I have spent the last 11 days cleaning out my garage, because the city inspector said, during the recent housing code enforcement sweeps, that he wants to see a small car parked in it.  Great so I get to spend all my entire forced vacation cleaning up my garage, and expelling Rip from my workshop, and making him clean out and remove the other stashes he had created around the property.  We filled up every trash can we could find on the street.  We hauled shit back to The Bible Tabernacle Thrift store where I bought it.  Rip took his planes and other shit and put it out in an uncovered secure storage, near the airport, under tarps.

The landlord has to replace much of the plumbing in the house in front, and he must replace the roof on the 3 story duplex in back, as well as 2 garage doors.  There is lots of termite damage.

The mandate in California State law is the “implied warranty of habitability”, the landlord must maintain the property.  Garages are for cars, not hoards of junk or dharma bum crash pads.  However, neglect can improve the profit of an asset, and cause it to decompose, slowly.  Landlords skimping on maintenance, it’s an old story.

But Venice has a long history of trashing.  All those wonderful piers either burned down, or were shut down.  1930’s Venice Beach was trashed by the petroleum industry.   It became a run down area.  “Los Angeles had neglected Venice so long that, by the 1950s, it had become the “Slum by the Sea.” With the exception of new police and fire stations in 1930, the city spent little on improvements after annexation. The city did not pave Trolleyway (Pacific Avenue) until 1954 when county and state funds became available. Low rents for run-down bungalows attracted predominantly European immigrants (including a substantial number of Holocaust survivors) and young counterculture artists, poets, and writers. The Beat Generation hung out at the Gas House on Ocean Front Walk and at Venice West Cafe on Dudley. Police raids were frequent during that era.^{[6]_ Wikipedia”}

Now Venice is mostly renters.  Renters occupy 68.8% of the housing stock and house- or apartment owners held 31.2%.   Tenants may worry that the landlord will try to charge back any maintenance expenses, but the landlord or landlady  cannot add them to the rent, but they can take the max increase from you next time they are allowed to, pretty much like they would anyway.