Tough Going for Renters With Children

Barbara Meyers remembers her overwhelming feeling of relief when a 1982 state Supreme Court ruling outlawed rental discrimination based on age just two months before her baby daughter was due.

An “Adults Only” sign hung ominously at the entrance of her modest, 18-unit Texas Street apartment complex, and because she and her husband, David, thought it was no time for a move, she had carefully hidden her pregnancy from the landlord and other tenants.

“When that law went in before Christine was born, I thought we had it made,” Barbara said. “It said you couldn’t discriminate against people with kids. Period. But it sure didn’t turn out that way for us.”

Meyers is hardly alone. Tenants rights advocates throughout the state bemoan the failure of the controversial Supreme Court decision to help renters with children; they say even apparently blatant housing discrimination based on age has been impossible to prove in court.

“The bottom line is that it is just as difficult for someone in San Diego with kids to find an apartment now as it was before the court case,” said Maureen McCarthy, director of consumer assistance for the California Public Interest Research Group. “We have been powerless to prosecute on any level.”

Before the law was passed, 60% of the city’s 185,000 apartments refused children, according to San Diego Apartment Assn. statistics.

“My gut feeling is housing restricted to children is much more prevalent that racial discrimination,” said Carol Schiller, regional administrator of the state Departent of Fair Employment and Housing in Southern California.

CalPIRG and other local agencies in San Diego County estimate they receive an average of one call a day from renters claiming discrimination because they have children. A statewide group, the California Tenants Assn., estimates it receives more than 1,000 such complaints annually.

More than two years after the court decision, the same “Adults Only” sign remains in place at the Meyers’ apartment complex, symbolizing the impotence of the efforts to enforce the law.

The Meyers and their neighbors, Daniel Kroos and his family, who were living in the building when their daughter was born 15 months ago, have fought a grim battle of wills with their landlord (who could not be reached for comment) to keep their apartments.

Both families say they are scarred by the stress brought on by a series of rent increases (from $400 to $500 per month) pointedly imposed only on the tenants with children. Both said they feel constantly threatened by eviction and haunted by the feeling they are unwelcome in their own homes.

The pressure nearly broke up the Krooses marriage and David Meyers said his preoccupation with the situation caused him to neglect his job--and be fired. The families gladly would move but, on limited incomes, they can’t find anyplace to go.

“When it was clear they were going to do anything to get us out, we started calling lawyers, government people--anybody we could think of,” said Kroos, a service agent for a rent-a-car company who takes home about $900 per month. “Everybody said it was hopeless to fight this but I had a hell of a hard time accepting that because I thought we were in the right.

“Ever since November, when the rent increases started, our tempers have been very short. I’ve been constantly depressed, to the point where sometimes I just want to load up the car and drive away to anyplace, just to get away from all of this.”

Kroos said he and his wife have been on the verge of divorce. “But we got to the breaking point before we decided we couldn’t throw away our marriage because of something like this--it would be like giving up on life,” Kroos said.

“All we want is for our lives to be regular, to have the peace of mind and security of knowing we are going to have a roof over our heads tomorrow.”

Barbara Meyers recalls that “even after the law went in, we were told they didn’t want children here.

“But I wanted a baby and I have a right to live here with one now,” she said. “I won’t give that up. I don’t let people push my kid around.”

Barbara said had noticed a significant personality change in her husband.

“I got to the point where I just couldn’t perform at work. I was sick all the time. Never wanted to get out of bed,” David Meyers said.

“Finally, I was fired.”

He now has a new job selling cars.

The Meyers had allowed an elderly friend of David’s--”Actually, he was like a father--he raised me,” David said--to live at their apartment after he suffered a series of heart attacks, and as the older man convalesced, he became almost like a grandfather to Christine.

“It was all he had to live for,” David said. “The love between those two was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”

About a month ago, the Meyers were told they would be evicted in three days if the visitor did not leave. Shortly after the Meyers found friends to take care of him, their friend passed away.

