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Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program (CNAP)
The City Attorney’s Office has coordinated with three other
agencies, including the Los Angeles Departments of Police, Building
and Safety, and City Planning, to target abandoned structures, nuisance
properties and blight plaguing neighborhoods throughout the City. CNAP
also encourages participation from residents
and local area businesses in solving the crime issues and problem
properties plaguing Los Angeles's neighborhoods.
CNAP spearheads a number of specialized, community-based programs
designed to target and prevent criminal activity and improve the
quality of life in Los Angeles's neighborhoods, including:
- Taking Out Urban Gang Headquarters (TOUGH)
The City Attorney’s Office’s TOUGH program focuses on
abating nuisance properties involving extensive gang activity. Working
with LAPD and other law enforcement
agencies, the TOUGH program files lawsuits seeking aggressive
and specifically tailored injunctive relief against property owners
and gang members, including stay away orders, closure of properties,
hiring of security guards, installation of video camera systems
and other remedial improvements to the properties.
Since January 2007, the TOUGH program has targeted the Avenues
gang in Northeast Los Angeles, shutting down its headquarters
and working on several other hangouts. TOUGH has also targeted
the Black P Stones gang in Baldwin Village and the Front Street
Crips in Pacoima.
- Violence and Crime Activated Tenant Eviction (VACATE)
VACATE works with property owners and LAPD officers citywide
to expedite the eviction of tenants who engage in narcotics,
gang or violence-related crimes. VACATE reviews all
related arrests submitted by LAPD, notifying landlords
of pertinent offenses committed by their tenants, and pursuing
criminal or civil remedies against owners who fail to evict
these tenants. VACATE prosecutors also file eviction
actions where owners refuse, or are too fearful, to evict
for specified related crimes.
- Problem Properties Resolution Team (PPRT)
PPRT receives referrals of problem properties and neighborhoods
from Council Offices, LAPD, other city agencies, area businesses,
and residents. Assigned CNAP attorneys are responsible
for Narcotics and Vice Buildings Abatements and Abandoned
Building Abatements.
Narcotics and Vice Building Abatements
CNAP attorneys work with the Los Angeles Departments of LAPD,
Building and Safety, Planning and Housing to abate problem residential
and commercial properties with nuisance activity involving narcotics,
alcohol, prostitution or other criminal
activity.
Abandoned Building Abatements
The Abandoned Building Task Force
(ABTF) addresses problems associated with vacant buildings.
Vacant buildings are typically blighted with nuisance conditions
such as trash, debris, overgrown vegetation and graffiti.
They are frequently open to unauthorized entry by gang members
and/or vagrants who very often engage in drug use, sales and
other criminal activity. Vacant buildings, left unattended,
provide an origin for decay and a decline in the quality of
life in the neighborhood. ABTF addresses this type of property
with a coordinated effort between city prosecutors, inspectors
from the Department of Building and Safety and the Housing
Department, and the Planning Department. ABTF’s
objective is to rehabilitate nuisance properties and place
them back into productive housing stock. In those instances
when properties cannot be rehabilitated, LADBS can seek to
have them demolished.
Since the project’s inception, the ABTF has overseen
the rehabilitation and re-occupancy of nearly 1,700 nuisance
structures, nearly 500 demolitions by owner, and at least 120
demolitions by the City. This effort represents the return
of nearly 2,500 of previously vacant, blighted, and nuisance
plagued property to productive use. And additional 3,000
vacant properties have been successfully abated through joint
efforts by the ABTF and LADBS’ Contract Nuisance Abatement
Unit.
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