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Life & Times Transcript
09/22/05 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Would you believe people live in these conditions in this day and age in Los Angeles? Rebecca Isaac>> This is a roach. And you see parts of the ceiling collapsing. The place is just really not the place that you would want to go. You wouldn't want to live there unless you absolutely had to. Val Zavala>> And then, a story of revenge, a frantic plane trip and a Dickens classic. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Health officials have called it one of the worst slums in Los Angeles. It's an apartment building in Echo Park where families with young children are living in squalor. So why do landlords in this day and age of rising property values neglect their buildings and why don't tenants just move? Well, as Hena Cuevas found out, the answers are not as simple as the questions. A quick word of warning. Some of the pictures in the story are fairly disgusting. Hena Cuevas>> Finding an affordable place to live in Los Angeles is a daunting task. Rents are so high that the average for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment is sixteen hundred dollars a month. And nearly two-thirds of Los Angeles residents can't afford to pay that. Sixty-two year old Antonio Razo is among them. Antonio Razo>> I don't receive too much money because I don't have a high education and it's very hard to looking for another place. Hena Cuevas>> Razo works in a factory. He, his wife and son live in this apartment building in Echo Park. They pay four hundred dollars a month which doesn't get them much. In fact, it gets them a slum. We weren't allowed to shoot inside the apartment, but their building was featured in several Spanish language newscasts that highlighted the deplorable conditions. Health officials visited the building and declared it one of the worst in the city. So why don't the Razos move? Antonio Razo>> Well, I tried to looking for another place, but right now the rent is very expensive because one apartment with a single room is around six hundred dollars or a little bit over. So I have to spend maybe over two weeks to pay it. Hena Cuevas>> Conditions got so bad that the residents decided to get legal help. Two years ago, they contacted the Inner City Law Center. Thomas Freiberg>> There's just no end to the landlords who let their buildings become uninhabitable and create really intolerable conditions. Hena Cuevas>> Thomas Freiberg is one of the attorneys at the Law Center in the Skid Row area of downtown. He and a group of lawyers donate their time to help low-income tenants fight negligent landlords. Thomas Freiberg>> If they can collect the rent and spend very little to maintain their buildings, I'm sure that there's a profit margin there that works very well for them. Hena Cuevas>> In the most extreme cases, they've even taken landlords to court. Rebecca Isaac>> I think the worst actual situation that happened was a building that actually collapsed. Hena Cuevas>> According to Rebecca Isaac, Executive Director of the Law Center, going to court is a last resort. Instead, they prefer to get apartment buildings fixed up. Rebecca Isaac>> Lawsuits are basically what you do when you can't solve the problem any other way, which is why I'm so proud that we have -- you know, we start at the very beginning and work, you know, all the angles to try to resolve the problems. Hena Cuevas>> So how do you take on an obstinate landlord? In the case of Razo's building, the group guided residents through the proper procedures, how to request and document improvements. This home video shows Razo's building with no hot water, no carpet, linoleum that's missing, mold and rusty faucets. Rebecca Isaac>> And you see sewage and you see parts of the ceiling collapsing and, you know, the place is just really not the place that you would want to go. You wouldn't want to live there unless you absolutely had to. Hena Cuevas>> But according to Julius Thompson, one of the Center's attorneys, this isn't the worst they've seen. Julius Thompson>> Even children that get -- there's such a heavy cockroach infestation that at night cockroaches crawl into the ear canal of people sleeping and people wake up in terrible pain. If they're lucky, they get the cockroach removed. Otherwise, it just sort of dies in there. Hena Cuevas>> And it's not just roaches. They also found rats, and the fleas were virtually eating the children alive. Rebecca Isaac>> It's very difficult for me to go to those places and see the kids in those conditions. It's painful to me. Hena Cuevas>> Despite the pressure on landlords and the documentation, the owners refused to make repairs. So last year, the Inner City Law Center began legal proceedings against not only the current owner, but previous ones. Julius Thompson>> We're suing the three past owners of this building for not keeping it in compliance with the city and county codes and also for the injuries that our clients have suffered living here as tenants. Hena Cuevas>> But Isaac says this is not a typical case. Fortunately, most landlords will comply once the problems are pointed out and a little legal pressure is applied. Rebecca Isaac>> There is only a very small group of people who, I think, make their money by just extracting as much as possible out of these very poor people and also refuse to keep their buildings in decent condition. Hena Cuevas>> Razo's building is an extreme case. We contacted the owner for an interview and they said they would respond, but never did. Now the case is scheduled to go to trial in March of 