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A 10-year-old girl was molested after she was the only girl placed in a Tucson group home that also housed an older boy with a history of sexual issues, her mother alleges in a lawsuit filed last week.

The girl was placed in a group home run by Gap Ministries, which police reports show has a history of abuse between the children in its care.

Her mother, whom the Star is not identifying because she and her children share the same last name, says her two kids were placed in the group home in August 2013, a year after she lost custody for exposing them to a potentially dangerous family member.

She said the group home’s failure to supervise and promptly report her daughter’s molestation by a 13-year-old boy — who also was in CPS custody and living in the home — led to continued abuse by the boy.

She says the group home didn’t call police to report the suspected abuse and the boy wasn’t removed from the home until the mother called police herself, more than a week after the home knew about the abuse. During that time the girl was molested at least once more, her mother said.

She regained custody of her daughter and 8-year-old son in March. Her daughter, now 11, is still dealing with the trauma, she said.

“She has a lot of nightmares,” her mother said.

Gap Ministries officials would not discuss the lawsuit with the Star or answer questions about the supervision of children in its group homes.

“Due to the sensitivity and the nature of the issue, we are not able to make a comment. We really need to respect the privacy and honor those that are involved in this issue,” said Greg Ayers, Gap Ministries founder and president, in a voice mail.

The faith-based Gap Ministries runs 13 homes, known as Splash Houses, throughout Pima County. Most are licensed to house up to 10 children, ages birth to 17, and are staffed by two full-time, live-in house parents. Most of the homes can also house two additional children of staff members.

The mother and attorney Lynne Cadigan filed the complaint against the state, the group home and various employees in Pima County Superior Court on Wednesday.

DETAILS OF THE CASE

The mother said her daughter told her during a Sept. 28, 2013, visit that an older boy at the group home had touched her sexually. She reported the abuse on Sept. 30 by emailing her daughter’s CPS caseworker and calling the CPS hotline. Emails show that the girl’s therapist from Las Familias also notified the girl’s CPS caseworker, Erika Tabarez, of the abuse on Oct. 1.

The group home leaders later told police they took steps to keep the two children apart, including putting a chime on the boy’s door so they would know if he left his room and assigning a staff member to stay with him at all times, the police report shows. But in one instance, the boy molested the girl again late at night when he asked to use the bathroom and the staff member assigned to him was off-duty, the police report says.

When the mother heard from her daughter that the abuse was continuing, she called police on Oct. 8, 2013. An officer visited the group home and told house manager Francisco Contreras that he should have called authorities as soon as he learned of any suspected abuse, the police report said. Contreras said he’d only been working there a few months and was following the group home’s protocol, which was to call the home’s crisis manager, the police report said.

The accused molester was arrested on charges of class-3 sexual assault. He entered a plea agreement in the Pima County Juvenile Court, and was sentenced to sex offender therapy and 18 months on probation, his delinquency file shows.

The lawsuit also alleges that the victim’s brother, who was placed in the same home, endured physical and emotional abuse from two older boys in the home, including his sister’s molestor. CPS and group home leaders did not protect him, the complaint said.

“As a result of the defendants’ gross negligence and deliberate indifference to the welfare of the children they had the duty to protect, the plaintiff children have suffered severe emotional distress and physical harm,” the complaint says.

The mother says that because her daughter had been a victim of sexual abuse in the past, CPS should not have placed her in a group home where she would be the only girl and would be living with an older boy in counseling for sexual issues.

While no state law explicitly prohibits such placement, CPS is supposed to ensure children are in safe and appropriate placements, said Cadigan, the attorney representing the mother and her children.

“Any social worker will tell you that children should not be placed in a situation like that,” she said.

Named among defendants in the suit are Charles Flanagan, head of the newly formed Department of Child Safety; the Department of Economic Security, which had oversight of Child Protective Services at the time the abuse took place; Gap Ministries; Greg and Pam Ayers; the house parent and his supervisor; and the victim’s CPS caseworker.

The suit also names the state of Arizona as a defendant in hopes of forcing the state to enact stronger protections for children in CPS custody, Cadigan said.

“We want state to have more stringent regulations so this doesn’t happen again,” she said.

This is not the first time Gap Ministries has been accused of failing to respond to a report of sexual abuse. A 2006 lawsuit filed by former employees alleged the home refused to investigate a local doctor’s suspicion that a child in their custody likely had been sexually abused in the past.

The couple, Douglas and Janet Davis, cared for six siblings at a Splash House in 2004 and 2005. The lawsuit said the group home’s administrators resisted investigating the suspected abuse, which raised red flags for the couple, prompting them to resign and seek a foster care license to keep custody of “the children they had come to love.”

The couple said the group homes’ leaders then “voiced a number of false and defamatory statements” about the pair, including that Douglas Davis had killed someone, and accused them of child abuse — allegations a state investigation later discredited. Also, the group home refused to let the couple visit the children while they were seeking custody of them, the lawsuit said. The couple ultimately did get licensed as foster parents for the children.

The attorney involved in that case, Joane Hallinan, said she could not discuss any details because, when the case was settled, she signed a confidentiality agreement.

CONFUSION OVER RULES

Confusion over mandatory reporting rules is widespread, even among state child welfare workers, said Sgt. Gerard Moretz, supervisor of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s Crimes Against Children Unit.

A common misperception is that calling the state Department of Child Safety hotline to report abuse is enough. Suspected abuse by a parent, guardian or custodian can be reported to police or the DCS, but suspected abuse by anyone else — such as a sibling, peer or a sports coach — must be reported to the police, Moretz said. That law went into effect in 2003 to deal with reports of abuse that fell between the cracks at the state level, Moretz said.

Local group-home managers say abuse between troubled children living in congregate care can happen even at the most well-run facilities.

“Even with the best of supervision, sometimes incidents can happen,” said Susie Huhn, executive director of Casa de los Niños, which offers foster care and prevention services and a crisis shelter for children. “But there are precautions agencies need to take, particularly when there is knowledge of kids’ behavioral concerns.”

Failing to properly supervise makes abuse much more likely, said Moretz, of the Sheriff’s Department.

“The problem I’ve seen over and over again is that children are going into these environments and the supervision isn’t adequate to keep them from abusing one another. That’s really the heart of the matter,” he said.The repeated abuse between Gap Ministries’ wards suggests a fundamental problem with the homes’ setup, Moretz said. He said in his two years with the Crime Against Children Unit, police have been called to Splash Houses for sexual abuse between children about 30 times.

Most of the abuse incidents occurred overnight, which could indicate inadequate supervision during those hours, he said.

“It only takes a few seconds to abuse somebody,” he said.

State licensing rules say that for every 10 children over age 12, a group home must have one paid staff member in the home while the children are asleep, though the staff member doesn’t have to be awake.

But Moretz added, “There were some instances where the kids’ behavior was so impulsive and so instantaneous, that even reasonable steps taken to prevent something would not have worked.”

Gap Ministries has been receptive to suggestions of how to prevent abuse in the future, Moretz said.

“What they’re doing is providing a place for kids that otherwise wouldn’t have a place,” he said. “They understand that many of the kids they are serving bring with them this terrible baggage,” he said.

The kids in their care are vulnerable to being abused and to abusing one another, he said. “My thought is, if you know that going into it, you probably better work out the logistics and not stumble along, hoping for the best.”

The Arizona Department of Child Safety has not responded to an Aug. 28 public records request from the Star seeking complaints or disciplinary actions taken against the home since it opened in 2000.

In fiscal year 2014 Gap Ministries received $4.7 million from the Arizona Department of Child Safety to house children in its 13 group homes. Its residential-style homes are licensed to care for up to 130 children at a time and house about 350 children annually, its website says.

In 2012, the nonprofit’s president, Greg Ayers, and his wife Pam, co-founders of the nonprofit, earned $111,000 and $112,000, respectively, said the nonprofit’s 990 tax form.

FAILURE TO REPORT

While abuse in congregate care can be unavoidable, failure to report it immediately is unacceptable, said Kathy Rau, executive director of the Southern Arizona Children’s Advocacy Center.

When children are abused in state custody, “what is the message we’re sending that child? You’re not safe at your home, you’re not safe with the state,” Rau said.

For mandatory reporters like group home staff, teachers and doctors, failure to report abuse of a minor is a class-1 misdemeanor and failure to report a sex crime is a Class 6 felony, Rau said.

Failing to help children who perpetuate the abuse — which typically stems from their own victimization — not only harms the victim, but the juvenile offender. Getting those children help before they become adults can help them avoid the label of sex offender and jail time, and instead provide rehabilitative services through juvenile court, Rau said.

“A lot of times, children that perpetrate on other children have issues that have not been reported,” she said. “This is their way of acting out. We need to be able to provide services for those kids before they get too old and are in the adult system, and there aren’t those opportunities to get help.”

