During his eight frenetic and flashy years as mayor of Los Angeles, Democratic Party star Antonio Villaraigosa often pointed to his success at improving the quality of life in the nation's second largest city.

But 65 miles east of Los Angeles, neighbors of a rental property the mayor long owned take a dimmer view.

"He's a slumlord, that's what he is," complained Steven Patzer, who lives next door to the small house on Eucalyptus Avenue in the city of Moreno Valley.

Town records show that the house — which recently featured boarded-up windows, peeling blue and white paint, and cinderblocks in the weed-choked front yard — racked up a series of code violations, including for unmaintained landscaping and discarded junk in the yard. Villaraigosa owned the house from 1990 until last month, county records show.

"You see it for yourself. It looks like shit, and you can quote me on that," said Patzer, 42. He said it "shocked the living daylights out of me," when he learned last year that the absentee owner he had long resented was the former mayor of Los Angeles. A charismatic politician and a leading ally of both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Villaraigosa chaired the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Many believe he has a shot at being California's next governor or senator.

But on Eucalyptus Avenue, votes might be scarce. Rita Ortiz, who lives across the street and spoke in Spanish, called the house "ugly" and "dirty." She wondered: "If he's the mayor, why does it look like that?"

In an interview Monday, Villaraigosa said this was the first he was hearing of problems at the property or of neighborhood discontent.

"If I had known, I would have taken care of it as soon as possible," he said. "I had two property managers who would inform me when there were issues, and we would fix it as soon as we were informed."

He added that he was unaware of any code violations, or any notices from the city.

He said he bought the property in 1990 as an investment and visited it just a few times in all the years he owned it. "You know, this is 60 miles away," he said. "We never went over there."