2006. To complicate matters, a fire broke out in the attic over this past Fourth of July weekend destroying half of the building. Twenty-eight families were left homeless, among them Maria Zarate, her husband and three children who lived on the bottom floor. Maria Zarate>> There was a small explosion and after that is when you could see the fire very high up in the sky. Everybody was screaming, especially those who lived in that unit. The children were screaming and the mother was desperate. Hena Cuevas>> The Zarates had to find another place to live, but it meant moving from a rent-controlled apartment to one costing much more. Their old place was four hundred twenty dollars a month. Their new apartment is almost twice as much and it isn't in any better shape. Maria Zarate>> Unfortunately, the building is in very bad condition. There are a lot of gangs. The police come by every day. There's a lot of noise. It's very bad. Julius Thompson>> When you've been in rent control and you go to the open market, you're going to be paying double, sometimes triple, what your rent was. And because people have ties to the community, they want to find something in the same area, but there's less and less units available. Hena Cuevas>> Part of the reason for the high rents, says Isaac, is the gentrification of downtown neighborhoods where low-income housing is usually found. Rebecca Isaac>> People really want to move into these areas and they see them as potential investments, so there's less and less housing stock for people. So, you know, it's harder and harder to find places. Hena Cuevas>> Downtown Los Angeles is going through a building boom, turning older buildings into thousands of trendy and expensive condos and lofts with prices rivaling Beverly Hills real estate. And according to Freiberg, some building owners want to join that frenzy. Thomas Freiberg>> They're trying to get our tenants out, fix these buildings up and then sell them at a profit because of their location. Hena Cuevas>> Under rent control, landlords can only increase rents by three percent each year and they make more money when they get a new tenant. So according to Freiberg, a lot of landlords just simply neglect their buildings, hoping to force their tenants out. Once they leave, they go in, fix the buildings and charge a lot more rent to the new tenant. After twenty-five years of helping low-income tenants, the Inner City Law Center can boast over one hundred percent success rate. Still, Freiberg is hoping for the day when demand for their services subsides. Thomas Freiberg>> Oh, it would be wonderful if we could dissolve and sell all these books and give this space back to someone else, but that'll never happen. Hena Cuevas>> Until then, these attorneys will have their work cut out for them, working to make living conditions for families like the Razos decent, clean and healthy. I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> It's in the middle of nowhere north of Santa Barbara, an entire Mexican village picture-perfect to the last tile. So how did this enchanting place come to be and why is it virtually abandoned? Stephanie O'Neill Noe heads north to find out. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Between the bustling central coast city of Santa Maria and Bakersfield in the central valley lies a one hundred twenty mile stretch of California Highway 166. It's a lightly traveled, picturesque two-lane road in east Santa Barbara County. It takes you first through the rolling hills of the Sierra Madre Mountains, then into the expansive farmlands of the Cuyama River Valley and it's here on off-the-beaten-track farmland behind rows of seemingly misplaced Italian poplar trees that one man's dream lies abandoned, at least for now. Jose Luis Bonilla is a Mexican entrepreneur who came to this little-known valley in 1979. With profits from several Mexican markets, he began work not on a dream home, but a dream village. That's right. An actual Mexican village complete with this full-size Mexican rodeo arena and seating for three thousand spectators, horse stables large enough for seventy Andalusia horses, many of which he would fly in from Spain, a reservoir with a giant fountain, a bandstand topped with ornate handcrafted metal work, street lights also made on-site, park benches and exotic landscaping, all of it in what many would call the middle of nowhere. Idoya Bonilla is Jose Luis's youngest child who helps oversee the Rancho. Idoya Bonilla>> Little by little, he started investing here in this ranch that they told him about. He liked it because it was far away from the city. He didn't want us to grow up in -- he lived in Riverside and he really didn't like it for us because it was growing and the schools were too big. He said, oh, I want my kids to live like I lived in Mexico where you have to go work and take care of the horses and stuff. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Your whole life essentially you've spent living here and watching your dad build this place. Idoya Bonilla>> Yeah. Ever since we got here and I was like nine months. Little by little, he started building things and he started out with the arena for my older brother. He likes the Mexican rodeo. With that is where he started and said I want to make something really nice. Since we lived here, he started collecting rocks. He'd buy big old dump trucks and start filling them up with rocks and sending them out there all day, just collect rocks and collect rocks until he had enough and he started building and go collect more. