GOOD BYE, GANGA DIN

The Rent Control Board made a stunning announcement at its meeting of July 7, 2005. It announced that its Senior Staff attorney, Doris Ganga, was retiring after working for the Board for 18 years. She was replaced by David Daniels, who previously worked for the Santa Monica Rent Control Board around 1990 and then was the senior attorney for the West Hollywood Rent Stabilization Commission for a few years.

The Rent Control Board has only had four Senior Attorneys during its 25 year history and Doris Ganga served the longest and was the only senior attorney who began working for the Board as a hearing examiner. I wrote a number of Rent Board Stories about her, the first was in March 1994 and it concerned the creative way she found to “block” rent increases when she was a hearing examiner. It is reprinted below in her memory.

RENT BOARD STORIES, Part 7
LADY DIANE’S BURDEN OF POOP

Diane was a foxy young lady who owned and operated a seventeen-unit apartment building located on Ocean Avenue. In December 1988, she filed a rent increase petition in order to prove that the property did not provide a “fair return” (whatever that term means.) She worked diligently on her increase petition for months, then sat in hearings for days and when it was over, she had a 135 page decision from a hearing examiner which found that although Diane was entitled to a rent increase, she couldn’t implement it because the increases were “blocked”.

Those of you who have gone through the rent increase process as inflicted by the Santa Monica Rent Control Board know that once an increase petition is filed, the Board sends inflammatory letters to all the tenants (“Tenant Response Forms”) which encourage the tenants to come to the hearing in order to complain about conditions on the property and to file “ugly pictures” to show why rent increases should be “blocked.”

The practice of “blocking” rent increases arose over the years and those of you who are not familiar with the concept, imagine that increase hearing is like a hockey game, and the Hearing Examiner is the “goalie” who is attempting to “block” rent increases by finding that conditions on the property constitute “substantial violations of health and safety laws.”

For the first five years of rent control, increases were not “blocked” unless a citation had been issued upon the landlord by the Department of Health and Safety or some other agency competent to make such determinations. But once the Board found that competent government agencies were not appropriately harsh with landlords, the Board hired its own investigators and let incompetent hearing examiners make the determinations instead.

In Diane’s case, her increases were “blocked” for all units because the tenants claimed that dog excrement (i.e. “poop”) could be found on the sidewalks and common areas of the property. The tenants claimed that a small poodle which belonged to Diane’s sister was the primary source of the poop. But Diane counter-claimed that more dogs lived in tenant-occupied units and that one of those dogs was a “boxer”, which is a type of dog that has a natural propensity to be a more prolific pooper than a poodle.

In order to resolve the dispute, the Hearing Examiner conducted an on-site inspection, but when she only found one small piece of poop by a tenants door, we were sure that the rent increases would “pass-through” freely without being “blocked” despite the “burden of poop” that she placed on Diane. But we were wrong because when hearing examiner, Doris Ganga, finally issued a written decision, it included Finding of Fact 34 which states:

“There is a continuing problem with dog excrement on walkways on the south and north sides of the property.”

And as a result of finding that one puppy nugget, the increase was blocked for the entire building! I thought the hearing examiners decision was so outrageous that I filed an appeal to the Rent Board, which stated the following arguments:

Argument #1 is titled, “The North Side Of The Property Is A Public Area and There Is No Way To Tell Which Pooch Pooped.”

Argument #2 is titled, “There Is No Place On The Property For Puppies To Poop and Therefore The Claim That All Poop Came From The Petitioner’s Sister’s Pooch Is Not Supported By Photos or Proof.”

Argument #3 is titled, “The On-Site Inspection By The Hearing Examiner Only Revealed One Small Piece Of Poop And Therefore The Decision Is Not Supported By Substantial Evidence.”

Argument #4 is titled, “As Long As Pets Are Allowed On the Property There Will Be A Problem With Poop No Matter How Much The Petitioner Scoops.”

The narrative stated below was as also included with the appeal in support of the technical legal arguments made above:

“They wanted the Examiner, to come on that night, to inspect the premises and make an on-site.

But she politely refused, until the next day, but by then, sure enough, all of the poop was away!

All, but for one piece, just outside Unit 3, but that was enough for the Examiner to see.

“Ah-ha!” said the Examiner with a smile on her face, “I knew, if I looked, I’d find poop in this place!”

And the increase was “blocked”, as sure as can be, because of the one little piece of poop she found by Unit number 3.

But she should have looked further, for she could have seen more, by looking just inside of Unit 3’s door.

By the date of decision, the tenant had gone, and lucky enough, he took “Boxer” along.
Now Petitioner has pictures for the Rent Board to see, about all the poop inside Unit 3.

But though the tenant is gone, and the poop is no more, it’s spirit remains: Finding Of Fact 34.

In addition to the written arguments above, the appeal included “ugly pictures” of unit No. 3, which had been abandoned by the tenant and left in a horrible condition while the decision was being written. The photos showed dog poop all over the carpet of Unit 3.

Although the Legal Staff did not directly overrule the Hearing Examiner, the rent control investigator was sent back to the property and when he failed to find any poop, the increases were quickly “unblocked”, to Diane’s great relief.

I would like to report that the Hearing Examiner who wrote the nasty decision in Diane’s case was not reprimanded, flogged or fired, but unfortunately she was promoted to the Legal Staff instead. More unfortunately, there has not been much improvement in the quality of her work since she the days when was a hearing examiner, happily “blocking” rent increases with whatever substance was at hand.

So, should you ever need to prove to any disbeliever that the Santa Monica Rent Control Board puts apartment owners through a lot of crap, you can easily win the argument by obtaining a copy of Rent Board Story I-1047 from the Rent Board.But be careful when you review the file! Some of the exhibits are really nasty!