Poor and Evicted: City Seen Lacking a Strategy as Homeless Ranks Swell

It had been 35 degrees the night before, and Phuong Duong and her 2-year-old daughter still shivered from the cold.

They stood in the midday sunlight in front of a weatherworn, 70-year-old garage in the central city--their home since Duong’s divorce last May.

“Last night it was so freezing. Electric blanket it worked, but so cold. I’m sick again. And Linda she crying whole night. I try everywhere, but nobody help me. I’m so scared,” said Duong, 31.

Duong, who moved to Long Beach in 1980 after an escape by boat from Vietnam, is desperate. She lives in a $225-a-month hovel, an illegal dwelling that smells of gas despite a broken window. And even that will soon be taken away.

Not Enough Income

She faces imminent eviction, the result of city action against her landlord. But with a monthly welfare stipend of $498 and no support from her ex-husband, Duong said, apartment houses will not accept her.

County and city agencies, with long waiting lists for housing or rental subsidies that are backed up for years, also have been of no help.

“I tried so many people. But they say waiting list, waiting list,” Duong said, tears welling in her eyes.

In her hands was a court order to respond within five days if she wished to challenge her eviction. She also held a dozen scribbled telephone numbers and letters from social service agencies, testament to her efforts to find a new home.

“They kick me out soon, but where do I go?” she asked.

Phuong Duong is the frightened human face of a large and growing Long Beach problem of how to help poor people who are evicted from substandard and illegal dwellings, say city officials and social service representatives.

Hundreds Dispossessed

The city must enforce its building and health codes to keep neighborhoods from becoming slums. But in doing that, city officials say, hundreds of poor families have been dispossessed.

“It is heartbreaking . . . And (Duong) kind of personifies what is happening,” said Annette Hough, manager of the city Housing Authority, which distributes $15 million a year in federal rent subsidies to 3,300 Long Beach households but still has a five-year backlog of low-income families seeking help.

“It is a big problem. These people come up and say, ‘I have to wait years (for housing assistance). What am I supposed to do?’ ” Hough said.

A spokesman for the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach said about 15 families a day show up at its Pine Avenue offices seeking help to avoid eviction. In addition, the privately funded Centro de la Raza assists about 350 low-income families a year in eviction actions, a spokesman said.

Two Families a Week

Jose G. Osuna, manager of building inspection for the city, said his department forces about two evictions a week from garages alone. Most of them are Latino and Asian families.

“These are problems that, if they existed, did not surface (until recent years),” Osuna said.

The city’s building code enforcement unit was formed in 1979 in part to force improvement or demolition of increasing numbers of aging and substandard dwellings, he said. And the number of unsafe, and often illegal, dwellings has increased as thousands of new immigrants have moved to the city since then, he said.

Code enforcement efforts are applauded by longtime homeowners such as Mary Lou Roe of North Long Beach, who has complained to city officials about an Asian immigrant family that lives illegally near her.

“It’s a sad situation with the homeless . . . but you don’t think about it until they move into a garage next door and the value of your property goes down,” she said. “Someone needs to solve these problems.”

No Referral Service

The city, often criticized for its limited support of social service programs, provides no referral or monetary assistance for evicted families.

But, in recent weeks, it has taken small steps in response to the problem of homeless families, city officials said.

They point to a new City Council-appointed Task Force for the Homeless, which met for the first time last week.

And Osuna said he will soon recommend to top city management a change in law that would punish landlords who rent substandard dwellings. Now, unless landlords ignore repeated warnings to improve dwellings and are taken to court, they incur no fines, he said.

As a result, the tenants are the victims of landlords who fill substandard dwellings and have nothing to lose, he said.

City Policy Criticized

Critics, however, say the poor also are victims of municipal policy that for years has shown little regard for them.

“The city does provide housing for desperate and homeless people--trash bins, alleys and public parks,” said Dennis L. Rockway, senior counsel for the Long Beach Legal Aid Foundation.

That agency last June notified the city that the housing section of its General Plan, revised in 1984, does not meet requirements of state law because it underestimates the need for low-cost housing and overestimates barriers to providing it.

“There has been a complete failure of Long Beach housing policy to meaningfully address the low-income housing needs of the people of the city,” Rockway said. “We’d be happy if they’d just do what other big cities in the state do, but they’re way behind.”

Policy in Effect 10 Years

Rockway points, for example, to Los Angeles, which for a decade has required landlords to pay $1,000 to individuals and $2,500 to families who are evicted from substandard dwellings. A Los Angeles city committee is studying an increase in payments to $2,000 and $5,000 respectively.

