Slums Los Angeles

After hearing complaints about slum conditions, top city housing officials promised tenants Saturday that the Housing Department will turn the heat up on owners of blighted apartment buildings. Tenants cited problems such as apartments infested with rodents and roaches and buildings without working utilities during the meeting held in downtown Los Angeles and sponsored by the Inquilinos Unidos' Organizing Committee, a nonprofit group that assists tenants with housing complaints.

After hearing complaints about slum conditions, top city housing officials promised tenants Saturday that the Housing Department will turn the heat up on owners of blighted apartment buildings. Tenants cited problems such as apartments infested with rodents and roaches and buildings without working utilities during the meeting held in downtown Los Angeles and sponsored by the Inquilinos Unidos' Organizing Committee, a nonprofit group that assists tenants with housing complaints.

The Brandon Hotel is the kind of building where some people go to live when they're down on their luck, and others when they want to hide. "I would never tell my mother that I live here," one resident said in a near whisper, displaying a bathroom shared by several tenants on one hall. The room stank, and a three-inch cockroach lay dead in the shower stall.

The Brandon Hotel is the kind of building where some people go to live when they're down on their luck, and others when they want to hide. "I would never tell my mother that I live here," one resident said in a near whisper, displaying a bathroom shared by several tenants on one hall. The room stank, and a three-inch cockroach lay dead in the shower stall.

Re "3 Slain, 1 Hurt by Gunfire at Eastside Party," Jan. 2: Three killed in Lincoln Heights. I was wondering if the president and Congress are going to give family survivors of this tragic event (terror) $1.6 million. Are not these families just as important as the 3,000 families in New York? They do not count, and besides, they are in the slums of Los Angeles. Their lives are not worth any more than the lives of the Taliban. Milt Burdick Brea

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.

Almost all the buildings were in poor neighborhoods, mostly inhabited by immigrants from Latin America. Old, dark and worn, there was nothing about them to attract attention--until they were named in the city's massive lawsuit against owners and lenders. Then those 11 buildings became the most famous slums in Los Angeles. Now, nearly two years later, most of them have changed a great deal.

The Tahitian Village Motor Hotel, with its bright tiki torches, festive music and glorious swimming pool, was Downey's most fashionable nightspot during the 1960s, hosting astronauts and other celebrities. Now, beset with problems like exposed electrical wiring, peeling paint, broken windows and wood rot, the once-celebrated landmark is home to welfare recipients, the working poor and the downtrodden.

The book "Rethinking Los Angeles," to be published this week by Sage Publications, looks at this region as a subject of serious academic study. The collection includes essays and artwork on the city, its past and the future by a diverse set of writers. This is a condensed excerpt from a chapter titled "Reimagining Los Angeles" by Robert Fishman, a professor at Rutgers University.

In a state that occasionally runs wild with public referendums, voters are regularly confronted at the polls with such dry, complicated issues as million-dollar bond measures, assessment districts and utility rates. It is not the stuff to stir the passions of the electorate. But in two small cities in northwest Orange County, voters will go the polls Tuesday to decide an emotional issue that has divided city councils, sparked heated protests and drawn wary looks from neighboring cities.

Walking through the Union Avenue apartment was like taking a tour of hell. The rat and roach traps overflowed with vermin. A broken pipe spewed raw sewage into the basement. Drug dealers and gang members roamed the dark, dingy halls. It was the mid-1980s and Nancy Mintie, who had just moved her legal practice out of a garage and into a storefront office, figured this would be the most dismal slumlord case she would ever handle. How wrong she was.

As a restaurateur, he earned a reputation for presenting the best in fine dining, featuring crystal stemware and white-gloved waiters. Now, as an apartment building owner, Ben Dimsdale is accused of running one of the worst slums in Los Angeles. An attorney entered a plea of not guilty Thursday on behalf of Dimsdale, the owner of the former Windsor restaurant, a mid-Wilshire landmark for 40 years before closing in 1990.