Chapter Four: Zine's cop-out

Much of city government took days off in advance of the holiday so I was lucky to run into Councilman Dennis Zine who had the first shot at stopping the illegal conversion of a single family house in my neighborhood into a three-unit apartment building

It was Thursday night and I was a guest on "Primetime Zine," the councilman's monthly talk show hosted by Lee Kanan Alpert on Time Warner Cable's public access channel. The invitation came before I found out Zine was one of the suspects in the mystery of who was killing my neighborhood.

With American flags flying from atop his SUV, Zine pulled into the Time Warner Cable parking lot and strutted up to me with two aides in tow. He wore an American flag tie, had an American flag lapel pin and carried a flag in his hand and was in the mood for a fight, if not a revolution.

I told him I was going to bring up the illegal conversion on air, that my neighbors were frustrated that neither he nor other city officials seem to take the issue very seriously and were so upset they were signing petitions.

"You're wrong. They have a permit," he snapped, insisting his staff did all it could by referring my neighbors' complaint back in March to the Department of Building and Safety. (My neighbor, a retired doctor, doesn't share that point of view, having spent hours waiting in Zine's office in a futile effort to actually talk to the councilman).

They have a permit to illegally convert a house into an apartment? And all you did was refer the complaint to Building and Safety?

"It's right here in the Building and Safety files," he said, waving printouts downloaded by a staffer. "We looked into it today and it's all perfectly legal. You're wrong."

What ensued was a heated discussion between two people who have had a lot of heated arguments over the years but still get along in a funny sort or way given the volatile nature of their personalities.

By Ellen Vukovich

Community correspondent

I have a small proposal which could have large implications for changing LAUSD schools. At minimum, it would stir things up. At maximum, it might even succeed.  

Imagine if parents with children in private schools enrolled them in their neighborhood public schools. Instead of paying tens of thousands for school tuition, they could donate one-half of that money to help to pay for what LAUSD no longer provides -- like supplies, art, music and shop classes along with some field trips.

This is key: Parents could take the time and dedication they currently lavish on private schools and do the same for their children's new schools.

Can you imagine if every neighborhood school was filled to the brim with parents and children that way? Can you imagine how that would inspire the teachers and staff?  Students might be inclined to want to learn. 

Over the last few years, friends have told me of their experiences with their children going to private schools. Excellent academic programs. A strong support system thanks to active parent participation. Catered lunches.  Themed parties and after-school events.

I went to LAUSD schools and we had some of that too.

UPDATE: laist.com riffs off of Lopez column and mentions the Bastille Day rally, observing, "The Saving L.A. Project seems to directly answer everyone's questions when it comes down to what's wrong and how to fix it: While we need great leaders, we need each other more."

L.A. Times star columnist Steve Lopez visited Chicago recently and was struck by the dynamism of  a city with strong leadership and the will to make things better -- a sharp contrast to what he sees happening in our city.

In his column Sunday,  Lopez asks a series of rhetorical questions to show just how big a difference there is between the city of Big Shoulders and what we all might agree is our city with no guts -- views that are similar to what I wrote about after my recent visit to Chicago.

He writes about how Chicago, under the leadership of Mayor Richard Daley, gets things done while L.A. under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa languishes. "(Villaraigosa''s) self-induced loss of momentum, along with funding shortages and a City Council that never veers from its quest for mediocrity, have conspired to knock the shine off Antonio's Holy Card smile."

Lopez and I spoke at length Thursday about this tale of two cities and he mentions the Bastille Day July 14 rally at noon at City Hall, calling the idea of leading a public revolt -- in the absence of real leadership by our elected officials -- "the least rewarding of all L.A. challenges."

He closes by saying, "OK, I'm all for revolution. But at least for a while, couldn't we work out an exchange program in which we trade Villaraigosa for Daley and see what happens?

His skepticism is appropriate until enough of us come together and demonstrate we can force City Hall to respond to our concerns instead of giving us lip service and the special interests our money.

The publicity for the rally is welcome. We've printed up thousands of fliers to promote the rally and we need people to distribute them far and wide so email me and we'll figure out how to get some to you. I can also send you an email copy of the flier and the letter that community activists are sending out all over town.

From Boyle Heights to Westchester, from West Hills to San Pedro, people are committed to coming down to City Hall on Monday July 14th. There is your chance to shake the foundations of City Hall and begin the process of bringing real democracy to L.A. and empowering the communities to stand up together to a failing power structure.

Take Back Los Angeles -- Demand A Great City. Join the Saving L.A. Project.

What can you say about the Fourth of July, American Independence Day, that isn't already a cliche?