The obligation to report applies when a mandatory reporter has a “reasonable belief” that a minor has been victimized, she said. Proof is not required.

“That is a very low standard. We’re not asking people to investigate,” she said. “If a reasonable person would believe a child has been a victim, that’s as far as you need to go.”

Sometimes foster parents or group homes are reluctant to report abuse committed by one of their charges. They worry if they’re not 100 percent sure the abuse is taking place, they could unnecessarily get the police involved in a vulnerable child’s life.

Rau understands that. But, she said, “You have to think about which is the lesser of two evils. What if something horrendous is going on and you don’t report it and now it continues? Which way are you going to be able to sleep at night?”

Raised on Tucson’s east side by an abusive parent, Angela Luna entered foster care at age 14.

After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she was put on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and stayed on them for seven years. But she says her emotional problems were related to her childhood trauma, not mental illness. The medications numbed her pain and anger, she says, and prevented her from learning how to deal with her emotions — or even knowing how she felt.

“I constantly felt stoned and high,” says Luna, now 28, who has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “You’re never given the chance to properly grow. ... Therapists ask, ‘How’s your medication?’ Not ‘How are you?’”

Arizona foster children were 4.4 times more likely than nonfoster children on Medicaid to be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs, a report based on 2008 data found.

Arizona hasn’t updated that report, but the number of foster kids on psychotropic drugs likely has grown along with the state’s foster-care population: Between March 2008 and March 2014, the number of Arizona children in foster care soared by 62 percent from 9,721 to 15,750. Child-welfare advocates attribute the growth to deepening poverty leading to more cases of neglect.

When used appropriately, psychotropic drugs — which affect mood, thought or behavior — can be lifesaving, experts say. But some child-welfare advocates say the drugs can be prescribed more for the convenience of overwhelmed caregivers than for the benefit of the child.

“I see youth that are so overly medicated that they’re literally drooling,” said Christa Drake, former executive director of In My Shoes, a mentorship program for foster youth. “Sometimes it’s like, ‘Let’s just medicate him and subdue him so we don’t have to deal with the behavior.’”

This year the state implemented new oversight and heightened reporting requirements regarding prescriptions for foster kids, said Steven Dingle, chief medical officer of the Arizona Division of Behavioral Health. As of January, “regional behavioral health authorities” — organizations that coordinate behavioral health care for foster kids — must regularly submit data on medication utilization rates among foster kids. The behavioral health authorities will also monitor the prescribing habits of doctors in their region and identify outliers.

In addition, doctors must now get authorization — attesting they first tried psychosocial interventions like therapy — before prescribing the following:

• antipsychotic or ADHD medications for children under age 6;
• any psychotropic drug at a dosage level exceeding FDA recommendations;
• more than one antipsychotic or antidepressant simultaneously.

The state has also formed the Arizona Psychotropic Monitoring Oversight Team, a partnership between the Department of Child Safety, AHCCCS and the Division of Behavioral Health Services focused on ensuring appropriate prescribing, Dingle said. The team plans to replicate the study on psychotropic prescriptions among 2008 foster children with more recent data, likely within the next six months, he said.

Normal behaviors

Despite the new reporting requirements, some worry medication use could increase as Arizona’s child welfare system is stretched.

Last November, the Arizona Department of Economic Security admitted that its Child Protective Service division failed to investigate more than 6,500 reports of abuse or neglect, in part due to sky-high caseloads for CPS caseworkers. CPS oversight was taken from DES and given to the newly created Department of Child Safety in May.

Heavy caseloads leave caseworkers, caregivers and doctors with less time to concentrate on each child’s medication regimen. A foster family shortage also means more children are in group homes, with less individualized attention, increasing the risk of fragmented oversight of their care.

“The system remains ripe for medication misuse or overuse,” says Sen. David Bradley, D-Tucson, who worked in child welfare for 20 years.

Finding solutions other than medication takes resources, time and patience, said Drake, formerly of In My Shoes. Foster children need stability and a safe space to explore and express their emotions, she said.

Instead, lots of kids get a diagnosis of conditions like “oppositional defiance disorder” when they act out, she said. That diagnosis can sometimes medicalize normal behavior, she said.

“Most people would be upset if they were ripped away from their families and sent to live in a group home,” she said. “A lot of our youth are acting appropriately in their surroundings.”

Foster kids with complex needs are often bounced between therapeutic and regular foster homes as their behavior stabilizes, then deteriorates again, said Sarah Huntoon, foster program director for Intermountain Centers for Human Development, which trains and licenses therapeutic foster homes.

The more transitions, the more instability for the foster child — and the less likely he is to have a familiar caregiver who will notice and report concerns about medications.

“Consistency of care is an issue,” she said.

Trauma is a given

Experts say it makes sense that kids in foster care have a higher rate of psychotropic-drug use than other kids.

Between 60 and 80 percent of foster youth have at least one psychiatric diagnosis or developmental disability, compared with 15 to 20 percent of the general population, said Dr. Sandy Stein, associate medical director of Community Partnership of Southern Arizona, the Regional Behavioral Health Authority for Pima County. The authority coordinates and manages behavioral health care for children in the child welfare system.

Some of those diagnoses in foster children are related to lack of prenatal care, to parental substance abuse or to a family history of mental illness, Stein said.

Lengthy stays in foster care, or transitions between foster families and group homes, can add to a child’s sense of instability.

“These kids have been traumatized,” says Susie Huhn, executive director of Casa de los Niños, a social-service and foster-care agency in Tucson. “The very fact that they’re in the foster care system means they’ve been exposed to toxic stress and traumatic events — so why wouldn’t we expect they’ll have more social or emotional issues?”

But some worry about questionable prescribing practices. Among the 2008 psychotropic drug report’s findings:

• Foster kids were nine times more likely than nonfoster children to be prescribed five psychotropic medications at one time. Almost 800 children, or 5.4 percent of the foster population, were taking two or more drugs. Only limited evidence supports the use of even two psychotropic drug in children, and no evidence supports children — or even adults — taking five at once, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
• Arizona foster children ages 5 and younger were 5.5 times more likely than nonfoster children to be prescribed at least one psychotropic medication. That year, 225 Arizona foster children 5 and younger were prescribed the drugs.
• The state’s foster kids were 7.4 times as likely to be prescribed the drugs in doses exceeding the maximum recommendation for their age group.
• Fifty-five foster children ages 1 and younger got a psychotropic prescription in 2008, though the report notes some drugs could have been prescribed to treat other conditions. The drugs can have serious side effects for infants, and the GAO points out that there is no established use for these drugs to treat mental-health conditions in infants.

Long-term harm

Even if kids improve with medication, powerful psychotropics may do a lifetime of harm.

Common side effects include paranoia, weight gain, extreme fatigue and reduced bone density.

Little research has been done on long-term impacts on brain development in children. And unlike in adults, side effects like weight gain can become permanent for children, even after they’re taken off the medication.

Proper diagnosis is often a challenge. Post-traumatic stress disorder can look a lot like ADHD, and the treatments for each are different, said Laurel Rettle, critical-care coordination administrator for Cenpatico, one of four Regional Behavioral Health Authorities in Arizona.

Although medications can help those who suffer from PTSD in the short term, long-term use of stimulants — like ADHD treatments — will not.

PTSD “is not, in and of itself, a serious mental illness,” she said. “These children are dealing with things they never should have to deal with. You can compare it to children of war.”

Geara Patten has been a therapeutic foster mom since 1998. Most of her foster children came to her already on medications, she said, and many stayed on them until they aged out of the system. She believes psychotropic medications were used generally only when necessary and helped many of her foster kids get through a difficult time.

Still, most of her foster kids ended up stopping their meds as soon as they gained independence, she said, and they seemed to thrive without the drugs.

“They’re at a calmer place,” she said. “I imagine 90 to 95 percent of them take themselves off the medicine.”

“Assent” sought

Bouncing between foster homes, group homes and behavioral-health facilities for foster youth, Luna learned to accept that the drugs were a necessary part of her life.

“You take the meds and shut up and deal with it, or you get in trouble,” she recalled of her time in a group home. “No one’s there to tell you that we all struggle. It makes you hopeless.”

A foster-care mentor was the first person to suggest her emotions and anger were understandable, and that she wasn’t destined to always need medication. Drake, of In My Shoes, encouraged Luna to question her medication protocol.

“Christa saved my life,” she said. “Christa told me, ‘You have a right to know about your medicine.’”

Starting this month, CPSA is formalizing an “assent” process for foster children under 18 to sign off on their treatment plan, said Stein of Community Partnership of Southern Arizona.

“Assent” is not legally binding, as the child’s caregiver has the final say on treatment, but the process will ensure children understand their diagnosis, treatment options and the goals of their medications, she said.

“It’s absolutely essential to engage kids in their overall health-care treatments,” she said.

