Long Beach : Landlord Takes Steps to Clear Out Drug Problems

A landlord ordered by the city to clean up 12 drug-troubled apartment buildings has hired eight on-site managers and evicted problem tenants in the past two months, officials said Tuesday.

City officials had given David Gomez 70 days to improve management of his properties or face the prospect of the buildings being shut down. The Police Department, in late May, told the city that it had spent $217,000 and made 134 drug-related arrests in and around the 12 buildings.

The department’s drug abatement program, which monitors drug activity on private properties and works with landlords to clean them up, identified all of Gomez’s 67 properties as problems but only declared a public nuisance at 12 of them.

Gomez hired Luis Pinel, president of the Hispanic Apartment Managers Assn., to manage 10 of his locations. He installed a security gate at one of the buildings and removed graffiti at all of them, said Sharon J. Jackson, who heads the abatement program.

Police have made only one drug-related arrest at a Gomez property in the past 60 days, she said, adding that the department will continue to monitor the buildings for at least another 90 days.