The only thing I can think of is to say something about the hundreds of people I've met since I left the Daily News and gotten out in the community as an ordinary citizen. Sure, I knew there were a lot of people who really want to make our city great but I didn't really understand just how many, just how hard they have worked, just how much they know and just how frustrated they are by the resistance of City Hall.

It's what triggered in me the belief that if we all came together -- the people of all backgrounds, all beliefs, all races and religions -- we can beat the problems we face and make life better for us all.

OK, it's a cliche but it's my cliche and I believe it. So listen to this Frank Sinatra version of the song that embodies that for me:
Frank Sinatra - 05 - The House I Live In (That's America To Me).mp3

Chapter Three: Westside Rentals

One of the mysteries that befuddled me about this case was how a single-family house became three apartments with six bedrooms, four bathrooms, three kitchens and a studio apartment. In 2,047 square feet. With a combined rental asking price of $5,500.

No, it's not exactly solving the affordable housing problem but it does prove people can live in incredibly small spaces like ants.

My investigation took me to Westside Rentals, the company with the sign in front of the illegal conversion that's threatening the well-being of Tract 17111, my neighborhood.

If you believe the L.A. Times, Westside Rentals provides a great service to the public and is a very successful business allowing landlords to put up listings free and charging prospective tenants $60 to see them. In a story on May 2 under the headline "How I Made It," the Times informed us that owner Mark Verge's Santa Monica-based company employs "80 people and lists about 20,000 apartments, houses and rooms for rent."

No mention is made that at least three of those listings at the time were for an illegal conversion that had been cited by the Department of Building and Safety for construction without a permit

Verge said his first big purchase when he got rich with his westsiderentals.com website was a $50,000 race horse named "Hide from the Bride" and he dreams of doing a reality TV show called "Rental Man" His motivation for getting into the rental listing business was pretty idealistic: "The business had a really bad name to it."

Since he is an idealist who advises "Meet everyone and treat them all the same" I figured I'd give him a call and see if he could take me through how the owners of this house found two tenants already and are looking for a third for the big unit, three bedrooms, two baths, $2,095 a month -- a $400 drop in the original asking price.

I asked to talk to Verge , explaining I was a journalist, and was immediately put through to Kevin Miller, head of operations, who was cordial and open about the fact the company is merely a go-between. Landlords put up their listings, people search the listings, contact the landlord and decide whether to rent the house or apartment.

"It's all their own business," he said. "We don't get involved at all."

I noted the contract people agree to when signing up is extremely long and detailed and frees Westside of all responsibility. So what happens when there are complaints, I asked.

"We don't get involved in that. It's all 'he said,' 'she said.' You got to take it with a grain of salt. We're not the police."

I'm a newspaperman, or was for 44 years, and it's painful to see what's happening.

My paper gets thinner and thinner and the staff gets smaller and smaller to the point people who work at the Daily News and people who read it wonder if it can survive. It's happening all over the country as advertising revenue dries up and it happened today, again, at the L.A. Times.

The Times' announced today that it will cut the space in the paper by 15 percent and lay off 150  editors and reporters, about 17 percent of its staff. It will bring the total editorial staff to about 700, compared to the peak of 1,200 a few years back.

For those who lose their jobs -- and I had to look a lot of them in the eye when I told them their jobs at the Daily News were being eliminated -- it's a personal catastrophe. There's not a whole lot of jobs that use the same skill sets. There's not a whole lot of jobs that are as much fun as newspapering.

Many papers will not survive the current problems or become little more than small, very local news operations online and in print.

But the Times is in a class by itself. A lot of its resources are tied up in news gathering in faraway places around the world, around the nation, that are expensive operations and of lower value to most readers. Despite its pretentions, The Times after all is not the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or Washington Post for that matter.

You can bet a lot of the cuts will come from out of town news operations and for the first time in nearly 50 years the Times will have to become a Los Angeles newspaper.  I have said many times, not without some irony, that the Times is criminal in its neglect of L.A., its lack of vision for Southern California, and that it would be a better paper with 600 reporters and editors than it was with 1,200.

Few in the business agree with me and the whining and caterwauling you'll hear over these cuts will drown out all contrarian views.

Twenty years ago, I produced a story at the Daily News headlined "City of Lmits" that spelled out how a century of growth at any price must come to an end -- the nation's dirtiest air, worst traffic congestion, sprawl over five counties, soaring poverty, loss of good-paying jobs, gang-infested neighborhoods -- imperiled the Southern California dream.

I still think that story by reporter Karen West was the truest and most important story I was ever involved in.

