Recently in Whodunit Category

Chapter Six: Criminal Charges

The wheels of justice grind slowly -- if at all.

For the last month, I backed away from my voluntary role as neighborhood detective to see how the system dealt with the illegal conversion in my Valley tract after the councilman, the Building and Safety Department and the City Attorney' Rocky Delgadillo's Office knew the mystery of who's killing my neighborhood was in the public eye.

Today, the current owner of the house at 19953 Haynes St. in my Valley floor tract that became a tenement over the last six months and a former owner were charged with crimes, four of them, all misdemeanors, each carrying $1,000 fines and/or six months in jail.

The allegations are zoning code violations for illegal use of land, illegal use and occupancy of a building, alteration of a building without permits and failure to comply with Building and Safety orders.

My neighbors will be thrilled at the good news but as their lead investigator in this case I'm going to have to tell them that nothing has changed and won't for a while.

Nady Mahdavi of West Hills who bought the house out of foreclosure back in January and representatives of the company that took over in July -- something called Fidelity Investments LLC in Bellflower, which is not to be confused with the mutual fund giant of the same name -- won't be arraigned until Sept. 24.

At that point, they would be booked and the legal process begins which could take a while. After that there's the question of when the three tenants who live in three separate apartments with more than a dozen rooms in 2,047 square feet actually have to move and the house restored to its original single family status.

Chapter Five: Serial Killers

Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised when the phone rang and Chief Inspector Frank Bush of Building and Safety was on the line telling me he had bad news. The house that became a tenement was sold again.

"You're kidding," I said.

"No," he said, "It was sold last month to something called Fidelity Investments LLC. A gift deed. We're starting all over again."

For the third time in six months, the house at 19953 Haynes St. in my tract of modest bungalows was flipped again. Nady Mahdavi to Claudia Perez to Fidelity Investments, what was the connection? Why did the stated value jump from $500,000 to $700,000 in the Mahdavi-Perez sale? Why was the Perez-Fidelity sale a gift deed? Who was going to do something about this?

It turns out my champion was the same person who last week denied anything was wrong, none other than my old pal Councilman Dennis Ziine.

Zine had gotten off his high horse and demanded action. He wanted Building and Safety to find out how a single-family house had become two three-bedroom apartments and a studio apartment with three kitchens and four bathrooms.

And he wanted the department and the City Attorney to come up with "recommendations to strengthen the City's enforcement power of citations and liens on properties that are in violation of applicable codes, including specific proposals to prevent the transfer of title of a property before any such violations are fully corrected."

Suddenly, there was action. "We issued a substandard order today," Bush said, which he explained means it's been cited as an illegal conversion. It's no longer just about construction without a permit. This is serious and will be dealt with, he assured me.

But it will take time.The former owners were off the hook, the hearing was canceled, the process that had already dragged on for four months while two tenants moved in and people who lived in the neighborhood for 50 years were talking about moving out would have to start again with a notice and a hearing.

By the time Bush called I had learned the residents of Tract 17111 were not alone. Illegal conversions were going on all over the city and little or nothing was being done about it.

How dumb could I be asking questions about who's killing my neighborhood when there's killers of neighborhoods operating all over L.A., serial killers.

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.

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 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.

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....