Posted by AL on March 12, 2008 at 20:47:06:
Rich, thanks for the advice, I certainly will.
Abating the property - Posted by AL
Posted by AL on March 11, 2008 at 09:26:58:
What is the due process for a city to abate a rental property? I have a multifamily building in CA, where the city made it their priority to go after me by first nitpicking on everything that can be possible wrong with the building, and then eventually escalating it to complete vacating of the building. They cited me for vacant units, they boarded up my vacant units after we had some homeless broke in there at night and we called the cops to have them removed, instead the cidy code enforcement showed up, boarded up the units, and then demand a payment of $2100 for their “services”. It all started when several tenants figured out that they can delay eviction proceddings by vandalizing their own units, and then immediately calling code enforcement. Thos nazzis showed up and started issuing “compliance ultimatums” left and right. I dumped over $250,000 into this building in the last two years, and now I’m completely wiped out, I have no money left, my property is now completely vacant thanks to the city, the property looks like ghetto with plywood on the windows and doors, and I’m letting the property go into foreclosure. They even issued citations for missing letters on the apartment doors to identify which unit is which! I’m still feel like run over by a train, I just don’t understand how can city code enforcement have some much power over property ownership rights and legal due process. I was never a slumloard, slumloards don’t dump quarter million into property renovation. Can somebody share any ideas? How can I legally challenge this thing? Are there any legal cases I can look up with similar circumstances?
Where are you? - Posted by Rich-CA
Posted by Rich-CA on March 11, 2008 at 18:35:29:
That sure sounds like Berkley, Santa Cruz or SF or any number of other neo-communist cities. In any case, its lawyer time. This is not easy and some of these cases have to go to the Supreme Court just because the local judges are in the pockets of these people.
Re: Where are you? - Posted by AL
Posted by AL on March 11, 2008 at 22:25:13:
“neo-communist” is right. The property is in Hemet, Riverside county, the most backward place on Earth. It’s about 1 hr north of San Diego, about 2 hours east of Los Angeles.
I spoke with three different attorneys on this, it appears that the case can be expected to be very very long, very expensive and very unpredictable, because the judges hate to go after the cities, and pay “public” money for the cities screw-ups. (At what point will the city employees have to become responsible for their actions instead of being able to use the city attorneys and “public” money to defend their own incompetence? ) So, I’m trying to look up some case law that I can arm myself with next time I talk to an attorney to (a) be a better educated customer, (b) be able to “sexy up” the case for an attorney, and (c) save on some initial research expenses.
Can you go to the County? - Posted by Rich-CA
Posted by Rich-CA on March 12, 2008 at 09:09:18:
Riverside County is not known for its liberalism, so perhaps if you called your County Supervisor and asked for assistance or advice.
You might want to subscribe to the California Real Estate Law Review and buy all the back issues. It contains a wealth of info at a reasonable price. Very accessible writing style plus specific case citations.