City Drops Overcrowding Citation Against Mother of 11

Santa Ana city officials said Wednesday that they will cancel a citation for overcrowding issued earlier this month to a woman living with her 11 children and one grandchild in a two-bedroom house.

A housing inspector appeared Wednesday afternoon at the home of Rosa Lopez Bravo, 37, in the 1200 block of South Sycamore Street, and told her she could disregard the citation. Lopez was scheduled to appear in court to answer the overcrowding charge on Sept. 4.

“Oh, thank you,” Lopez said in Spanish when she heard the news. “I was so worried that I would have to go to court.”

Responding to news reports of Lopez’s predicament, Santa Ana City Councilman Ron May, whose ward includes Lopez’s house, visited the home Wednesday morning and said he told her that “we are not in the business of throwing out homeowners.”

May said, however, that housing inspectors will continue to monitor conditions at the house and could issue a new citation if further investigation shows that Lopez is violating city codes.

“We will make a decision . . . when the facts are gathered,” May said. “We need to investigate the situation and see what the circumstances are.”

Lopez’s attorney, Frank H. Guzman of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, said he would “closely monitor any future action taken by the city against my client.”

Code enforcement officer Lily Romero issued the citation on Aug. 4, although Lopez told her that no one outside her immediate family lived in the house. Under a strict interpretation of the Uniform Building Code used by the city, the two-bedroom house should accommodate no more than six people.

City housing officials have said that inspector Romero was dubious that all of the children were Lopez’s. The occupants of the house have been cited on numerous occasions in the past two years for overcrowding and for other violations, according to George Hepp, city code enforcement coordinator.

The city’s file on the house--a one-inch thick folder--includes photographs of young men sleeping in the garage, occupied trailers parked in the backyard and various plumbing and electrical code violations. The pictures were taken on earlier inspections dating back to Feb. 21, 1985.

The file also shows that neighbors have complained repeatedly about conditions at the house. One housing inspector noted in the file last year that “this problem will not be resolved till C. A. (city attorney) action has been taken. . . . This is a very poor show by the city of major code violation in a neighborhood.”

Lopez said she and her husband, Jose Bravo, moved into the house in 1984. County records show that Celestino and Rosa Perez obtained the deed to the house that year, and that it was quit-claimed to Rosa Lopez Bravo in September, 1986.

Lopez said Wednesday that Celestino Perez is a relative of her husband. Perez was fined and placed on three years’ informal probation in March, 1986, for repeated code violations.

Does Work at Home

Lopez said her husband left for Mexico about a year ago, and that she has not heard from him since. She said she does assembly work at home, which provides her with a small income, and she receives about $80 a week from her eldest daughter, 20-year-old Teresa Huerta, who works part time as a waitress.

Celestino Perez, who owns the restaurant where Huerta works, sees to it that the family has enough to eat, Lopez said.

Her other children range from 9-month-old twins to 18 years of age. The five youngest children and the granddaughter are American citizens. The others, and Lopez, came to Santa Ana from Mexico in 1980, and have filed applications for legalization under the new federal immigration law, she said.

Until May, Lopez said, her brother and some cousins also lived in the house and paid rent to her. Since they returned to Mexico, however, she has not been able to make the $975 monthly payments on the house.

The house has already gone through foreclosure but failed to sell at a foreclosure sale, said Debbie Lowery, of the Amerimac Corp., a Cupertino-based mortgage company. An eviction notice was served at the residence last month, she said.

Lopez, however, said she has not yet been served with either a foreclosure or eviction notice. She said she soon will be looking for another place to live--”with three bedrooms.”