Mother of 11 Cited: Her Home Too Crowded : Code Allows Just 6 for Its 2 Rooms

Earlier this month, Santa Ana housing inspectors visited the home of Rosa Lopez Bravo on Sycamore Street and handed her a citation for overcrowding.

No more than six people could legally occupy the two-bedroom house, code enforcement officer Lily Romero told Lopez, 37, who came to Santa Ana from Mexico in 1980.

Lopez said that 11 of the 12 other people living in the house were her own children, and the 12th was her granddaughter. Besides, she told Romero, the family wasn’t renting the house--they had bought it in 1984 with a $5,000 down payment.

Court Fight Intended

“She told me we should have bought a bigger house,” Lopez said Tuesday, sharing a living room couch with some of her children: her 9-month-old twins, Lucia and Patricia; 3-year-old Esther, 4-year-old Alberto, 5-year-old Lupe and 13-year-old Javier, and her granddaughter, Maria Eugenia Huerta, 2.

The citation against Lopez, who said she intends to fight it in court with the help of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, focuses renewed attention on the city’s 2-year-old battle against overcrowding, which has prompted past charges of discrimination against the poor and minorities.

Frank Guzman, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, said he will fight the charge on her behalf, in hope of establishing a precedent exempting nuclear families from city codes that limit occupancy. Lopez is scheduled to appear in Orange County Municipal Court on Sept. 4 to answer the overcrowding charge.

While there is no exemption under the code for relatives, a Santa Ana housing official said Tuesday that the city would drop the citation if the occupants are indeed her children.

Santa Ana code enforcement officers have handed out hundreds of citations and warnings for overcrowding and illegal occupancy since the city began cracking down on owners of substandard housing about two years ago, city officials said.

Under the Uniform Building Code followed by the city, the number and size of bedrooms determine the number of people who can legally occupy a house or apartment, with no allowance made for living room, den or kitchen space.

Latino groups have criticized the city’s interpretation of the code as overly strict and discriminatory against large Latino families, many of which--particularly recent immigrants--cannot afford to live in Orange County without exceeding legal occupancy limits.

Guzman conceded that Lopez’s house may be overcrowded according to the city’s interpretation of the building code.

“But there should be certain exceptions,” he said. “The codes, pertaining to my client, are unconstitutional. They say, in effect, that she cannot be a homeowner, or live in a house with her children. . . . What I’d like to present to the jury is, what children would they like to see leave the home?”

Lopez said her other children are 11, 15, 17, 18 and 20 years of age, and all live with her in the small, sparsely furnished house, where dozens of images of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, along with dozens of family photographs, adorn scarred white walls. A small TV and a large portable cassette player are the only obvious luxuries.

Her granddaughter and her five youngest children are U.S. citizens, Lopez said, and her six older children have applied for amnesty under the new federal immigration law.

Husband Back in Mexico

Lopez said that only her eldest child, Teresa Huerta, works, bringing home $80 a week from her part-time job as a waitress. The owner of the restaurant where she works is also an uncle of one of the children, and he helps keep the family fed, Lopez said.

It complicates Lopez’s situation that her husband, Jose Bravo, returned to Mexico last year. He was going to find work and send back money to help make the $975 monthly payment on the house, but Lopez, who is unemployed, has not heard from him since he left.

She has not been able to make a house payment since May, when her brother and two cousins, who were living in the house and paying rent, left for Mexico. The house is for sale; Lopez said she will probably have to move regardless of the outcome of her case.

According to Santa Ana code enforcement coordinator George Hepp, the August citation is not the first received by the Lopez family. Complaints from neighbors date back to 1985, Hepp said. In 1986, Bravo was placed on probation for overcrowding in the house; the garage and a trailer in the backyard were occupied illegally. Up to 19 people lived in the house at one time, Hepp said.

Code Officer Was ‘Dubious’

Bravo signed the house over to his wife last year, Hepp said.

Code officer Romero said she would not comment on the case. But according to Hepp, when Romero visited the house Aug. 4 she was “dubious” of Lopez’s claim that all the children were her own. “We get told that story every day,” he said.

Hepp said it is rare that one nuclear family is cited for overcrowding, particularly in the family’s own home: “Usually, it’s two or three families sharing a house.”

He said the city will drop the charge if all the children living with Lopez are, in fact, her own family: “If they own the house and have a legitimate family in there, my gosh, it would cut a lot of ice as far as I’m concerned.”

But Guzman said the city should have obtained such information before forcing Lopez to appear in court.

The confrontation with authorities has aggravated Lopez’s kidney stone condition, Guzman said, adding that she had to be hospitalized for about two weeks. Her unpaid hospital bill is $15,000.