Whodunit: August 2008 Archives

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.