Not much has changed in the last two decades. In fact, the problems have gotten worse. And the city, county and state have done little or nothing to develop strategies to deal with these issues.

Growth at any price is still at the heart of public policy despite the lip service occasionally paid to the environmental and quality of life issues.

And to me that's a crime. It's why I so passionately believe that only a grassroots movement, a people's revolution, can turn things around. It's why I'm hoping we'll get a large crowd to City Hall on July 14 to launch a concerned citizens coalition that can snowball into a region-wide movement that will seize control of the political system and turn things around.

I know a lot of people believe that's a pipedream. So be it. A lot of people also believe it's the only strategy that will create a balance of interests and power between labor, business and the communities.

At the heart of the problem is the belief that we always have to have more and newer instead of enough and better.

I caught up with the neighbor lady Monday. It was hot, like only the Valley can be, when I walked to the corner and took a look at the house illegally converted into apartments.

There was a guy who didn't look all that healthy trying to get his car started in the driveway and sign in front: For Rent, Westside Rentals. I wrote down the phone number.

As I talked with my neighbor I looked around her house. It was filled with memories and memorabilia of the 50 years she and husband had lived there. A good life, the house they raised their children in and sometimes look after their grandchildren in now. It was home, she said, and I knew what she meant.

I hadn't had a home, a real home, since I was 18 until I moved into Tract 17111 as it's identified in government documents. For my wife and I and our son, our little bungalow was home, too, a happy home. It's what the Valley is all about, middle-class tracts like ours where neighbors know each other and look after each other, where people from all over the world, people of every race and religion live quietly and unpretentiously, in harmony.

And someone was trying to destroy that, infecting a deadly virus, a broken window, into our little piece of paradise. It's a crime these things are happening.

That's certainly how my neighbor feels about this. She was calm but clear as she described her frustration over months to get this attack on our way of life stopped by the city, by Councilman Dennis Zine's office, by somebody. But to the city it was nothing but a minor annoyance, just a routine "unapproved construction" problem -- no an attack on the quality of our lives, our neighborhood.

She and some other neighbors got the runaround from Zine's office and the bureaucrats for weeks as they tried to figure out how to get somebody to do something.

Finally, they drew up a petition that says in part:: "This community and others like it will not exist if investor-buyers succeed in violating zoning laws to create multiple family dwellings in single family dweIling zones and utilize schemes such as deliberate re-sales to associates, friends, and/or family, in order to delay government action."

I was hooked. Foul play was alleged. I loved the idea of playing a journalistic Columbo right in my own backyard but as we talked I learned my neighbor already had the part of Mrs. Columbo down pat.

My wife was out on her early morning jaunt through the neighborhood with Bruno the beast this morning and couldn't help noticing -- news maven as she is -- the number of drivers chatting away with cell phones at their ear.

It is after all the first day of the rest of our lives with our hands free, even though our minds may be far away in conversation.

And then she saw the motorcycle cops, red lights flashing, with victims pulled over to the side of the road.

Being the kind of person she is -- a cell phone hater -- she couldn't help commenting to one of the cops about the latest add-on to his role as server and protector of society.

"Just trying to save lives," he told her, with a friendly smile.

So watch yourself out there, friends, it's dangerous. The phone police are on the job -- and don't get hit by a stray bullet from some street thug. 

Chapter One

I'd suspected something was amiss for a while but until I heard the knock on the door I looked the other way like everybody else.

It was Saturday and there was a neighbor lady standing there. She held a piece of paper in her hand.

"Do you know what's happened?"

Bruno was going crazy, yowling and lunging at the screen door with the full force of that giant head of his, 60 pounds of pit bull/shar-pei fury. Damn, I wish my wife had never taken him in from the bushes just because she thought he'd kill somebody.

"Shut up, Bruno," I yelled to no avail.

The woman was unfazed.

"You know that house they turned into a board-and-care facility five, six years ago. The one at the corner? It's been converted into three apartments with kitchens and baths. It's illegal. Did you see who's moving in? We can't get the city to do anything ."

I perked up. This was my beat. I stepped outside, yelled at Bruno one more time and said: "You've knocked on the right door, ma'm. My name is Ron. Maybe I can help."

She and another lady were going door to door with petitions. They'd been trying for months. It's an illegal conversion. It's got to be stopped.

I got the picture clear enough. Our tract of modest bungalows on the Valley floor was threatened. Quiet streets, no through traffic, no crime, nice people. The only time we see a cop is when our next door neighbor comes by.

"I'm busy," I told her. "We'll talk."

To be continued....