NEWS of the WEEK cont’d
houSInG
PILInG on: Dario Pini claims city inspectors are looking for any pretext to shut him down. Here he shows a water-heater pipe — one-quarter inch in diameter too small, according to city building codes — that got his Alamar hotel closed. Pini said it took only half an hour to make the fix. City Hall, Pini claimed, has been on a personal vendetta to get him. His 21-room, beachfront hotel, the Alamar, was shut down, not because of rats or roaches, but because the hot water heater needed a three-quarter-inch pipe instead of the half-inch pipe it had. Calonne declined to engage in what he described as “cross talk” with Pini, stating only, “Mr. Pini will have an opportunity to explain his version of the facts when and if the city files an enforcement action against him.” Should that happen, Pini said he would deploy his considerable resources to resist. Pini isn’t saying exactly how many properties he owns, but he’s willing to acknowledge 100-150 rental properties within city limits. That doesn’t include holdings in Kern County, Las Vegas, Ventura, and Santa Maria. With this portfolio, Pini is easily rich enough to hire a management company and retire to the beach. “I could do that,” he agreed. “I could probably buy an entire island if I wanted to. But I’m committed to providing housing for these people.” By “these people,” Pini means Spanish-speaking immigrants. Over the years, Pini has been quick to accuse his accusers of racism and elitism. When it comes to providing housing for Santa Barbara’s immigrants and working poor, Pini insists, he’s the biggest game in town. Whether that’s their blessing or curse, however, remains the subject of intense debate. Pini is quick to point out that both his parents were Given Pini’s long legal history, that’s one defiantly Italian immigrants who immigrated to the United States audacious T-shirt joke. when they were infants. Pini grew up in the Bay Area, his But Pini’s demeanor is strictly deadpan. To the extent father a butcher who worked eight hours a day in a freezer box, his hands regularly cut to ribbons. His grandfather irony is intended, none is betrayed. For Calonne, there’s nothing remotely amusing about cleaned San Francisco’s streetcar tracks. As a kid, Pini was Pini or the unsafe housing conditions to which Pini’s a standout baseball player and was drafted out of college tenants are routinely subjected: rats, cockroaches, faulty in 1972 by a minor league farm team for the Oakland wiring, backed-up toilets, garbage spilling over, cold Athletics. When baseball didn’t pan out, Pini moved to hot-water heaters, wires exposed, and people sleeping in Santa Barbara, where he worked 19 years as a specialquarters too tight for human habitation: children in closets, education instructor for the Santa Barbara School District. adults on balconies under thin plastic tarps, families in There, he recalled, he handled the unruliest of kids.“I guess crawl spaces. Overcrowding is everywhere: 16 beds in a that’s why I’m so tolerant,” he said.“I dealt with these types two-bedroom apartment, 20 people in another. of people. I have more patience. I try to resolve problems.” All this, Calonne said, city inspectors expected. What Pini’s detractors are quick to dismiss such claims as wasn’t expected, he said, was the sheer volume of children nauseatingly self-serving. Former educators who claim living in what he termed “21st-century slum conditions.” to have worked with Pini remember a man absolutely Fifty percent of the people at driven to make money. Pini’s properties were kids. They are no doubt Calonne was struck by the correct, and make effect they had on him. But money he absolutely then, he added, even streetand spectacularly did. But over the years, many hardened cops who assisted attorneys representing in the sweeps were shaken tenants in landlordby what they encountered. tenant disputes have “When the public sees what the inspectors saw,” Calonne conceded — however predicted, “it will shock the privately — that Pini has conscience of the community.” been unusually willing Calonne, in the meantime, to strike a deal with has been strategically selective problem tenants. And for with what information and SAMe oLd, SAMe oLd: Pini properties have long been notorithose unable to provide what images he’s released thus ous for overcrowding and dilapidated conditions. City inspectors the financial paperwork far. That’s been necessary, he found tenants living on balconies tented with plastic tarps. needed to pass muster said, for inspectors to maintain with other landlords, the element of surprise and also to protect the integrity of Pini’s doors — albeit dilapidated — have always been open. Late rents are not forgiven, but they are accommodated, any legal action City Hall may eventually take against Pini. But Pini claimed that Calonne took liberties with some of evictions initiated only when tenants got four to five the photographs he released to the media in a press release months late. Pini claims he’s owed about $160,000 in late early last weekend. One photo, for example, showed a dead rent by some of his current tenants. Normally, that figure rat in a trap placed on top of a neatly folded News-Press. is closer to $100,000. “Things are getting worse,” he said. “That’s from my own house,” Pini exclaimed. Likewise, he Pets and kids were never an issue for Pini. Neither were claimed, a photograph showing a partially built bathroom sheets and blankets used to divide a one-room unit into — described in the press as being in use — was from the two. Dining rooms and living rooms, as Pini reads state building codes, qualify as habitable living space. guest quarters of his own Mission Ridge home.
Into the FryIng Pan City Hall Wages Enforcement Battle Against Landlord Pini
I
by Nick Welsh f Dario Pini is nervous, he doesn’t show it. And if he’s joking, he’s not letting on. For the past 40 years, Dario Pini has loomed large in Santa Barbara’s urban folk mythology as the city’s single most notorious landlord. Twenty-two years ago, City Hall succeeded in putting Pini in jail for a slew of slumlord building-code violations. In 2011, a statewide tenants-rights organization declared Pini “slumlord of the year.” One year later, City Hall threw the book at Pini with a 67-count complaint alleging wholesale building safety violations, and today, City Hall is after Pini again for all the same reasons. But this time, City Hall is pursuing the legal steps necessary to wrest control of Pini’s vast rental empire — home, Pini says, to at least 1,000 Santa Barbara city tenants. That makes it a very big deal. City Attorney Ariel Calonne, not given to theatrics, called the city’s latest action “unprecedented.” Last week, Calonne stated Pini could not be trusted to bring his properties up to basic safety standards. More to the point, Calonne charged, Pini lacked “the capability” to do so. That’s when Calonne took the first step to end the interminable game of cat and mouse he contends Pini has been playing with building code inspectors for the past 20 years. That’s when the city attorney dispatched a team of 20 cops, firefighters, and city inspectors — armed with a search warrant issued by Judge Jean Dandona allowing the use of force if need be — to inspect 164 of Pini’s whoknows-how-many rental units. In an interview with The Santa Barbara Independent last Sunday, Pini accused Calonne and City Hall of strongarm tactics that served only to terrify his tenants — largely poor, Mexican immigrants who speak little English — when less draconian methods were readily at hand. If City Hall succeeds in its mission, Pini claimed, “hundreds and hundreds” of his renters will find themselves without a home. Given the harsh realities of Santa Barbara’s rental market, he argued, few of these displaced tenants will find new landlords anywhere as accommodating as he’s been. At the conclusion of the interview — held at Pini’s Villa Rosa hotel by the city’s West Beach waterfront — Pini stood up and turned around, revealing in the process the words written on the back of his black T-shirt: “If a man says he’ll fix it, there’s no need to remind him every six months.”
c it y of santa ba r bar a
pau l wellm an
dec. 8-15, 2016
cont’d on p. 16 ~
independent.com
December 15, 2016
THE INDEPENDENt
15