Huizar's illegal renovation

David Zahniser in the LA Weekly ferrets out the story behind 4903 La Calandria Way, an El Sereno home where City Councilman Jose Huizar may or may not have lived for awhile but where he did get ticketed by a building inspector for remodeling without a permit. His work later got OK'd, but the house oddly does not show up in the city's planning database — and the whole circumstances have gotten caught up in council candidate Alvin Parra's campaign against his former boss.

[The inspector] repeatedly instructed Huizar’s workers to halt the illegal construction, telling them to stop three times over a six-week period, according to the file assembled by the Department of Building and Safety. Finally, the city issued a written order on December 16, 2003, informing Huizar — a man with a planning degree from Princeton University who once worked for City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo — that the house violated 19 sections of the municipal code.

Huizar finally resolved the city’s case against him four weeks ago, just as he was firing up his campaign for re-election to the Los Angeles City Council, representing a district stretching from the graffiti-scarred retaining walls of Boyle Heights to the upscale restaurants of Eagle Rock. Huizar even bought a new home for his growing family, south of El Sereno.....Huizar sounded a bit confused about his residency during a sit-down interview with the L.A. Weekly. Asked if he moved into the La Calandria house right away when he bought it in 1999, Huizar responded, “Oh yeah, oh yeah. I’ve been living there eight years.” A few minutes later, Huizar went back to the residency question, saying he remembered that in fact he moved into the house three years after he bought it. “Maybe it was ’02 or ’03,” he said.

Forget it, Jake. It's Eastside politics. They are nothing, however, compared to the death threats and "south-of-the-border style politics" found by the Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson in the city of Cudahy: "Cudahy is a strange little city; some say a scary one....Cudahy resembles a Mexican border town more than it does a Los Angeles suburb."

Photo: Rena Kosnett/LA Weekly