County to Provide Hot Line Help for Aid Recipients Living in Substandard Hotels

Beginning early next year, homeless people given temporary shelter in hotels at county expense will no longer have to put up with rats and cockroaches under terms of an agreement approved Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Under the agreement reached between the county and welfare rights advocates, general relief recipients dissatisfied with their rooms will be able to call a toll-free hot line if the hotel refuses to move them to a better room. The calls would trigger a series of steps that could include individual rooms being shut down or an offending hotel being suspended from the county voucher system.

Under that system, poor people with nowhere else to stay are issued county vouchers good for temporary lodging in $8- to $16-a-night hotels. Individuals may stay at voucher hotels up to 14 days while applications for general relief payments are being processed. The hotels are reimbursed by the county.

In addition to the hot line, room voucher recipients also will be furnished with a list of minimum standards that they can use to ensure they get a decent room. A room may be rejected, for instance, if it lacks heating, a clean mattress, intact windows or a working lock.

The new program is expected to be fully implemented by next Feb. 1, although welfare rights lawyers complained Tuesday that such steps should be taken much earlier.

For years, advocates of welfare rights and the homeless have complained that voucher hotels are commonly substandard, lacking proper heating, ventilation, security or other basic comforts. Two years ago, advocates filed suit alleging at first that county welfare officials were illegally sending recipients to unheated rooms but later broadening their attack to include lack of enforcement of health and safety standards. The targets of their concern were primarily the dozens of shabby hotels in the downtown Skid Row area.

Since the lawsuit was filed, welfare officials have paid closer attention to so-called voucher hotels. Twice-monthly inspections of the downtown area hotels began more than a year ago, and several have been stricken from the voucher program as a result.

Tuesday’s agreement does not settle the voucher lawsuit, but it does go a significant way toward resolving some of the key concerns of the homeless advocates, attorneys on both sides said. Deputy County Counsel Frank DaVanzo said sworn affidavits from 170 mostly homeless people prompted a temporary injunction, which will remain in effect until the case goes to trial, maybe in two years.

County Files Suit

DaVanzo added that the county has moved to join the homeless advocates in one way, by filing suit against some of the hotels identified as the worst offenders. He said that if it is proven in court that a hotel that has received voucher funds is substandard, the hotel may have to reimburse the county.

Jon W. Davidson, one of several attorneys who filed the suit against the county, said welfare officials should be able to implement the hot line and other changes by Jan. 1. But county welfare director Eddy Tanaka said he may need more time, and the board set a Feb. 1 deadline for full implementation.

Supervisor Ed Edelman pressed for an earlier start date and urged Tanaka to “get busy on this. . . . It’s a mess out there.”