“Maybe it would have happened anyway, we’ll never know,” Barbara said. “But he lost his will to live when they separated him from Christine. He died of a broken heart.”

Their stories don’t reflect it, but the Meyers and Krooses are winners in this newest battleground of tenant-landlord relations. The couples took their case to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing Commission, proved that discrimination was behind their higher rents and won a judgment ordering their landlords to repeal the increases

It was one of the first cases heard by the commission, which is empowered to litigate discrimination complaints, since it was ordered last December by the Legislature to begin accepting child discrimination cases, which it had refused to prosecute previously.

After months of being told by various lawyers and social agencies that they didn’t have a leg to stand on if they hoped to bring suit against their landlord, the families said they were impressed with the state’s swift action and sympathetic attitude.

But theirs is a hollow victory. Neither family feels welcome at the apartments. Kroos said he would move tomorrow, but he can’t afford to leave. The Meyers will vacate as soon as their income tax refund check arrives.

Last Friday, a new list of rules was handed to the tenants, many of them restricting noise and areas of the crowded complex where children can--or, more specifically, cannot--play. One violation, the tenants have been told, can result in an order to evict in 30 days.

“You can tell these are aimed to get us out of here,” Barbara Meyers said. “One way or another, they’ll get rid of kids, and there probably isn’t anything we can do about that.”

“I don’t know what we can do,” Kroos said. “We can’t afford to leave, but these rules make it impossible to let my baby go outside. That’s no way to raise a child. She deserves to have a chance to play outside in the sun like other babies.”

McCarthy said one of the common ploys landlords use to avoid renters with children, but stay within the letter of the law, is to make rules and conditions so odious to raising children that families will be discouraged from living in their buildings.

“We see some pretty incredible things said to prospective tenants when a manager finds out they have children,” McCarthy said. “But it really isn’t hard for a manager to disqualify an applicant for some other, obscure reason, or to come up with obscure rules to drive a tenant with kids out.”

Landlords sometimes restrict the number of people who can live in one unit--a family might be told that four people can’t live in a two-bedroom apartment. McCarthy said that point is often stretched to rules saying children of the opposite sex--even if one is an infant--cannot sleep in the same bedroom. “That’s blatantly illegal, but you wouldn’t believe how often we run across it,” McCarthy said.

“The problem is, we just can’t come up with a decent suit to file against landlords because the law is written so broadly, it’s very hard to prove specific discrimination,” McCarthy said. “The law gives a lot of leeway to landlords.”

A Times survey of 25 apartment vacancies in the county--10 in the City of San Diego and five each in South Bay, North County and East County--indicated it would be extremely difficult for a couple with one child to find a two-bedroom apartment in the $450 to $650 per month range.

Six apartments pointedly said they would not allow children. Another 13 discouraged the idea. “Your baby just wouldn’t be happy here. Find some place where he will be,” said one San Diego manager.

“The other tenants don’t like kids,” a manager from North County said. “We’ll consider you, but keep that in mind.”

Only six of the apartments contacted indicated that renting with a child would not be a factor. The survey did not contact apartments advertising for families.

The entrance by the FEHC into the disputes will help enforcement, but its decisions apply no more than a slap on the wrist to the landlord--the Meyers and the Krooses had their $100 monthly rent increase revoked, but the FEHC cannot impose criminal penalties--and probably will not help renters looking for apartments.

Nevertheless, it offers a new avenue of complaint. “All we could do before the FEHC’s involvement was tell them to file in small claims court, and that’s not much help to someone who desperately needs an apartment if there is to be a roof over his family’s head,” said Charlene Castleman, of Heartland Human Relations, a fair-housing agency funded by five East County cities.

“Basically, all of the old standards are still in place, but now at least we can send them some place where they might be more likely to get help.”

Barbara Meyers said the FEHC “really showed us compassion, where we hadn’t gotten any from anybody else before. And they did help us. But our lives are still miserable because of our living situation, and there’s nothing that can be done about that.”