers. About 60 brokers attended a workshop Wednesday to lobby against the proposed ordinance, drafted after the City Council directed planners last April to come up with a plan to curtail the number of garages and guest houses being converted in Ojai to illegal rental units.

A plan to require regular inspections of nearly 350 housing units was put on hold after an apartment owners' group proposed a compromise they say will guard against overzealous code enforcement officers. Last month, the City Council gave preliminary approval to an ordinance that authorized annual inspections of the apartments for the next three years. Council members agreed to put off final approval of the plan until March 17.

The state Department of Real Estate has asked a major California developer to stop selling homes and condominiums until state officials review a section of the company's contract with prospective home buyers that prevents them from inspecting for radon before the close of escrow, the department commissioner said Tuesday. Commissioner James Edmonds said the department verbally made the request to Pardee Construction Co.

Seems simple: to check the sink plumbing for leaks, turn on the water and look for drips. Not quite, says Jack Gerwick. "You have to turn just the hot water on and let it run. That makes the pipes expand and leaks show up right away. If you just used cold water, you might not see them," Gerwick said as he leaned inside a cabinet to feel a drain pipe for tell-tale moisture. Gerwick is a house sleuth for Inspector Homes, a Laguna Beach home inspection service.

Beverly Vedder was so upset by angry phone calls from homeowners that she occasionally broke down and cried. "I was reduced to tears at times," testified the former secretary for giant housing developer Kaufman & Broad. "I was overwhelmed." Of the many homeowner grievances that Vedder received, one especially stuck in her mind.

A recent federal audit charges that Orange County has misspent money intended to rehabilitate housing for poor and low-income residents, causing some people to live in unsafe or unhealthful conditions. The June 29 audit by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that the county paid for some rehabilitation work that was never done and ignored some repairs that should have been made.

Gov. George Deukmejian on Friday signed a law to require all licensed day-care homes, no matter how small, to install smoke detectors to prevent the kind of tragedy that killed two infants in a Huntington Beach fire earlier this month.

The night before the Allied invasion of Normandy, Milford Bliss parachuted behind enemy lines. After the war, he spent some time traveling around a Europe in ruins. Whole towns "just flattened," he recalled. "It changes your thinking." Last summer Bliss returned to see a continent rebuilt. Buildings that were 200 to 300 years old were repaired so they were as sturdy as ever.

Miguel Torres showed off the illegal garage dwelling to Los Angeles building inspectors Monday as if he were guiding a model home tour. In order to rent out his home for $450 a month, he had converted his two-car garage on 111th Street in South-Central Los Angeles into three rooms--bathroom, bedroom and living room--for his family of seven.