Luna got off her medications at age 21 and earned her GED. She put herself through cosmetology school and as a hairstylist, client after client praised strengths she never realized she possessed: her compassion and listening skills.

Now in her work as a mentor to foster youth, Luna says she sees children on four or five different psychotropic medications at a time. Some may have serious mental illnesses and require medication, but she thinks many of them just need understanding.

Giving foster kids the emotional tools to cope with their trauma will have a far more positive effect on their lives, she said.

“You have to cherish all your broken pieces,” she says, “because it makes a beautiful mural.”

Police militarization became an issue of national debate as Americans watched heavily armored police crack down on protesters after the Aug. 9 shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

Now some local law enforcement officials are reconsidering their own tactics and interactions with the public.

“Militarization of the police has been pushed more and more to the forefront. Is there a warrior-guardian type mind-set that we need to be cautious of?” said Chris Nanos, chief deputy of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. “You would be remiss if you didn’t look at those events and say, ‘Could that be us?’ And then do what you can to learn from it and not be in that position.”

The Department of Defense’s 1033 program and other federal programs have helped supply local police with assault rifles, armored vehicles, night-vision goggles and other military equipment since the 1990s. Pima County law-enforcement agencies have received $5.8 million worth of military gear through the program since 2006, according to Defense Department records obtained and shared publicly by the New York Times.

The data set breaks down the 1033 military transfers by county, but not by law enforcement agency. It does not include military equipment agencies acquired through other programs or purchases.

Nationwide, 500 law enforcement agencies used federal programs or grants to acquire mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles that can withstand roadside bombs, says a June report from the American Civil Liberties Union that focused on the militarization of American police.

“Using these federal funds, state and local law-enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals purportedly to wage the failed War on Drugs, the battlegrounds of which have disproportionately been in communities of color,” said the report, which called for greater oversight of programs like 1033, and more judicious use of heavily armed SWAT teams, which are now routinely used to carry out search warrants in homes.

Last year, four local police agencies settled a lawsuit with the family of Jose Guerena, a former U.S. Marine who was killed in 2011 during a drug raid by a Pima County Regional SWAT Team.

Guerena’s wife woke him as the raid began, saying she thought intruders were in the yard. Guerena, 26, came around the corner into a hallway holding his AR-15 rifle and SWAT officers shot at him 71 times, hitting him 22 times, the Star reported at the time. The lawsuit alleged the SWAT team acted negligently.

WHAT AGENCIES GOT

Law enforcement in Arizona counties — Gila, Mohave, Navajo, Pinal, Yavapai, Yuma and Maricopa — have 11 mine-resistant vehicles obtained since 2006 through the 1033 program, which was launched in 1997 and gave preference to agencies engaged in counterdrug and counterterrorism activities.

Maricopa County alone got four of them, plus more than 400 assault rifles, seven other armored vehicles and five helicopters. The Defense Department records include equipment transfers to state agencies that happen to be based in a given county. Maricopa, home to the state Capitol in Phoenix, is also the headquarters of most state agencies.

Pima County agencies’ military transfers through 1033 include 455 night-vision optics such as goggles and scopes, 282 pieces of body armor like vests or helmets, and 151 assault rifles. Among the other acquisitions in Arizona since 2006: Navajo County got dozens of rifles; a rubber, an inert grenade launcher for training purposes; and three night-vision sniper scopes. Gila and Yavapai counties have two armored trucks each. La Paz County got 43 assault rifles.

“Arizona law enforcement, designed to serve and protect communities, is instead equipped to wage a war,” the ACLU report said.

Actually, much of the gear coming to the Tucson Police Department through 1033 is medical supplies, personal protective gear, cases and pouches for police tools, and storage equipment, said Mark Timpf, Tucson police assistant chief.

The department did get at least 50 M16 rifles from the program, but because military rifles are fully automatic and the Police Department uses semiautomatic rifles, TPD uses them only for parts.

Tucson police don’t have any firearms more powerful than what criminals are using, Timpf said. Although violent crime is down in Tucson, the intensity of the violence has increased, he said.

TPD also got 13 Humvees through 1033. One is an armored Humvee the SWAT team uses to provide cover and rescue when a victim needs to be moved under the threat of gun violence. Four are used for parts, and eight mostly sit in storage but are available to specially trained units for search and rescue, Timpf said.

The Oro Valley Police Department received 20 M16s last year and got an armored vehicle in 2000. Crime rates are low in Oro Valley, but spokeswoman Lt. Kara Riley said, “We have to prepare for the possibilities, not just the probabilities.”

In April, Oro Valley PD deployed its armored vehicle after a man fled the scene of a traffic stop. Steven Wahl entered an Oro Valley home, barricaded himself and took several people hostage. A standoff with the Pima County regional SWAT team ensued, and Wahl eventually shot and killed himself. That night, “that vehicle absolutely saved lives,” Riley said.

The 1033 program also saves taxpayer money, TPD’s Timpf said. Equipment acquired through 1033 is equipment agencies don’t have to buy.

That’s particularly important in rural areas like Navajo County, where resources are stretched thin, said Navajo County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Jim Molesa. The department received 70 M16s, which would otherwise cost $1,200 apiece. He said the department shares its mine-resistant vehicle with other agencies, like the regional SWAT team.

“When somebody is giving something away for free, people generally take it,” Molesa said.

CONCERNS OVER GEAR

Most of the 1033 transfers to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department include gear such as warm socks, tools, rope and webbing materials for search-and-rescue teams, Chief Deputy Nanos said. One especially useful transfer was military-grade first-aid kits, which were used during the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others, he said.

The Sheriff’s Department has armored vehicles bought with federal grant funding, not the 1033 program, Nanos said. But the department did not want a mine-resistant vehicle.

“I can’t imagine its use,” he said. “A 28-ton vehicle? I don’t know if I would even want that on the road.”

The Sheriff’s Department plans to boost oversight of its acquisitions through 1033 and similar programs to ensure the equipment received is truly useful, he said. It also is increasing oversight of the use of SWAT teams.

What happened in Ferguson serves as an important reminder that combat-style dress and firepower can escalate tense situations, Nanos said.

“If you dress for a riot, they’ll come,” he said. “We do need to be prepared and be well-trained and equipped for those rare moments you may have to use some brute strength. … But 99 percent of the time, our law enforcement effort is really a communication effort. How do we become problem solvers? Not everything needs to be solved with muscle.”

Chrystle Porter and Bobby Tate tried repeatedly to get a county code inspector to document the leaks and mold they say made their rental home unlivable.

But Pima County code enforcers told Porter they don’t deal with conditions inside occupied residential properties. That’s because the county intentionally adopted a limited set of property maintenance codes to avoid the expense of addressing unsafe conditions inside run-down properties.

Arizona law gives counties the authority to adopt codes that apply to distressed, occupied homes. But if the county adopted such a code it would have to enforce it — and that would cost money the county doesn’t have, said Yves Khawam, chief building official in Pima County Development Services, which includes code enforcement.

The county adopted a limited version of the International Property Maintenance Code in 2003 that expanded enforcement to cover vacant structures but deleted sections related to occupied housing.

To change that, the county Board of Supervisors would have to pay for expanding the code.

“There is political will, but are there political resources?” Khawam said. “No one wants to increase taxes.”

WHO HANDLES IT?

For a year and a half, Porter and Tate said, they talked to their landlord about leaks when it rained. After a heavy downpour in November, inches of water oozed across the floor. Finally, part of a wall collapsed, revealing mold behind it, they said.

“You could instantly smell the mold,” Porter said. She took her children — Rihley, 4, and Tyler, 7 — to live across the street at their grandmother’s house so they wouldn’t breathe in the air.

They said their landlord, Kevin Sack, refused to address the leaks and structural problems or the mold. After they demanded he make repairs, they said, he issued an eviction notice and would not accept their $600-a-month rent payments.

Sack disputed the couple’s claims and said he evicted them only because they stopped paying rent after November. On the advice of Southern Arizona Legal Aid, Porter and Tate put their January and February rent in a security deposit box to show they were willing to pay.

“I’ve been in the house. There’s no mold,” Sack said. He said Tate, without permission, removed a window to put in an AC unit and caused flooding. Porter and Tate said water came in through the roof and along the foundation of the home.

Without help from code enforcement, Porter said she was at a loss as to how to hold her landlord responsible under the landlord-tenant act, which required that a rental property be “fit and habitable” with facilities for electricity, plumbing, heating and cooling and ventilation.

“We just want them to do their jobs,” she said of code enforcement. “If they don’t do it, then who does handle this situation?”

DECENTRALIZED APPROACH

The Pima County Department of Environmental Quality can address potentially hazardous issues like raw sewage if it’s outside the home. But the department has no authority inside residential properties, said Beth Gorman, senior program manager.

