Health and Safety Receivership in California

Mark Adams
3 min readOct 4, 2019

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In 1999 Kimberly Sanchez, an 11-week-old baby, living in a severely dilapidated building caught a respiratory infection and tragically passed away. Unfortunately, this was just one of the many deaths that have occurred following unaddressed, dangerous building code violations.

Acutely aware of the number of nuisance properties plaguing California communities, I served on and was a driving force behind Mayor Riordan’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Slum Housing in the late 1990s. Around this time, I learned from a local college professor that California’s Health and Safety Code could provide an answer to address some of these lethal buildings: receivership.

Historically used to assist with bankruptcy and the management of assets, receivership is an innovative solution that can quickly remedy pressing dangers. Not only can a receivership ensure the remediation of health and safety code violations, but a receiver can develop a long-term plan to secure the future of a property. This is the solution to the problem with dozens of different causes, made more complicated by the human factors that each case presents.

In the wake of Kimberly’s death, a coalition of organizations, including local law students and one of LA’s largest law firms, were mobilized to act to have the dangerous Health and Safety Code violations at her building addressed. To this point, the owner of the 66-unit apartment complex had ignored code enforcement efforts to fix the scores of issues on-site. In court, the case saw the first-ever appointment of a receiver under California’s Health and Safety Code. That receiver was me.

The first receivership was not easy, and I encountered multiple setbacks. The most pressing was the inability to find a financial institution willing to fund a Receiver’s Certificate to finance the emergency work needed on-site. In response to this challenge, I developed a financing plan that has been used on almost every project since, funding over $40 million in abatement work with no loss to our lenders to date.

Although the city attorney filed a criminal proceeding against the apartment owner, culminating in his serving a 45-day jail term, it was the receivership that remedied the hazards on-site. Experience has shown that criminal and civil proceedings against recalcitrant owners are unlikely to secure lasting change. Through receivership, we ensured that the property was completely rehabilitated without displacing the tenants, and enacted a plan for the long-term maintenance of the property before being discharged.

With the success of the first health and safety receivership, I went on to establish California Receivership Group. Twenty years and 225 projects later, we’ve been appointed in over 30 counties and 100 cities by over 130 judges (state and federal). Receiverships have included single and multi-family buildings, hotels, motels, mobile home parks, and commercial buildings.

The importance of nuisance abatement work can be found in the simple fact that the effects of dilapidated buildings reach far beyond the property line. From decreasing neighboring property values to compromising physical health and safety to increasing crime, nuisance conditions can negatively affect an entire community.

Learn more about Receiver Mark Adams and health and safety receivership on his blog

See CRG in action on YouTube

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Mark Adams
Mark Adams

Written by Mark Adams

Founder and President of California Receivership Group. Innovator of the use of the health and safety receivership remedy for nuisance properties.

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