Occupancy Inspection Program Dominates Council Meeting

Bill Podley, of Podley Properties, addresses the Pasadena City Council (Photo – Garrett Rowlan),

Seeing the “STOP ILLEGAL SEARCHES” buttons worn by the full house attending the Monday night meeting of the Pasadena City Council, one might have thought the message concerned Christopher Ballew versus the City of Pasadena, which, according to the printed agenda, was discussed in closed session.

By Garrett Rowlan

However, the beating of Christophe Ballew only mentioned a “no reportable action,” and the buttons were worn by realtors in the Pasadena-Foothill area, who were concerned about another kind of search, inspectors barging through for-sale properties to eyeball houses before or during escrow. The Occupancy Inspection Program was Number 9 on the Council docket but booted up to the top of the agenda, it being the evening’s marquee agenda.

The program, which had been adopted in 1973 and not revised since 1991, had been an earlier issue of frustrated realtors, who had appeared in numbers at the Council a few weeks ago and demanded that the issue be addressed.

It had been. Staff recommended a streamlining of the inspection problem, a whittling down to essential safety issues in a house up for sale, though members of the audience—vociferous at times, even meriting a rebuke from the sergeant-at-arms—seemed to want to scrap the program altogether. They were not alone. John Kennedy, having been earlier elected for another year as the city’s Vice Mayor (which coincided on his birthday), proposed eliminating the process. Kennedy’s point—made at length by other speakers (the room was crowded by real estate agents)—was that in today’s real estate market, an inspector is a kind of fifth wheel, what with a website listing permits, loan appraisers, private inspectors, and a market-value populace likely to rat on a neighbor’s building violation. The point was made repeatedly:  the Occupancy Inspection Program was a legal dinosaur, blinking in the Mesozoic twilight. “This program is anachronistic and we need to move on,” Kennedy said.

Other speakers echoed this sentiment. “This program has outlived its usefulness,” said Bill Podley, of Podley Properties and a long-time realtor in the Pasadena area. (He confessed to being around when the original document was drawn up.)

”This program is counter-productive and a waste of resources,” Tyron Hampton said.

Yet others, while acknowledging the program is flawed, were against scrapping it altogether. For while there were ample resources for inspecting and listing violations, where was the power to enforce the correction? A buyer and seller might both be aware of potential problems, yet for reasons of self-interest be disinclined to fix them. Following the staff recommendations—a stripping of the process to flag only the most egregious violations—would keep a legal “trigger” in place while cutting back on paperwork and delays. “The fundamental premise of the program is valid,” Mayor Terry Tornek said

Realtors in the Pasadena-Foothill area at the Pasadena City Council meeting on Monday, May 7, 2018 (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).

The motion to abandon the program didn’t pass, and the Council left it to find a way to work with realtors to keep the city involved, and the realtors happy.

Earlier, in public commentary, one speaker suggested the conversion of a lawn bowling court to a grass-tennis court in Central Park. Another speaker praised interim police Chief John Perez for “reaching out to the community” in the wake of the Christophe Ballew incident. Another speaker, Teresa Mei Chuc, supported the “She Does” movement, a push to make the most vulnerable people in Pasadena heard. She read a poem* that bean “The flowers are blooming like Bruises on her face…” Finally, the owner of a business, European Wax Center in Hastings Ranch, complained about the homeless problem, worsened by the nearby recycling center.

*Poem by Teresa Mei Chuc

> Watch the entire Pasadena City Council meeting for Monday, May 7, 2018.