Fire districts in unincorporated Pima County will disconnect utilities in response to immediate dangers like a gas leak or exposed wires. But they cannot compel landlords to fix the situation that caused the hazard, said Jim Pratt, a deputy fire marshal with Northwest Fire District.

Earlier this year, Kylie Collins, 33, kept smelling propane in her trailer at Eagle’s Nest mobile home park, where she lives with her husband and 9-month-old daughter. After calling General Electric with the year and model number of her water heater, she discovered that her unit’s natural gas water heater was not compatible with the trailer’s propane tank and could not be converted. Her landlord would not replace the water heater, insisting the two devices could be made compatible. Fearing for her safety, Collins said she repeatedly called Pima County code enforcement, to no avail.

“Everybody I’ve called at code enforcement has pointed the finger at someone else,” she said.

So she called the fire district, which disconnected the propane tank after a responding officer said the setup posed an immediate hazard. He told her not to reconnect it until a licensed professional installed a new water heater compatible with propane, Collins said. He also pointed out black soot on the bottom of the water heater, where he said it must have caught fire. But the fire district couldn’t force the landlord to make any repairs.

Collins and her family still live in the trailer, without hot water or a stove, because they can’t afford to move and lose their security deposit. She has filed a civil case against her landlord, Sergio Leyva, in Superior Court and hopes to get a waiver, based on her low income, for the hundreds of dollars in court fees she’s paid.

Leyva says he doesn’t know why the fire department disconnected the propane tank, but he denies there was a safety issue. He and his attorney would not comment further.

BIGGER PICTURE

County officials say Collins’ case is an example of the system working: She got the fire department involved and is using the rights under the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act to pressure her landlord to make repairs.

But housing attorneys at Southern Arizona Legal Aid say the responsibility for enforcing minimum housing standards should fall to the government, not low-income renters. They say leaving it up to tenants rarely results in distressed homes actually getting fixed, as most tenants sue for money to relocate — if they can afford the expense of going to court in the first place.

Tenants in unsafe housing can pursue legal action against their landlords using the Landlord-Tenant Act. The county gives Southern Arizona Legal Aid $100,000 a year to help address this and other legal issues for low-income clients, said Margaret Kish, director of the county’s Department of Community Development and Neighborhood Conservation.

Eviction proceedings are handled in Pima County Consolidated Justice Court, which is where tenants fighting for repairs can end up. Judges can’t force landlords to make repairs during eviction proceedings, even if they find in the tenant’s favor. They can only order landlords to give tenants money to move somewhere else, said Maria Felix, chief administrative judge.

Struggling tenants often withhold rent to pressure their landlords to make repairs. But attorneys say that’s a bad idea — failure to pay rent can be a valid basis for eviction, whatever the reason. Justice Court judges sometimes are unwilling to hear tenants’ rationale for not paying, as lack of payment cases appear open and shut.

If tenants file a civil complaint against their landlord in Justice Court — which starting next month will cost $98 — they must remain living in the distressed property in order for the judge to force the landlord to make repairs, Felix says. Few are willing to do that.

“Why would anyone wait a year in impossible conditions for a remedy which may never be granted?” said Beverly Parker, attorney with Southern Arizona Legal Aid.

Slumlords know code enforcement will not intervene and that poor tenants are unlikely to sue, Parker said.

“Public safety is a basic government function,” she said. “Why is this not part of that?”

But judges don’t necessarily know that. Doug Kooi, administrator of the Pima County Consolidated Justice Courts, said most Justice Court judges are unaware that the county doesn’t do enforcement inside residential properties.

“Actually, the first response I’ve been getting is that they should call county code enforcement or the building department to seek assistance in what would be code violations,” he said.

Fines as a deterrent

Addressing all residential housing violations in the county would likely cost millions, county officials said. Once inspectors start looking for violations or responding to complaints, they’d certainly find problems and would have to condemn properties and possibly pay to relocate residents.

“Relocation is extremely expensive,” Kish said.

Projections done in 2007 suggested a cost of $16 million — including inspections, repairs and relocation services for families — if 2,500 distressed homes were inspected and half were found to need assistance. On the lower end, if only 500 distressed homes were inspected, the cost would be about $3 million, the estimates said.

But if enforcement were expanded to cover rental properties, the county’s expense could be offset by fines against negligent property owners, Parker said.

“It would certainly have a deterring effect on those that are ignoring the laws,” she said. “I know this is the Wild West and things in the county are different, but that makes people that live out there even more vulnerable to bad practices.”

The city of Tucson, which does enforce code inside occupied properties, relocates families by partnering with social-service agencies. The city’s code enforcement budget is $2.5 million for the upcoming fiscal year, said Ernie Duarte, director of Planning and Development Services.

Adapting to misery

Many low-income renters find ways to adapt to living without power or water because they have nowhere else to go, said Betty Villegas, program manager with the Pima County Housing Center.

“It’s not right. But it’s survival,” she said.

Affordable-housing advocates hope to get $30 million to boost local options through next year’s bond election. But in previous elections, in 1997 and 2004, only $5 million and $10 million respectively went to address the need, Villegas said.

County Supervisor Richard Elias said he’d consider expanding the Pima County code to cover properties’ interiors, but first the Board of Supervisors would need detail on projected costs.

“Is money tight? Yes. But how do you quantify the value of where a child lives?” he said.

County Supervisor Sharon Bronson agreed but said the government shouldn’t be paying for what is a landlord’s responsibility.

“For people to live in unsuitable conditions as a result of landlords’ failure to respond is unacceptable,” she said. “If we’ve got some issues and there’s a health concern, I certainly am supportive of looking at a change in policy.”

Supervisor Ray Carroll said distressed housing hasn’t been a systemic problem in his district and he would not support expanding government bureaucracy. He recommends tenants contact their supervisor to have him or her deal with it personally, as he said he’s done in the past.

Pima County Development Services director Carmine DeBonis said that since the Star raised the issue, code officials have discussed extending enforcement to rental units.

“It’s not that this is something the county is unwilling to address,” he said. “Up to this point, we’ve not had a demonstrated pattern of difficulties. ... We’re learning that there may be some difficulties associated with our approach.”

Settlement desired

Porter and Tate, who moved out in February, decided to sue their landlord in Superior Court because their claims exceed Justice Court’s $10,000 limit.

Like in Justice Court, Superior Court judges can’t force landlords to improve a property if the tenant has moved out. But the couple hopes to reach a settlement before trial that would include repairs to the home, even though they no longer want to live there.

Tate recalls how county zoning inspectors questioned him about the cars he was repairing in his yard last year. Yet he couldn’t get anyone to care about the conditions his kids were living in, he said.

“They care about what your yard looks like,” he said. “They don’t care about what your house is like.”

Renters at a Pima County trailer park are making do without hot water or stoves after the company that supplies their propane said it’s too dangerous to refill their tanks.

The renters are lucky their homes haven’t gone up in flames, said a representative of the company that rents tanks to the park owner. On six of the seven trailers at Eagles Nest mobile home park on East Benson Highway, the park owner set up large propane tanks — as big as 120 gallons — with regulators meant for small tanks on barbecue grills, said April Knoll of Arizona Propane.

“You cannot run a whole house on that size regulator. It could cause lots of damage,” Knoll said. “It is pretty amazing that something hasn’t happened yet.”

The company put a note on the door of each resident last week saying it would no longer refill the unsafe tanks. The note said if the situation isn’t fixed in 30 days, the company will take back the tanks.

“Our job is to make sure everything is safe,” Knoll said. “If we go in there and start filling tanks running off of barbecue regulators, that could put us in deep trouble.”

It would cost $100 apiece for the tanks to get appropriate regulators, she said.

Sergio Leyva, owner of Eagles Nest, denied there is a safety issue when reached by phone on Monday. When the Star asked whether he was going to replace the regulators, Leyva said he had to speak with his lawyer. He has not returned messages left since then.

A lawyer, whom Leyva previously identified as his attorney, also did not return two messages this week.

Knoll said she talked to Leyva and also warned him that some trailers have natural-gas water heaters that can’t be safely converted to receive propane.

“He should be replacing those as well,” she said.

Renter Kylie Collins, who has an 11-month-old daughter, said she feared for her safety when she kept smelling propane in her trailer earlier this year and her landlord wouldn’t respond to her requests for a repair. She finally called the Fire Department in March, and the responding officer disconnected the propane tank. He said the tank was not compatible with the trailer’s natural-gas water heater and that the barbecue regulator posed an immediate hazard.

LIMITED CODE ENFORCEMENT

But the fire district cannot force the landlord to bring utilities up to code, said Willie Treatch, Rural/Metro Fire Department deputy fire marshal.

In Pima County, code enforcement is disseminated among various departments, including Development Services, which includes code enforcement; various fire districts; and the county Department of Environmental Quality, which deals with issues like raw sewage outside of residential properties.

