Code Violations Lead to Landlords’ Arrest

Three owners of a Van Nuys apartment building were charged with 29 violations of various fire, health, building and safety codes Thursday after failing to heed several warnings from city and county agencies to clean up their Victory Boulevard building.

Guido Fernando Arias, 33; his wife, Nottha Pornprasit, 41, and her sister, Priya Pornprasit, 45, all of Van Nuys, could each face up to 14 years in prison and be ordered to pay several thousand dollars in fines if convicted of all the charges, according to the city attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said the building at 15135 Victory Blvd. has defective fire doors, an untested fire standpipe system, cockroach infestation, broken doors, leaky plumbing, peeling paint, worn flooring, exposed electrical wiring and is missing ground-fault interrupters.

“The building in question is in need of a lot of repairs, a lot of work,” said Deputy City Atty. Michael Wilkinson. “They [the owners] had several chances to comply but they never did.”

The arrests followed more than six months of inspections of the three-story apartment building by the city Department of Building and Safety, the Fire Department and the county Health Department.

After each agency inspected the site, the owners were warned to rectify the violations but neglected to do so, authorities said.

Finally, the Slum Housing Task Force of the city attorney’s office gave the owners 30 days to bring the building up to code. They were arrested after they missed that deadline, Wilkinson said.

Each of the 29 counts is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Wilkinson said that in most cases, the penalty will not be as harsh and that Arias and the Pornprasit sisters are more likely to get a substantial fine, an order to make repairs and a bill to cover the costs of the investigation because it is their first offense.

Efforts on Thursday to reach the building owners were unsuccessful.