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Only one problem. In twenty years of building, Bonilla never bothered with getting permits for all the construction and, without knowledge of county officials, Bonilla had dozens of men working morning to night fulfilling his dream. The permit problem didn't surface until the year 2000. That's when Bonilla began filling these stadium seats with several thousand rodeo and concert spectators. Harrell Fletcher>> His vision was that this would be a Mexican Solvang, that he would have restaurants and shops, a church, and just make this a piece of Mexico that people could come and visit. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Harrell Fletcher is a land agent who is helping Luis Bonilla get permits for the village. No small task, but Fletcher says the extensive photo-documentation of the building process coupled with the quality engineering and construction has so far impressed inspectors. John Karamitsos is a supervisor with the Santa Barbara County Planning and Development Department. He says, while it is alarming to him that his office was unaware of the two-decade long project, he nevertheless believes that Rancho Bonilla will qualify for the necessary permits. John Karamitsos>> What we have here is out in probably the most rural part of Santa Barbara County, something that really is spectacular and rivals some of the most impressive structural development within the county. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> For years, Bonilla directed workers to collect building materials from his five hundred acres of ranchland surrounding the village. Abandoned oil pipe was transformed into fencing and corrals and he used river rock to create an authentic Mexican feel. Harrell Fletcher>> All the rock is from the area. This area used to be a river bed, so all these were round tumbled rocks, and he has taken and matched all these rocks and chipped them so that they would be smooth-faced for the front. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> River rock entirely blankets Bonilla's rodeo arena which is considered one of the world's best such examples. Harrell Fletcher>> This is the entrance to the arena. They have the pits where the animals could come out from there on the left side and then bulls could come and they would have bloodless bullfights here also. It's an exact replica of a bull arena. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> A Mexican bull arena? Harrell Fletcher>> Right. They come out of those pens and down and open that door right there and let them in. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Sam Quinones is an author and Los Angeles Times reporter who lives in and wrote about Mexico for ten years. Sam Quinones>> It's this beautiful monument to kind of a fevered mind. You know, the guy let nothing stand in his way. He just went out there and built and built more and, as he built more, that allowed him to think of even grander designs and grander schemes and that allowed him to even build more and on it went for twenty or twenty-five years or so. To me, it's a reminder of why people came to California in part. It's the ability to -- the state was kind of once this blank slate in which kind of anybody's imagination could take flight. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> But frustration about permits and regulations of today's California prompted Bonilla three years ago to return to his home in Zacatecas, Mexico. Idoya Bonilla>> There was like so much more he wants to do with it, but just time and money and permits, sometimes he gets really frustrated. He's like I'm building all this and it's not giving me anything. It's like a big white elephant (laughter). Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> Bonilla has even gone so far as to put the ranch up for sale, but only to the right buyer. Idoya Bonilla>> Not really about money, but about appreciation, about the horses, about the taking care of it, keeping the trees, keeping everything the way it is or better, someone who loves it as much as he does. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> How would you feel if he sold it? Idoya Bonilla>> Oh, no, no. I don't want him to. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> This is your home. Idoya Bonilla>> Yeah. Stephanie O'Neill Noe>> As Idoya Bonilla and her family await final word from county building inspectors, they continue to invest their time schooling local youngsters in the art of Mexican rodeo, their hope being that Rancho Bonilla will again become a showcase of authentic Mexican culture. For Life and Times, I'm Stephanie O'Neill Noe in the Cuyama River Valley. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first movie this week is the thriller, "Flightplan", starring Jodie Foster. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com, and Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. Henry, what did you think of "Flightplan"? Henry Sheehan>> What a stinker (laughter). I mean, this is just really bad. It's an old gimmick. I saw it done in the Alfred Hitchcock Hour years ago and "Frantic", the Roman Polanski movie, takes the same plot. It's that a person loses a loved one and everyone denies that the loved one was ever with her. This time, it takes place on a plane and, believe me, that's not a very helpful plot, as it turns out. Jodie Foster is the mother. Peter Sarsgaard is on board as the flight marshal. Sean Bean is the pilot. You know, plenty of opportunities for red herrings and to figure out who the bad guy is. But it just drags and goes on and on and there are incredible loose ends that are just left hanging. The screening I was at, the public hissed this movie. Larry