But none has the authority to enforce inside residential properties. As the Star reported in June, that’s because Pima County has intentionally adopted a limited set of property maintenance codes to avoid the expense of enforcing a more robust code that would apply to the inside of residential properties.

Confusion remains over whether Pima County has oversight of mobile homes’ safety. Carmine DeBonis, Pima County Development Services director, said mobile-home tenants can make complaints about problems inside their homes — such as heating and cooling or electrical issues — to the state’s Office of Manufactured Housing, in the Arizona Department of Fire, Building and Life Safety.

But that’s not the case, said Debra Blake, deputy director of the Office of Manufactured Housing. The state office’s oversight ends after the trailers are constructed and installed, she said. Local jurisdictions are responsible for dealing with reports of code violations or zoning code issues, like adding on decks, she said.

Commercial properties are more strictly regulated in the county, Treatch said. Fire districts have enforcement authority there and can issue citations, and even shut a building down if there’s an unaddressed hazard.

LITTLE RECOURSE FOR TENANTS

Mobile-home park residents who rent their trailers have little recourse unless they have the money to hire a lawyer and pressure their landlord using the state’s landlord-tenant laws. They also can request a hearing through the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings for $50.

At Eagles Nest, residents don’t have any hot water, stoves or heat, which will be a bigger problem in the winter.

“It’s not right,” said renter Chico el Santo, 52, who has lived in the park for about a year. “So many of them (landlords) want money for doing nothing. At some point, the city or county should step in and do something.”

Collins has been boiling water on an electric hot plate and using it to bathe her baby. She said she’s been trying to move, but she hasn’t been able to find anyone who will rent to her because she has an eviction on her record because of the ongoing dispute over the propane tanks.

Months ago she withheld rent payments in an effort to pressure her landlord, Leyva, to repair the tank. Legal advocates say withholding rent is never a good idea because nonpayment can be a valid basis for eviction, but Collins said she didn’t know what else to do.

Leyva filed an eviction in Pima County Justice Court, but Collins appealed with her own complaint about what she said are her landlord’s failures under the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. Her case is now in Superior Court and she says she is making rent payments to the Justice Court.

She said she’s fed up that no one is holding her landlord accountable. Various facets of local code enforcement keep “pointing the finger at somebody else,” she said.

CITY ENFORCEMENT

The situation might be different if Eagles Nest were a mile to the west or a quarter mile north, inside Tucson city limits.

City code enforcement has the authority to go after landlords under a Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, adopted in 2003. The city’s code enforcement department used to send inspectors to look for violations and fine negligent property owners as part of a slum-abatement task force. But since the recession, the department has fewer inspectors on staff and mostly responds to complaints.

About seven years ago, Pima County considered creating something like the city’s slum task force. But it abandoned the area because of anticipated costs in the millions — including the cost of relocating people whose homes were condemned.

Yves Khawam, Pima County’s chief building official, said the Development Services Department could possibly expand its authority to situations in which low-income tenants are exploited by landlords. But he said the department would need a proposal quantifying how often that happens and how much it could cost to tackle the problem.

“If this is a service that could be beneficial on a small scale,” he said, “that could be something we could consider.”

While pregnant with her son, 30-year-old Joani Bonjour lived in a northwest Tucson trailer rife with black mold.

And that was a step up: In the trailer before, she had to splash through puddles during monsoon season to get to her bedroom. The roof was covered by a tarp held down by rocks.

Still, Bonjour was grateful for her trailers at Twin Palms mobile home park. The park owner worked with her for months after her boyfriend lost his job and they struggled to pay rent. He eventually evicted them, but she doesn’t hold a grudge.

“People like us, they really helped out,” she says. “We didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Metro Tucson’s 44,000 mobile homes in roughly 430 parks range from safe and well-maintained to filthy and hazardous. In the worst ones, plumbing breaks and electrical hazards are common. Many of the dilapidated trailers have leaks and structural weaknesses. Residents live by the whims of landlords, and property managers who know their tenants, especially the elderly and disabled ones, are out of options.

The problems are well known to local and state housing officials. Yet they rarely take steps to clean up the parks — or shut down the most egregious offenders of fair housing and building code standards — because Tucson has no better alternative for its poorest residents.

Mobile homes, which comprise 10 percent of Pima County’s housing stock, offer some of the area’s most affordable housing. Shutting down a badly run park, or condemning a crumbling 60-year-old trailer, can push the occupants into homelessness, advocates say.

“It’s a huge dilemma,” says Evelia Martinez, project manager with the Southwest Fair Housing Council in Tucson. “Unless you have something better to offer, why would you displace a family that’s getting by, living a family of five in a one-bedroom mobile home?”

‘NIGHTMARE’ CONDITIONS

Some mobile home parks across the state are practically unlivable, says Joe Scelza, vice president of the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home and RV Owners. The group organizes and lobbies for mobile home park residents who own their trailers and rent the land underneath.

“They’re lean-tos. They’re worse than tents because they have fire hazards in them,” Scelza says. “It’s a nightmare.”

Sewer system breaks can cause raw sewage to pool underneath trailers, and outdated electrical systems can spark fast-moving flames. Leaking trailers often have black mold on the walls or collapsing roofs. Some older models have particle-board floors that basically disintegrate when wet.

Many mobile homes have urgent problems that need an immediate fix, and city and county services aren’t always equipped to respond, says Scott Coverdale, executive director of the nonprofit Community Home Repair Projects of Arizona, one of the few options for low-income homeowners in need of emergency repairs. Half of the group’s work is in mobile homes.

The nonprofit used to get up to $250,000 a year from the Arizona Department of Housing, but the funding was eliminated a few years ago. Cuts to federal funding for the program, as well as to funding for city and county repair services, has made it harder to address all the needs in the parks, he says.

Sometimes a park owner will refuse to fix problems with the park’s sewer system, leading to sewage back-ups inside trailers. Even though park owners are supposed to pay for such repairs, Coverdale sometimes unclogs the system on behalf of the tenants.

“We want to hold the park owners responsible,” he says, “but we’re also trying to help our clients get out of a difficult situation.”

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM HERE

Poorly maintained, aging housing is not unique to the mobile home parks in Tucson, where poverty is high, wages are low and affordable shelter is in short supply.

Across Arizona, nearly one in four working families spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, says a February report from the nonprofit Center for Housing Policy in Washington, D.C. That puts the state among the worst for housing affordability.

Low-income mobile home park tenants are especially vulnerable to exploitation. They might have no means of transportation, no savings for a security deposit elsewhere and no resources to take legal action if a landlord violates lease conditions. They may be undocumented immigrants, who often seek out mobile home parks because many don’t do background checks on tenants.

“A lot of times they are abused and taken advantage of because they live in fear of being on the street and being deported,” says Debra Blake, deputy director of the state’s Office of Manufactured Housing. “They’re grateful to have a roof over their head and they’re afraid. Well, they shouldn’t be here illegally, but how do you fix that?”

Tucson park owner Kirk Saunders says many mobile home park tenants make a rational decision to live in a substandard trailer — and they aren’t necessarily victims.

“These aren’t stupid people,” Saunders says. “They go in and they see the toilet’s broken and the roof leaks.” But the trade-off may be worth it to someone who is desperate for shelter or whose criminal background precludes any other housing option, he says.

Mobile home parks are not regulated by any state entity. They don’t have to be licensed and have no required regular inspections. (Trailers get an inspection before they can qualify as Section 8 housing.) That means the degraded conditions of the oldest trailers and surrounding infrastructure go unchecked unless someone reports a code violation.

And that’s not likely to happen. Residents often fear a landlord’s retaliation if they complain, says Teresa Williams, the city’s code enforcement division administrator. Residents of a well-kept park might complaints to her office repeatedly about an overgrown shrub, while at a rundown park with rampant violations residents don’t complain for months — or years — at a time.

Lack of affordable housing plays a role, says Anna Sanchez, administrator of Tucson’s Housing and Community Development department.

Residents “understand that if they complain, it may mean the park gets shut down and they don’t have any other housing,” she says.

In 2012, Pima County had 17 affordable rental units available for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, defined as earning less than $18,100 for a household of four, says an analysis of Census and federal housing data by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research group. That’s compared with a national rate of 29 affordable units per 100 poor households.

“It’s a big problem, and we know that,” Sanchez says. “It’s just a difficult situation all around.”

REACTIVE SYSTEM

The city has tried to tackle code violations in the past.

The Slum Abatement and Blight Enforcement Response project, piloted in 2001, cleaned up dozens of properties in mobile home parks and other substandard housing. The effort led to the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance in 2003, which strengthened minimum-housing standards for landlords and their properties.

When parks are empty, the city’s Vacant and Neglected Structures program can step in. Last year, it tore down all 18 trailers in Desert Blossom park in northwest Tucson, where every trailer was vacant and dilapidated.

