Polite Crowding Crackdown OKd : Moorpark: The city directs its two code enforcement officers to place a priority on eliminating illegal residential conversions of garages and other substandard buildings.

Moorpark city officials want their code enforcement officers to crack down on overcrowding in the city, but to do it with a soft touch.

The City Council has directed the city’s two code enforcement officers to place such a crackdown among their highest priorities in an effort to eliminate such overcrowding symptoms as the illegal residential conversion of garages, trailers, sheds and other substandard buildings.

At the same time, council members are considering changing the code enforcement officers’ khaki-colored uniforms because of complaints that the city employees resemble Ventura County sheriff’s deputies.

“From 10 feet away, you can’t tell the difference,” Mayor Paul W. Lawrason Jr. said. “It’s very intimidating to a lot of people in the city.”

Lawrason and other council members said they’re turning their attention to the overcrowding problem because it’s getting worse.

More and more downtown homeowners are complaining that their neighborhoods are becoming overrun with houses crammed with 20 to 25 people and that garages and parked trailers are being used as year-round residences, officials said.

Complaints are also increasing concerning other problems downtown that officials say are the fallout of overcrowding: men urinating outside or harassing women on the street, cars parked on lawns and noisy, late-night parties.

And the problem is spreading to the newer, more exclusive areas of Campus Park and Peach Hill, where there is an increasing number of complaints about overcrowded houses or illegal conversions of garages to apartments.

But an official at a local public service agency said Moorpark officials are choosing to crack down on overcrowding at the wrong time.

Many of the homeowners or renters who are doubling up with other families or leasing out their garages are probably victims of the recession, trying to meet mortgage or rent payments, said Ruben Castro, director of the Catholic Charities office in Moorpark.

And the people renting the garages, trailers or sheds have nowhere else to go, he said.

If the housing code is strictly enforced, Castro said, people are “going to wind up sleeping out in their cars, or out in the orchards.”

The answer to overcrowding isn’t stricter enforcement of building codes, he said. “The answer is this community needs more affordable housing, lots of it.”

City officials agree.

Moorpark has only 171 housing units set aside for households that earn 80% of the median income of $48,400 or less, contrasted with the 959 affordable housing units that it is supposed to have by 1994, according to guidelines set by the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Council members said those that they want to penalize are not financially struggling residents, but the landlords, often absentee landlords, who rake in huge profits by renting out garages and other substandard dwellings for $400 to $500 per month.

“There’s a balance between recognizing a consequence of our economic times versus those cases where there’s exploitation involved,” Councilman Bernardo M. Perez said.

People can be understanding of “two related families getting together because of financial hardship,” he said.

But “where you have an absentee landlord utilizing garages or substandard structures . . . to board excessive numbers of, usually, single males . . . the landowners need to be made responsible. They should be accountable to their neighbors.”

Council members, however, say they don’t support code enforcement through intimidation.

Lawrason, the council member who has pushed for changing the code enforcement officers’ uniforms to more civilian-like attire, said he is concerned that the city employees might be acting like deputies in addition to looking like them.

Two years ago the City Council increased the authority of code-enforcement officers, allowing them to write citations.

But “I’ve had complaints from the public that they’ve been authoritarian,” getting loud and aggressive with residents suspected of violating the housing codes, Lawrason said.

Mario Riley, a code enforcement officer who is primarily responsible for responding to complaints about overcrowding, said there have been no formal complaints against him or fellow officer Frank Mancino.

Riley said he doesn’t see himself as a villain who’s turning families out of their homes, but as a public servant helping to eliminate unsafe living conditions.

He recalls finding a family who bathed their infant outside because the garage where they lived didn’t have a fully equipped bathroom. And two downtown houses burned to the ground last year from fires started in the garages where people were living illegally, he said.

But Castro said even such squalid and dangerous living quarters are better than the alternative for most of these people.

“The alternative is being homeless, you’re out in the elements,” he said. “What could be more unsafe than that?”

The people who object to his uniform or behavior are probably just angry because they were caught violating city codes, he said.

Although he’s never presented himself as a deputy, Riley said, the similarity between his uniform and a deputy’s makes him feel safer on the job.

Most people who rent out garages, park cars on their front lawns or otherwise violate city housing codes don’t realize they’re breaking the law and are contrite when code enforcement officers come to their doors, Riley said.

But sometimes people are hostile, usually “the people who are blatantly in violation and know they are,” he said.

“I’ve had people threaten me with death,” he said. And “the only thing that has kept them from going off is that uniform.”

Although the code enforcement officers don’t carry weapons, their uniforms give them an air of authority, Riley said.

If the uniforms are changed and “I go out there dressed like a delivery person, they’re going to go ‘Who are you?’ ” he said.