Los Angeles Housing Department

The Los Angeles Housing Department will hold a meeting Saturday for residents to review a study on rental housing in the area. The Rental Housing Study 1994 Summary Report was mandated by the City Council to give residents an overview of the economics and status of housing in Los Angeles. Residents may comment on policy options about the rent stabilization ordinance and related policies.

Glen Lim and his mother were anxious to find someone who could explain how their apartment building in Mid-Wilshire had gotten into so much trouble with Los Angeles housing inspectors — and what they could do to fix the problem. Eun Chavis seemed like the perfect answer. She was smart, a veteran city employee and a Korean American who spoke the only language Lim's mother, the manager of his building, understood. But instead of bringing the building into compliance, Chavis used her position at the Los Angeles Housing Department's Koreatown office to collect $16,000 in payoffs from Lim and his family, according to criminal court records, police reports and interviews.

Hope-Net, an interfaith distributor of free food to the poor in the Mid-Wilshire area, is heading a partnership to build and manage an apartment building for low-income families. With support from the Los Angeles Community Design Center, the Los Angeles Housing Department and a mix of private and public funding sources, Hope-Net broke ground in October on a $2.9-million, 17-unit apartment building in the Mid-City area on West Boulevard between Pico and Olympic boulevards.

A Los Angeles jury Tuesday found former city Housing Authority executives liable for mismanaging federal funds designated to help the poor get housing and jobs. The panel concluded at the end of a five-week trial that former Assistant Executive Director Lucille Loyce and then-Executive Director Donald Smith should pay the agency $528,000 for mismanaging taxpayer money and lying to the agency's board about it. Neither Loyce nor Smith has been criminally prosecuted.

Re "City Housing Department Violates the Public's Trust," Feb. 2. The Los Angeles Housing Department has financed the reconstruction of 1,562 buildings damaged in the Northridge earthquake. In your Feb. 2 editorial, in which you sharply criticized the Housing Department's monitoring of federal Davis-Bacon wage requirements on these projects, there were essential misstatements of fact that should be corrected. You state that contractors who violate Davis-Bacon requirements are not turned over to the city attorney for criminal prosecution.

A local nonprofit group that builds and refurbishes affordable housing complexes for low-income families will celebrate the completion of its latest development today in Sylmar. Los Angeles Councilman Hal Bernson and Gary Pinney, general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department, plan to join residents and staff from the Los Angeles Community Design Center this morning for a ceremony marking completion of the 18-unit Astoria Place Townhomes.

In his Valley Commentary article attacking affordable housing ("Slam the Door on Low-Income Housing Plan," Nov. 27) Don Schultz of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. misrepresented the city's Earthquake Emergency Loan Program in several ways. Mr. Schultz claimed the city is financing the construction of new high-density "slum" housing that will replace modest-sized apartment houses with large ones. None of these assertions is true. The facts are these: The city will receive $325 million from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to rebuild 15,000 to 20,000 housing units damaged in the Northridge earthquake.

Federal and local officials called on the Los Angeles Housing Department on Tuesday to explain why most contractors who violated labor laws by underpaying their workers on earthquake repair jobs have not been prosecuted. A Times article reported Sunday that housing officials uncovered numerous cases of contractors failing to pay prevailing wages for federally funded repair work, but no cases were turned over for prosecution.

Re "Zen and the art of management," May 11 I'm sure other readers have their own particular favorites, but as a marketing and customer service professional, I can say that, in my experience, the Los Angeles Housing Department represents the nadir of customer service by a government agency, and that is a reflection of management. Compared with the Housing Department, the Postal Service and the DMV are Nordstrom. The Housing Department does an execrable job of informing or updating its constituents.

The Los Angeles Housing Department and Bank of America have jointly started a new below-market-rate loan program to help homeowners retrofit houses to prepare for the next big earthquake. The program, "Tie-Down Los Angeles," targets low- and moderate-income homeowners seeking to bolt down homes to foundations, install gas shut-off valves, strengthen chimneys or perform other alterations to improve earthquake safety.

Re "Zen and the art of management," May 11 I'm sure other readers have their own particular favorites, but as a marketing and customer service professional, I can say that, in my experience, the Los Angeles Housing Department represents the nadir of customer service by a government agency, and that is a reflection of management. Compared with the Housing Department, the Postal Service and the DMV are Nordstrom. The Housing Department does an execrable job of informing or updating its constituents.

The Los Angeles Housing Department has paid thousands of dollars to a Zen Buddhist priest from Hawaii for management training that includes teaching breathing with sphincter control, learning "how to stand" and playing with wooden sticks. Norma Wong, a former Hawaii state legislator and leadership consultant, has been paid $18,819 since 2005 to conduct at least four training sessions for executives and other staff. The most recent one was last week.

The general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department has accused the city-county homeless agency of mismanaging money and called for an immediate management audit of the agency. Mercedes Marquez, the general manager, requested the audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, in a letter sent Tuesday to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. In the letter, Marquez wrote that the agency, because of accounting issues, didn't know it had $1.

Question: I am getting ready to move out of the apartment I have lived in for 12 years. Is a landlord entitled to deduct money for painting or cleaning after a tenant has been in an apartment for that long? It is obvious to me that this work would be "automatically needed" after such a long time. Am I right?

Two partnerships involving Los Angeles Harbor Commissioner James Acevedo are in default on $4.1 million in city loans used to buy land in the San Fernando Valley for two unsuccessful housing projects, officials said Friday. One partnership once also included a company headed by a Los Angeles Recreation and Parks commissioner, Christopher Hammond. His firm dropped out in 2003, though it is still listed in the partnership papers.

Long before they discovered the decaying body of a woman, the handful of residents at the Orchid Hotel at 8th and Flower streets had other complaints. With no manager on site, their concerns about leaking pipes and uncollected trash went unanswered, tenants said. So too did their complaints about the strong odor wafting from the second floor. The new owners of the Orchid had complaints as well.

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved $2 million Tuesday for a home ownership program that targets a Lincoln Heights development. Officials said the loan program was created to increase the buying power for low-income families and improve the economic development of the area. The city program will subsidize up to $50,000 to provide deferred second mortgage loans at City View Terrace, a townhome-style development at the 3700 block of Baldwin Street.

The Los Angeles Housing and Community Redevelopment Committee on Wednesday approved using more than $2.6 million to establish a North Hollywood residential facility for people with AIDS and HIV. "This is not a hospice, but simply a place to live," said Tom Henry, deputy to Councilman Joel Wachs, whose district includes the proposed site for the residential center.

A program that was supposed to sell as many as 1,700 rehabilitated homes in Los Angeles to low-income buyers is being threatened by the federal government's decision to suspend a nationwide initiative to restore foreclosed properties for sale to the poor. The U.S.

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved an ordinance Wednesday that will keep housing available to tenants who receive assistance from a federal subsidy program. The amendment to the city's rent control ordinance makes it illegal for owners of rent-controlled buildings to opt out of the Section 8 program or to terminate existing contracts with Section 8 tenants. As the housing market has tightened, landlords have fled the program and reaped higher rents on the open market.