But for the most part, the concerted effort of a decade ago has evolved into a reactive code-enforcement system that is complaint-driven, officials say.

Tucson code enforcement has 17 inspectors today, compared with 25 seven years ago. After staffing cuts in 2007, the City Attorney’s Office eliminated the “neighborhood prosecution team” that partnered with code enforcement to penalize slumlords, says City Attorney Mike Rankin. He helped establish the slum-abatement program in 2001.

“We’re still trying to do what we can with the existing people in the prosecutor’s office,” Rankin says.

COUNTY CODE ENFORCEMENT

In the city, code enforcement is consolidated in one department, but that’s not the case in surrounding Pima County. Complaints about electrical hazards go to the local fire district. Sewage or environmental health issues go to the Department of Environmental Quality.

No county ordinance targets slums and slumlords, so code enforcement has no authority to tackle substandard housing inside homes, says Yves Khawam, the county’s chief building official.

Tenants with problems in their mobile home’s interior can file a complaint with the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings for $50, an alternative to civil court, and get a hearing with an administrative law judge. The county has considered adopting a neighborhood preservation ordinance like the city’s, but “we do not have the resources to go after these types of issues,” Khawam says.

Residents in the county parks say code enforcement is weak there. Los Ranchitos mobile home park is in a triangle of county land on the southeast side of the city that is brimming with mobile home parks.

“The inspectors are lax,” says resident and trailer owner Kathy Kellersman. “It don’t take much to say, ‘Oh my God, someone’s living in that?’”

When she and her husband moved into the park four years ago with their three sons, they say park owners offered them trailers with mold, roof leaks, holes in the floor and questionable wiring.

“A good, decent tent would have been a hell of a lot cleaner and safer,” says John Kellersman, who works at Auto Zone. They bought the best one they saw and joined the 76 percent of Pima County mobile home residents who own their trailer.

Last year, the entire park went without water for two weeks. Then-owner Scott Greene didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

A lack of political will for change — and the dilemma over where to put residents whose homes are condemned — has stymied efforts to clean up the parks, says Gary Bachman of the Pima County Community Development and Neighborhood Conservation Department.

“If we had a multimillion dollar grant, we could probably get somewhere,” he says.

In the absence of resources, parks are home to families like the single mother and her children assisted by Jackie Franco, family resource liaison for Flowing Wells Unified School District. The family lived in a trailer that had no doors and had holes in the floor.

To the overwhelmed mother, Franco says, what mattered most was keeping a roof over her children’s heads. “They all had a place to sleep,” she says. “They just covered up the holes.”

TOLERATING SLUMS

Ron Sande, 71, owns, and has done extensive work on, a 1960 trailer which he says “should have been in a landfill 15 years before I bought it.”

He has lived in Shady Lane mobile home park in Flowing Wells since 2000. New owners took over in 2011 — they added water meters to half the trailers and raised the rent without notice, he says. Residents have gone without heat or air conditioning. In one trailer, the toilet is sinking through the bathroom floor and has been for years, the occupants say.

Calls to Shady Lane park’s owner, Blanca Ashley, resulted in two hang-ups and two unreturned messages.

Sande, who worked at Home Depot until his recent retirement, says he tried to organize the tenants to put pressure on the new owners, but many are on disability, with fixed incomes, and fear eviction.

“They won’t stand up for themselves,” he says. “They won’t push back.”

But Sande isn’t worried: He just got approved for Section 8 housing, which has more than 8,300 people on its waiting list. He plans to move soon.

Park owners deal with a complex population, says Saunders, who owns a park in Sahuarita and 10 more in Phoenix, Texas and California.

While the vast majority of his tenants work hard to pay their rent and keep up their homes, others who own their trailers refuse to maintain them. Some bring drug activity into the parks.

He recalled one Phoenix tenant with untreated mental illness who was threatening to hurt neighbors and needed care far beyond what a landlord could provide.

“We’re in the heart of the socioeconomic challenges of America,” he says. “It’s not just about a bad landlord doing bad things to great people.”

‘NOT ALL SLUMLORDS’

Some mobile home parks in Tucson offer quilting classes, 24-hour security, weekend barbecues and pristine pools.

High-end parks, such as Pantano Vista in East Tucson, sell $95,000 manufactured homes on 6,000-square-foot lots that are almost indistinguishable from site-built houses. Some low-income parks are run by dedicated managers who stretch their budgets to maintain the premises.

“We’re not all slumlords,” Saunders says.

But some unscrupulous park owners prey on families who see homeownership as the path to a better life, says Martinez of the Southwest Fair Housing Council. They sell trailers with a junk value of $500 for 10 times as much. They find a pretext to evict people whose rent is supposed to go toward buying their trailer, and then they find a new buyer and do the same thing again.

Most park owners fall between those extremes. Eric Anderson, owner of Twin Palms Mobile Home Court, where Bonjour lived, acknowledges it’s tough to maintain aging trailers in his 50-year-old park. But he says he tries to respond to residents’ requests quickly — especially if there is a leak or black mold.

“I’m not ashamed of it at all,” he says. “There’s no end to the amount of maintenance. ... You have to keep a focus on continually keeping things better.”

He says he has owned Twin Palms and another nearby park for two decades. To keep rents low, he rehabs older trailers rather than replace them with newer ones.

But the economy is making it harder for park owners to keep up with needed maintenance, he says.

“I can see where some (owners) get stretched so thin they don’t have the resources to do the upgrades that are necessary,” he says. “But once you start losing in that direction, how do you come back from it?”

It’s unfair to single out mobile homes from all of the substandard housing in Tucson, says Saunders, who is also a board member of Manufactured Housing Communities of Arizona. The group advocates for owners of mobile home parks.

“Mobile homes represent a fraction of the dilapidated houses in the county,” he says. “Having said that, I think it’s abominable that those conditions exist and somebody has no choice but to live in radically bad housing, or live on the street.”

But Saunders is not buying the argument that park owners are solely to blame. Government shares the responsibility, he says.

“You’ve got this whole paternalism of government and people who don’t think people should live in substandard housing,” he says. But officials do little to offer real alternatives and take slumlords to task.

“They don’t do the code enforcement that they should because it takes time and resources and they’ve got to file lawsuits, and they don’t have the stomach for it,” he says. “If the city really wanted to crack down on substandard housing, they would.”

ZONING EVOLUTION

Most mobile home parks in the city limits were originally built on unincorporated Pima County land that has since been annexed. And lots of older parks have been grandfathered in as “non-confirming use” sites, allowing them to stay put as modern zoning evolved around them. That makes it tough to spot violations without researching which rules the park must follow.

More than one-third of Tucson’s trailers were built before a 1976 federal law established building and safety standards for mobile home construction, a 2001 survey of local mobile home residents found.

“Some people try to stretch them out as far as they can,” says Williams, of Tucson’s code enforcement division. “There is no state or city code that says a trailer can only be lived in for so long.”

In the Northwest Fire District, lots of parks were built without input from fire departments, but modern parks have to ensure fire-truck access throughout the park and a water supply, says Capt. Adam Goldberg, spokesman for Northwest Fire. As many as 20 older parks in his district don’t have fire hydrants.

“How do you have a 250-trailer mobile home park and have no fire hydrants?” he asks.

The fire district requests federal Community Development Block Grant money each year to add hydrants at trailer parks, and for the past seven years has been adding about two a year, at a cost of $10,000 each.

“We’re basically trying to play catch up,” he says.

Mobile home fires are more likely to be fatal because flames races through the structures, Goldberg says. Some pre-1976 models have aluminum, instead of copper, wiring that becomes hot with use and they lack smoke detectors.

The Tucson Fire Department responded to 46 mobile home fires between April 1, 2013, and April 1, 2014. Northwest Fire was dispatched to 50 mobile-home fires in 2013, including smoking or flaming electrical outlets.

‘HOSTILE’ LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Park owners face their own challenges.

Zoning regulations require minimum space between each trailer — 3 to 40 feet, depending on the zoning — making it difficult to replace old, deteriorating units with newer and wider ones. Owners keep decaying models in use to avoid money-draining vacancies, says Mike Parham, legal counsel for Manufactured Housing Communities of Arizona, a lobbying group representing the interests of park owners.

A 2013 court decision involving a Benson mobile home park clarified that grandfathered mobile home parks are exempt from spacing requirements between trailers, but zoning officials haven’t enforced that consistently, Parham says.

“There’s this idea in the mind of the public that these are sleazy trailer parks,” he says. “And because of the perception of the industry and hostility of local zoning toward it, it’s very tough to run a quality project.”

Low-income tenants are caught in the middle.

