Overcrowding was widely cited by Santa Barbara inspectors at the Dario Pini-owned properties in receivership, and dozens of residents are being displaced as part of the process to fix code violations, according to progress reports submitted to Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Colleen Sterne.
After surprise inspections at 13 properties owned by the prolific Santa Barbara landlord, the City Attorney’s Office filed an unfair competition action in 2017, accusing him of more than 3,000 violations of health and safety codes.
The complaint alleged that Pini’s “thousands of unlawful acts and neglect” go back to the early 1980s, and that his residents are exposed to hazardous, substandard living conditions.
Pini owns at least 100 properties in Santa Barbara, according to the City Attorney’s Office.
The court-appointed receiver, William Hoffman, submitted reports with updates on construction and notices sent to residents to comply with occupancy limits. The reports do not count these displacements as evictions.
At the 320 W. Mission St. apartment building, 10 of the 15 units were overcrowded, according to Hoffman’s most recent batch of reports, from June. Residents in affected units were sent 60-day notices to comply with residency limits.
The receiver is using the Santa Barbara city guidelines for overcrowding, which are harsher and affect more units than the California “two plus one” method — two people per bedroom, plus one — and the Housing Authority’s occupancy guidelines, according to the June report.
“After reviewing the analysis, the city ultimately decided that the current code standard (IPMC) must be applied to determine the maximum number of occupants per unit,” stated the June report from TriGild Residential, a company Hoffman employed to manage the properties in this case.
The International Property Maintenance Code outlines 50 square feet per occupant of bedroom space, so depending on the size of the bedroom, only two people are allowed in a one-bedroom unit, while the state “two plus one method” would allow three.
The IPMC occupancy standard is “the only one we can use,” John Doimas of the Santa Barbara City Attorney’s Office said. “We have to use what’s in our code.”
Santa Barbara may look to change its residency guidelines, but even with a change, some units would inevitably still be classified as overcrowded, Doimas added. Children under a certain age don’t factor into head counts when calculating whether a unit is overcrowded, he said.
In June, the complex at 318-320 W. Valerio St. had 13 overcrowded units, out of 14 occupied units. Ten people were living in a three-bedroom apartment, according to the report.
Hoffman, the receiver, has given notices to residents to remedy the violation by not being overcrowded, Doimas said, adding that some people had already done that as of late August.
“While we understand the housing shortage, we also realize by allowing overcrowding, it has an impact on buildings, they run down very quickly,” he said.
There are efforts to help the displaced residents find other housing in livable conditions, which is the whole goal of the code-violations case, Doimas said.
The Santa Barbara Foundation has helped by holding informational meetings for tenants and assisting with relocation for some of them, he added, which was also noted in the court-mandated reports.
Architectural planning and construction are underway on the properties to fix code violations, with some repairs already complete.
The most recent court documents in this case have been motions to reduce Hoffman’s receivership fees for certain properties, filed by Pini attorney Paul Burns.
Sterne in 2018 assigned a receiver to seven of Pini’s multitenant residential properties and requires regular reports on them: 320 W. Mission St., 313 W. Arrellaga St., 329 E. Carrillo St., 104 Los Aguajes Ave., 626-630 W. Cota St., 318-320 W. Valerio St. and 615 San Pascual St. (which is vacant and planned to be demolished).
Sterne did not appoint a receiver for the perpetually-in-progress Fiesta Inn at 1816 State St., but a receiver was assigned to Pini’s hotel at 26 Chapala St., which allegedly has a history of unpermitted construction, according to court documents.
In 2015, city officials ordered Pini to finish construction on the Fiesta Inn renovation project within six months — or face more fines. Four years later, it has not been finished.
The cities of Carpinteria and Santa Maria have also filed code violation cases against Pini and reached settlement agreements.
Carpinteria recently sued for an alleged breach of settlement contract.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
