Housing Los Angeles

West Valley developers of commercial projects can now take advantage of one-stop shopping for city inspectors. The streamlined approach is available because the West Valley portion of the 11th City Council District joined a pilot program established July 1, said area City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski. Normally, developers must schedule specialized inspectors to OK their work in progress, one for plumbing, another for electrical, for example.

Three-and-a-half years ago, the residents of Cambria Apartments in the Pico-Union district of Los Angeles wrested control of their decaying apartment complex away from an unresponsive owner. Aided by a federal grant, the tenants organized and became its owners. But with that victory came the sudden challenge of evicting the drug dealers, prostitutes, roaches and rodents that had made their complex one of the most notorious slums in Los Angeles. Saturday, that job was completed.

Mayor Richard Riordan released a $160-million housing and community development spending plan Monday that emphasizes improving neighborhoods and creating more jobs. The mayor's proposal, which probably will receive a less than warm response from the City Council, reflects a $7-million drop in federal Community Development Block Grant funds, a particularly painful decline given the number of community groups seeking them.

Last summer, Sue Potteiger gladly accepted a job transfer from Seattle to Irvine. But then the 47-year-old executive at Washington Mutual Bank wondered: How would she, her stay-at-home husband and two grade-school-age daughters afford to live in expensive Southern California? Six months later, her boxes unpacked and two cats running around inside the family's spacious, red-tiled house in Mission Viejo, Potteiger says happily: "We were surprised at how much house we could buy.

The Los Angeles City Council directed the city attorney Tuesday to draft amendments to the building code that call for new standards to improve earthquake safety in apartment buildings. The amendments, which apply to so-called "soft stories" in multistory apartment buildings, are aimed at preventing another tragedy like the collapse of the Northridge Meadows Apartments in the 1994 earthquake, in which 16 people died.

Downtown Los Angeles' glitzy but financially struggling high-rise apartment complexes have become the target of real estate investors gambling that rents will rise as the real estate market recovers. The latest buyer is Palo Alto-based Essex Property Trust Inc., which this week acquired the 19-story Bunker Hill Towers, downtown L.A.'s first high-rise apartment complex, from a Hong Kong partnership for $36.5 million.

In his tailored suit, and behind the wheel of his 12-cylinder snow-white BMW, Richard Burns looks like the slumlord from Central Casting as he tours his properties in a gritty neighborhood in the northeast San Fernando Valley. But ask his largely Latino, working-class tenants, and police who patrol here, and they'll tell you Burns is anything but.

Fifth-grader Rafaela Ortega was at the podium, explaining how her new house is different from the aging, gang- and drug- infested public housing project she and her family used to call home. "My new house is beautiful. It has four bedrooms and two bathrooms," the 10-year-old said Monday. "The streets are clean. And I know I am safe here."

Encouraged by a string of new real estate projects downtown, a Los Angeles developer is trying to turn a dilapidated and mostly vacant stretch of 4th Street into 250 apartments that would command market rates. Tom Gilmore of Gilmore Associates has received a financing commitment from lender Finova Capital and agreed to pay $7.5 million for two turn-of-the-century structures, including the 500,000-square-foot Farmers & Merchant's bank complex on 4th Street and the San Fernando Building at 400 S.