Los Angeles also is one of 17 cities and counties in the state that require rental housing developers to build a percentage of new dwellings for low- or moderate-income households, Rockway said. Irvine and Avalon also have such provisions, he said.

Rockway is hardly alone in his assessment of Long Beach’s history of providing housing assistance to the poor.

“I don’t know of anything the city has done,” said Armando Vazquez-Ramos, executive director of the Centro de la Raza. “I think they have been comfortable to ignore the living conditions of Latinos because they are still seen as an unorganized and ignorant community, which does not have legal status and is not an element of the community that will bitch and complain.”

Homeless in 1st District

City Councilman Evan Anderson Braude, who first suggested a task force on the homeless problem and whose downtown 1st District is home to many Latino immigrants, sees things much the same way.

“I get the impression that city management has been insensitive to a major segment of our society, (those) incapable of speaking for themselves,” Braude said.

Braude said he would consider sponsoring an ordinance that, like Los Angeles’, requires landlords to pay for relocation of tenants who are moved out of substandard housing.

Despite the absence of city programs to assist evicted residents, Braude, Vazquez-Ramos and leaders of other local service organizations said they believe support is growing at City Hall for the needy.

New Ideas Expected

“I think some new ideas will come from Mr. Hankla,” Braude said, referring to James Hankla, who becomes city manager March 1, replacing John Dever.

“He is aware of what is happening in other cities,” Braude said of Hankla. “He has said monies are available for activities the City of Long Beach has not taken advantage of. That was a big concern of many of the members of the council, and I’m sure that has a lot to do with the reasons he was chosen.”

Mayor Ernie Kell, a council member since 1975, said in an interview that he would support an ordinance levying fees on landlords of substandard dwellings to pay for relocation of tenants. And he said a majority of the council probably would also concur.

In addition, Kell said he will probably introduce legislation, as Osuna recommends, to immediately fine landlords who allow tenants to reside in dwellings that do not meet state and city standards.

A city program advising evicted tenants on where to go for emergency housing also should be implemented, he said.

Opposed to Rent Control

Although the City Council historically has opposed rent control and just-cause eviction proposals, “I have never seen the council be soft on apartment owners under all circumstances,” Kell said. “I think the council assumed they were obeying the law.”

However, a proposal that would require developers to build a percentage of new apartments for low-income residents would require more study and probably would face strong opposition on the council floor, Kell said.

As the council considers possible changes, Phuong Duong and others like her must work within the system that has just begun to respond to the problems of evicted tenants.

The city provides no long-term housing for poor families, although about 1,100 of the 3,300 households that receive rent subsidies through the Housing Authority are low-income families. (The other 2,200 subsidized households consist of senior citizens or physically handicapped persons.)

Two-Year Waiting List

The county-run Carmelitos Housing Project in North Long Beach has 713 low-income dwellings, but the waiting list is backed up two years.

So, upon eviction, poor families must find lodging in a market where $500 a month for a two-bedroom apartment is cheap or seek accommodations at one of three short-term private Long Beach shelters while continuing their search. But those three facilities--Lydia House for women and children, Samaritan House for single men and the Long Beach Family Shelter--have only 178 beds among them.

A third option is to seek help from the Travelers Aid Society or a handful of other local agencies affiliated with United Way to temporarily place desperate families in shelters or motels.

Through her many efforts, Duong and her daughter finally appeared on their way to finding another home this week.

First, the Legal Aid Foundation’s Eviction Defense Unit filed a legal response to her notice of eviction, giving her about one more month to look for shelter.

Rent Subsidy Promised

Then, the Housing Authority’s Hough said Duong would be moved to the top of the agency’s waiting list for federal rent subsidies, which means that about 70% of Duong’s rent will be underwritten when the next program vacancy occurs--perhaps within two months.

Hough said she was able to move Duong up because a provision in the city’s contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that priority in the subsidy program be given to low-income families evicted from substandard housing by actions of the city Health Department or the Department of Building and Safety.

Until this week, the city had no program to notify evicted tenants of this requirement. But after queries by The Times, building inspectors were directed to begin distributing housing authority flyers with the information to tenants facing city-caused eviction, Hough and Osuna said.

Duong said she hopes to spend the weeks between eviction and entry into the subsidy program in a local shelter. Although still worried that her landlord may evict her on his own, a relieved Duong said Tuesday evening: “I guess everything now OK.”