In a tiny northwest-side park without a name, a woman and her 28-year-old daughter live in a trailer whose ceiling buckles in every room. In the bedroom, insulation hangs out of a gaping hole — as it has since the mother reported it to their landlord two years ago. Black mold grows under the sink. The floorboards are broken and coming up in the kitchen, ever since the rainy week when water poured through the broken light fixture above.

“For six nights in a row I was up bailing water out of the kitchen,” the mother says. “We keep anticipating, when is the rest of the roof going to collapse?”

The pair, both on disability, have lived here for eight years. After two years on the waiting list, they hope they are on track to get Section 8 housing soon.

Until then, they will not make waves. They were evicted from a rental unit in Texas after complaining to the landlord about exposed wiring and a collapsing floor.

This time, they will not report code violations in their home. They beg a reporter not to print their names or even the location of their park.

This time, they’ll wait quietly.

“I’m worried about being retaliated against,” the mother says. “We’re afraid we’ll be put in the street again.”

From her father’s beige-stuccoed mobile home, Genesis Hollman has watched two families move into the trailer next door on a rent-to-own contract.

And she has watched both of them leave the small south-side mobile home park in frustration after learning the landlord didn’t have proper title to the trailer.

“They sell them and sell them and sell them,” says Hollman, 26.

Housing advocates say it’s a familiar story in Tucson, where widespread poverty and a lack of affordable housing creates an environment ripe for victimization: Too many mobile home park owners are dealing trailers without proper paperwork.

“They’re selling these things and half the time, they don’t have the title because it’s been abandoned by the original owners,” says Joe Scelza, vice president of the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home and RV Owners. The group advocates for mobile home park residents who own their trailers and rent the land underneath.

For prospective homebuyers who can’t afford a site-built home or who don’t have the credit for a mortgage, rent-to-own contracts on mobile homes — in which part of the monthly rent goes toward buying the trailer — offer a rare chance at homeownership.

But rent-to-own contracts are often full of loopholes, legal advocates say. Unscrupulous sellers collect on a trailer for months, then find a pretext to evict the buyer and resell the trailer. Other times the buyer finishes paying, only to find that the seller never actually owned the trailer.

“It’s selling the American dream to poor people,” says Beverly Parker, managing attorney with Southern Arizona Legal Aid in Tucson, who has seen this scenario play out repeatedly. Sellers “don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. It’s just business.”

PRETEXT FOR EVICTION

Under the Mobile Home Parks Residential Landlord and Tenant Act — which applies to mobile home residents who own their trailer and rent the land beneath — a tenant can be evicted on the next notice after receiving three notices about the same problem or four notices about different problems within one year. That’s a fairly easy standard to meet if a landlord is looking for problems, advocates say.

Arbitrary enforcement of park rules — and the targeting of vocal tenants — is hard to prevent through legislation, says Rich Zettlemoyer, president of the mobile homeowners association.

A clause in the mobile home landlord-tenant act puts the burden on the landlord to prove his or her actions were not in retaliation if an eviction comes after certain actions, like a tenant reporting code violations.

But in the justice courts, where evictions are heard, the burden of proof often falls on tenants, who rarely bring legal representation, says Stan Silas, senior staff attorney with Community Legal Services, Inc., in Phoenix.

“There aren’t enough attorneys out there willing to help them do this,” he says.

A 2005 report on eviction proceedings in Maricopa County, organized by the Phoenix-based William E. Morris Institute for Justice, found that most cases were heard in less than one minute — and many only took 20 seconds. The study found that 87 percent of landlords came to court with legal representation, and no tenants did.

The study led to 2009 reforms standardizing eviction proceedings, says its supervisor, Ellen Sue Katz, an attorney with the Morris Institute.

“The rules, if followed, would make things much better for tenants,” Katz says.

Last year, more than two-thirds of all eviction cases — not just mobile home cases — were ruled in favor of the landlord in the Pima County Consolidated Justice Court, says Doug Kooi, court administrator. That’s about 10,000 of the 14,300 eviction cases heard in 2013.

Justice courts are presided over by justices of the peace, elected officials who do not have to be attorneys. Sometimes filling in are judges pro tempore — part-time, appointed justice officers who also do not have to be attorneys.

Many judges are diligent, Legal Aid’s Parker says, but “if your judge is not a lawyer, it’s hard to argue the law.”

Justices of the peace “tend to believe nonpayment of rent trumps everything,” says Silas, the legal advocate. “Justices might not consider the conditions the tenant is living in, or that landlords sometimes fail to meet their contractual and statutory obligations, as well.”

Landlords typically lead the training sessions on landlord-tenant law for justices, he says, and training on mobile home-specific legislation has been minimal.

“Most of the time,” he says, “the tenant is the one swimming upstream.”

TENANT HAS FEW OPTIONS

To legally deal mobile homes, park owners must be licensed by the Arizona Department of Fire, Building and Life Safety. But unlicensed dealing of mobile homes is common, says Debra Blake, deputy director of the department’s Office of Manufactured Housing.

The office has issued 87 cease-and-desist orders statewide to unlicensed dealers since 2008.

“There’s a lot of illegal sales going on in parks,” she says. “It’s a big problem.”

At Colonial Mobile Home Park on Tucson’s south side, where residents have complained that the owner sells trailers he doesn’t own, property manager Elizabeth Casillas says the park lacks titles to some trailers for sale because they were abandoned. She says tenants who buy them are told up front that they’ll need to get titles themselves at the Motor Vehicles Division.

Jim Stagner, who owns Colonial and at least three other mobile home parks in Tucson, did not respond to calls seeking comment about selling untitled trailers.

A seller must acquire a clean title before he or she can sell a mobile home, says Mike Parham, legal counsel for Manufactured Housing Communities of Arizona, a lobbying group representing park owners. If a trailer has been abandoned in a mobile home park, the park owner can obtain a bonded title through the Motor Vehicles Division or hold a landlord-lien sale — that is, offer the trailer at a public auction where most likely, the landlord will be the highest bidder and will receive the title from the MVD.

Those who unknowingly purchased an untitled mobile home can sue the landlord or file a consumer fraud complaint with the attorney general’s office. Their best bet would be to persuade the park owner to get the title and have it transferred to the buyer, Parham says. But that can take years — and is unaffordable and unrealistic for many people scrambling for stable housing, Legal Aid’s Parker says.

“You’re talking about people who don’t have access to justice because they can’t afford it,” she says.

No one tracks how often would-be buyers get snared in rent-to-own deals gone wrong, but based on the number of victims seeking help at Southwest Fair Housing Council, “I’m gonna say it happens on a daily basis,” says Evelia Martinez, project manager at the Tucson nonprofit.

ABANDONED TRAILERS

Unscrupulous landlords and property managers have incentives to get tenants to abandon their homes: Abandoned trailers can be revenue streams.

Tenants who own their trailer on rented land can find themselves in an impossible position if they want to leave: Relocating a trailer typically costs $3,000 to $5,000, assuming it’s is in good enough condition to be moved.

The state offers mobile home relocation assistance, but many owners have no place to move their trailer even with that help. That’s because newer mobile home parks often have rules against accepting trailers of a certain age or condition, so costly rehabilitation may be required to secure a new space.

Often, just abandoning their trailer is the best option, especially if they can’t find a buyer approved by their landlord, can’t continue to pay their space rent or utilities, or can’t afford repairs to make the place livable.

This year, the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home and RV Owners opposed a bill — written by the lobbying group for mobile home park owners, Manufactured Housing Communities of Arizona — that legal advocates say would have made it easier for landlords to declare a trailer abandoned if the owner was absent for 30 days and rent was due for 30 days.

“Under this bill, a park owner has total discretion to claim a home is ‘substantially’ damaged and then remove or demolish a damaged mobile home without court order and with no liability. The park owner could have caused the damage and still can use these provisions,” Katz, of the William E. Morris Institute for Justice, wrote in a email to legislators considering the bill.

Susan Brenton, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Communities of Arizona, says the legislation sought to put in writing how abandonment has been handled for decades, and it would have given residents at least 77 days after the landlord filed for abandonment to pay up and reclaim the trailer.

“This is how it’s been done for the last 20 years and it’s worked,” she says.

The bill did not make it to the floor this session and Brenton says the board of the lobbying group will meet this summer to decide whether to pursue it next session.

RENT-TO-OWN abuse

When Pamela Schmidt put down money on a 1957 Flamingo model in the midtown Covered Wagon Mobile Home Park, the blue-and-white trailer was showing its age. In late 2012, a busted sewer line sent raw sewage seeping up from the ground. Since she had already signed a rent-to-own contract, park managers said it was her responsibility to repair it, which she couldn’t afford. To use her toilet, she disconnected it from the broken pipe and let the waste fall onto the ground.

But to Schmidt, 48, the trailer had the makings of a home. After she put down $1,500 in a rent-to-own arrangement, property manager Jeff Wehage repeatedly delayed handing over the title, she says. (Wehage no longer works for the property management company, office employees say.) Schmidt later realized that the photocopy of the title he’d given her had the name of a deceased woman on it.