Mantle>> Oooh. Jean? Jean Oppenheimer>> We were at the same screening, I think. Larry Mantle>> Were you a hisser? Jean Oppenheimer>> No, I wasn't, but I was very disappointed with the film. I mean, sometimes to me, the best part about a film is really the setup. I mean, it sets up some great dilemma or conflict or character, but in this case, it had nowhere to really go with it. Where it went was completely unbelievable. That, I think, was the worst part about it. It was a plot development that I just found so unconvincing that it just ruined all the good will that the film had, you know, created to that point. I wasn't crazy about the first part, but compared to the second part, the first part wasn't a bad setup. "Flightplan" is actually reminiscent of a 1965 British film called "Bunny Lake is Missing" that I thought was so much better, but it's also about a mother whose child goes missing and does the child really exist? Larry Mantle>> Next up is a film from Canadian director, David Cronenberg, "A History of Violence". [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of "A History of Violence"? Jean Oppenheimer>> I thought it was really terrific. I mean, it has one of the best structured screenplays I think that I have ever encountered. It has an excellent setup that really quickly and beautifully establishes what we need to know about the central family. It's a happy marriage, the kid has some problems at school, it's a close-knit family, blah, blah, blah. The story moves at a perfect pace. The film touches on so many issues, most of them centered around violence, what violence does to the individual, to a community, what happens when violence is unleashed. Viggo Mortensen has never been this good before. He is just terrific. And Maria Bello, who's an actress that I've always liked, is equally good. There's also a debut performance by a young man named Ashton Holmes who plays the son who I thought was great. It's an exciting film. It's well written and it has something to say. Larry Mantle>> Henry, do you agree? Henry Sheehan>> Oh, very much. I think this is really one of the top movies of the year, maybe the best movie of the year. You know, we're used to David Cronenberg making monster movies in which the person turning into a monster kind of embraces the change that's going on within him or her. At first glance, this looks like a gangster movie. I mean, you know, Ed Harris shows up and he's scarred and he's in the black suit and he's got a couple of gonzos with him and that kind of goes on throughout the movie. But it is also about monsters. It is also about, you know, tremendous changes that people are undergoing almost to the point where they become unrecognizable, but they embrace these changes. You know, they like them, so in that sense, it is a monster picture. Just in terms of technical filmmaking, it's superb and all these acts of violence that happen in the movie are continually surprising. I mean, even as you've seen an act of violence and figure that later there has to be more, when it comes, it is a shock, but it's also a surprise. Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, we have the directorial return of Roman Polanski and his take on Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist". [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Well, Henry, here you have a gifted director. How did he do with Dickens' material? Henry Sheehan>> Well, yes, you have a very modern director. I mean, one of the directors who defines modern filmmaking or modernist filmmaking taking on very traditional material and I thought he did just a terrific job. I mean, bringing all kinds of modern techniques and attitudes towards very traditional material. I mean, this is a very nice adaptation of Dickens, good for the whole family, but it's also another Polanski movie about evil and how society can be suffused with it. You know, we think of the Victorians as loving their children. Polanski gives us a society where adults look down on children as liars and untrustworthy. You have a great conception of Fagin as this guy who never changes. I mean, he's always sweetness and light whether he's seducing these kids into criminality or whether he's deciding that one or more of them has to be killed. I mean, he never changes. He always operates at the same level, which fits really nicely into Polanski's definition of pervasive evil. Larry Mantle>> Jean, do you agree? Jean Oppenheimer>> No, I don't. I'm about a hundred eighty degrees away from that. I found this to be a really disappointingly flat film and very sort of disjointed. Halfway through the film, the focus shifts away from Oliver and onto some of the other characters, none of whom are as appealing as the kid, and I think the way the story is put together, it becomes very choppy. I feel that this is probably the most autobiographical of Polanski's films. I mean, it's impossible to watch without drawing parallels really between the title character's hard-scrabbled life and Polanski's own childhood in Poland. But I don't feel that he made this emotionally involving to me at all. One of his great strengths normally is creating atmosphere and I didn't feel he succeeded in that area either. Larry Mantle>> As always, it's great to have you with us. For FilmWeek on Life and Times, I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Henry Sheehan of henrysheehan.com. Please join us again next week for our next FilmWeek on Life and Times. Val Zavala>> KPCC public radio broadcasts a full hour of FilmWeek Friday mornings at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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