Content area
Full Text
Devanand Sharma owns a quiet apartment complex in the midst of a troubled Westlake neighborhood where heroin addicts and youthful gang members control the public alleyways and clamber across people's rooftops to elude police.
Despite the grim surroundings, longtime tenants of the complex, many of them poor, said they always considered the building a pleasant place to live-in fact "one of the nicest" in the Westlake district.
Tenants say Sharma does not raise the rent every year, as he could under city rent laws, and responds promptly to reports of broken appliances or plumbing. The graffiti left by gangs is regularly painted over.
So the tenants were surprised to learn that Sharma was sued March 1 by the city attorney, who in a stinging press release described a neglected hovel filled with falling plaster, filth and rodents.
Sharma, who has vowed to clear his name, believes he is a victim of guilt by association. In its press release, the city attorney linked Sharma to his older brother, Vijaynand, who was sentenced in 1988 to 23 months in prison for scores of building code violations and is now a fugitive. The Vijaynand Sharma case received heavy media coverage in the 1980s.
"Why is this case in court?" Devanand Sharma asked. "They (the city) did not try to work with me, not even for one day, to come up with reasonable deadlines for the major work. I feel that the city attorney saw my last name-Sharma-and said, `Can we catch him in some act? Can we throw any violations at him?' "
Deputy City Atty. Richard Bobb, contends that Sharma "was not treated any differently than anyone else" who is targeted by the city attorney's aggressive anti-slum task force.
On March 1, Bobb told The Times that Sharma had neglected the 30-unit complex at 737 S. Westlake Ave. to the point of "making it really disgusting," and said: "You would think...