Public Nuisances

First Rep. Laura Richardson was having problems making house payments, defaulting six times over eight years. Then after a bank foreclosed on her Sacramento house and sold it at auction in May, the Long Beach Democrat made such a stink that Washington Mutual, in an unusual move, grabbed it back and returned it to her. This week, in the latest chapter in the housing saga, the Code Enforcement Department in Sacramento declared her home a "public nuisance."

After years of work, commendations are in order for neighbors who made the system work. Recently, a Huntington Beach property owner lost her house for permitting conditions that one code enforcement officer said amounted to "the most blighted house in Orange County." For more than a decade, neighbors pleaded for help to get the property of Elena Zagustin, a professor, brought up to a minimum standard of health and safety. Neighbors even offered to clean up and maintain the yard.

A bullet hole mars the Diet Coke ad on a sign in Jae Joo Kim's store, a 24-hour Donut King anchoring a troubled Van Nuys mini-mall. Another bullet hole has punctured another part of the sign, distorting the red plastic letters announcing that small drinks cost 55 cents. There is yet another bullet hole just outside, in the black metal molding that frames one of the plate-glass windows.

One of the San Fernando Valley's hottest cruising spots--the La Rinda Plaza--has been declared a public nuisance by a city zoning official who ordered the shopping center's owners to install gates that can be closed at night. The decision was applauded Thursday by grateful residents and officials who said rowdy crowds at the plaza, which draws car aficionados from Rancho Cucamonga to Simi Valley, have brought noise, traffic and violence to their neighborhood.

Concerned that an influx of homeless people has increased crime in an affluent Studio City area, a group of residents has called for authorities to use a public nuisance law to prosecute transients. The residents are eager to crack down on so-called "transient criminals," believed by residents to be responsible for offenses ranging from car burglaries to rapes. "Existing criminal codes--burglary, robbery, etc.

U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson's rundown Sacramento house, which became the scourge of the neighborhood and a sore point with an investor who thought he had bought it out of foreclosure, has drawn the interest of a House ethics panel. The Office of Congressional Ethics contacted real estate investor James York, who bought Richardson's house at a foreclosure auction last year, only to have Washington Mutual take it back after he had recorded the deed and return the house to the congresswoman.

A Palos Verdes Estates woman who upset neighbors by renting her 7,000-square-foot house out for weddings, film shoots and other large gatherings, including an art and furniture auction, pleaded no contest Friday to creating a public nuisance. Melahat Uzumcu was sentenced to three years' informal probation and fined $500. She is not allowed to rent the home for commercial purposes and must give the city 72 hours notice if more than 50 people visit her at once. Uzumcu was charged with four misdemeanors before agreeing to a plea with the city prosecutor.

Critics and supporters of the troubled Thunderbird club faced off at a final public hearing this week, with those who hope to see the restaurant and nightclub lose its license presenting a video they said showed the problems it has caused. Police reports of public nuisances and continued complaints by neighbors prompted the city to conduct hearings on the operating permit for the club, which opened in November.

Intent on preventing unnecessary fire hazards, the Simi Valley City Council on Monday declared 29 tumbleweed-infested properties public nuisances, clearing the way for city-hired crews to clear the sites at the owners' expense. Monday night's vote is one in a series of steps the city takes each year to ensure removal of flammable weeds, which break free in high winds and blow into traffic. Property owners had been asked to remove the weeds by the end of October.