She says she was billed thousands of dollars for supposed damage to an old awning that fell down and for late rent payments, which she says was due to confusion over what she owed and the rapid accumulation of late fees. She wanted to sell the trailer in order to pay off her debts and stop the late fees, but without the title, she couldn’t.

Schmidt was evicted from her space in February 2013 for lack of rent payment. Moving her trailer to a new park was not an option, because in the decades since it was installed, a building was erected just a few feet in front of the trailer hitch.

The landlord deemed her trailer abandoned after the eviction, and Schmidt says all of her personal belongings were removed from the trailer’s storage shed.

“So much sentimental stuff that is gone,” she says.

Covered Wagon mobile home park owner Scott Greene — who owns at least five parks in Tucson — did not respond to calls and messages left with his office staff seeking comment.

Schmidt has filed a complaint with the state attorney general’s office, but hasn’t heard anything. She says she has little hope of getting her money or belongings back, let alone the run-down trailer she bought.

“I really don’t know how to deal with all this,” she says. “I feel like I was completely taken advantage of. There’s nowhere to turn to because I don’t have the money to fight it.”

Residents of a high-rise student housing facility have been throwing beer and liquor bottles off their balconies for more than a year, raining glass and other objects down on the nearby Islamic Center of Tucson’s roof and parking lot.

But the vandalism and abuse reached a fever pitch during the University of Arizona’s homecoming celebration this past weekend, said Kamel Didan, vice chairman of the board of the mosque and community center, which has been in Tucson since 1962.

“This weekend was absolutely terrible. Someone could have died,” said Didan, who is also an associate professor at the UA. “Imagine kids on the 14th floor, tossing whiskey bottles on people. When I came in Sunday morning, I was shocked at our parking lot. It looked like somebody smashed glass all over the place.”

He also heard that racial comments and obscenities were shouted from balconies at a woman entering the center. The racial comments were a first, he said, and he doesn’t consider the repeated vandalism a hate crime.

“This is mostly kids being very disrespectful, kids being drunk and not realizing how dangerous they are being,” he said.

The Islamic Center of Tucson has been at 901 E. First Street for 25 years. But Didan said leaders have recently considered moving because of verbal abuse, dangerous projectiles and loud partying from three nearby student housing facilities, especially Level, a 14-story facility that opened in fall 2013, he said. It’s located one block from the western edge of campus and many of its balconies overlook the Islamic Center.

Within months of the facility’s opening last year, residents had tossed eggs, produce — including pumpkins at Halloween — and glass bottles from the balconies, Didan said.

Complaints to management of Level — which is not affiliated with the University of Arizona — seemed to fall on deaf ears until last weekend, when Didan showed the building’s local manager the glass-strewn parking lot, Didan said.

This week the building’s management company, Denver-based Cardinal Group Management, flew an official to Tucson to meet with Didan on Tuesday. Cardinal Group took over management of Level and its next-door student housing property, Next, in June.

Alex O’Brien, a principal with Cardinal Group, said he came to Tucson to show how seriously the company is taking the complaints. “We will take disciplinary action against any residents identified in accordance with the lease,” he said in an email Tuesday.

Didan said they discussed adding nets to catch falling objects, covering the Islamic Center’s parking lot and adding surveillance cameras to catch offenders.

University officials were unaware of the vandalism until contacted by the Star on Tuesday, said Andrea Smiley, associate vice president of communications for the UA. She said the university expects the facility’s management to deal with violations by its tenants, either through fines or eviction.

“We don’t know for sure they’re university students,” she said. “If they are, we would expect the property management to let us know and then we’d pursue our own investigation regarding the student code of conduct” through the UA Dean of Students Office.

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik said Tuesday that he is organizing a meeting Monday in hopes of putting an end to the misbehavior. He’s invited the city attorney — to weigh in on whether the behavior could be considered reckless endangerment — as well as leaders of local neighborhood groups, the university, the Islamic Center and the Tucson Police Department.

Kozachik said he agrees with Didan that the bottle-throwing doesn’t appear to be motivated by racial or cultural discrimination.

“I don’t think this is a hate crime,” he said. “I think we’re dealing with drunk kids who don’t know how to handle their beer.”

Didan said he has so far declined to file a legal claim against management or press charges against any students, even when he’s been able to identify from which room the objects have been thrown.

“We always said, ‘Look, we’re neighbors. Let’s work something out,’” he said.

In April he organized an open-house block party to introduce the dorm’s residents to the center, in the hopes they’d show it more respect. He bought tons of food and sent out invitations.

“Very few showed up,” he said.

Didan has also been disappointed in the reaction of parents of students involved.

“It will take someone to die for them to rein in their kids,” he said.

Former San Carlos Apache Tribal Chairman Wendsler Nosie said he felt sick when he heard what legislators did last week.

Members of Congress — including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act a controversial land-swap measure that would privatize national forest land sacred to Western Apache tribes.

More than a dozen versions of the land-swap bill have failed to pass Congress since 2005. But now the U.S. Senate is expected to make a decision on the defense spending bill by late Thursday.

After almost a decade of fighting the land swap, Nosie said he couldn't believe it had been tucked into the must-pass defense spending act.

"I was questioning, 'Why isn’t anybody listening? Why are McCain and these guys allowed to do what they’re doing?'" he said.

The 2,400-acre land parcel near Superior, Ariz., sits atop a massive copper deposit. Foreign mining company Resolution Copper Mining wants to establish a mine there. But the parcel also contains the Oak Flat Campground, an area dotted with petroglyphs and historic and prehistoric sites, conservationists say. Centuries-old oak trees, Manzanita shrubs and other vegetation dominate the rocky landscape. The site is surrounded by canyons where streams flow and natural pools form in the rainy season.

"I think any religious people would be outraged," Nosie said in a Wednesday interview. "The issue of it being a sacred site has never come to the forefront. That needed to be discussed."

Last year, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Tohono O'odham Nation were among 20 Native American groups who sent a letter to Congressional leaders, protesting the land-swap bill. They argued it tramples on the religious rights of indigenous people. Nosie said it continues a pattern of "killing the identity of native people."

Opponents to the land-swap point out that the mine project could be undertaken without privatizing the land, which would ensure it would receive thorough oversight from federal agencies.

Pushing a land-swap through Congress is not the only option for the mining company to acquire the land, opponents say.

"Rio Tinto has yet to articulate any credible reason why a congressional land exchange is needed, versus the normal administrative processes," states the 2013 letter from the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona to Congress.

Administrative land exchanges are much more common than legislative land exchanges, says a 2010 policy brief from the University of Montana.

Administrative exchanges require the U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management determine that privatizing the land is in the public interest, but a legislative land exchange gives that discretion to Congress.

JOBS BILL

Supporters in Congress say the legislation will bring desperately needed jobs to the struggling mining town of Superior, 100 miles north of Tucson. Town residents are divided, with many saying the jobs are well worth the sacrifice of the outdoor recreation area to the East of the town.

The mine is expected to bring 1,400 direct jobs to the area and generate $61 billion over the life of the mine.

A spokesman for Resolution Copper, jointly owned by two foreign mining giants, said this week the company would not comment on the land exchange until the Senate votes on it.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe says its spiritual beings live within the Oak Flat, Gaan Canyon and Queen Creek area.

"Oak Flat is where the creator, God, touched the earth for us. These are our ancestral home places," Nosie said. The Apache collect medicinal plants and acorns there, and conduct ceremonies including the "sunrise ceremony," honoring girls entering womanhood, Nosie said.

The mining company has acknowledged that Oak Flat will be damaged by the proposed mine due to its use of block-cave mining. This method of mining removes a mountain of rock from underground, resulting in major subsidence, or collapse, of the land above.

Resolution Copper estimates a two-mile wide crater will form at Oak Flat due to the mining. 

Opponents — including the Concerned Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition in Superior — say the mine could be much less damaging, and still profitable, if a less destructive method of mining were used, such as the cut-and-fill technique historically used in Superior.

"We should be able to mine in a way that is less harmful," said Roy Chavez, a former miner and past mayor of Superior.

Native American groups and conservationists also worry about the impact to surrounding areas, including the steep cliffs at Apache Leap. They say Gaan Canyon and Queen Creek Canyon could be de-watered by the mining project.

The historical significance of the Oak Flat area hasn't received as much attention as it should have in the land-swap debate, said Scott Wood, heritage program manager for the Tonto National Forest.

"People need to understand that in this part of Arizona, there are a lot of significant prehistoric sites," he said. "It’s also an area that was heavily utilized and is very important, in fact sacred, to several tribes, including the Apaches. ... It’s the continuing association that the area has with the Apaches that’s most significant."