A Garage Is Not a Home

Maria Torres and her five children live in a garage. It has an oil-stained concrete floor and one bare light bulb. A crib and three beds are lined up against a door that no longer swings open for cars. On chilly mornings, the youngsters can see their breath. Their “home” has no heat, no bathroom, no windows and no hot water. The rent is $200 a month. Like thousands of poor families, they need a decent place to live.

Six months ago, Times reporters Stephanie Chavez and James Quinn reported that thousands of other families are living in garages throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Their survey, the first of its kind, revealed that as many as 42,000 families pay up to $400 a month to live in garages in the northeast San Fernando Valley, East Los Angeles, Lynwood, South Gate and parts of Long Beach. They found the same thing in Santa Ana and Anaheim in Orange County.

Yet the clearly shameful discovery prompted no public outrage, no governmental action, no private donations and, worse, no new housing that would free them from their makeshift homes. The lack of outrage must stem in part from the difficulties of solving the problem, but also perhaps because many of the families are immigrants from Mexico and Central America. It was as though officials read the report and said to themselves: Better a cold, barren garage than a Third World hut.

Mass evictions that would swell the ranks of the homeless is not the answer, but neither is mass indifference. Homeowners who rent the worst of the garages ought to pay high penalties. But when they are caught, and that is rare, they usually are told simply to clear out their garages. They evict the poor tenants and quickly rent to another desperate family. Higher fines, repeat inspections and the threat of hard time served, not in jail but in a garage that has no bathroom, no running water and no heat, would provide powerful deterrents.

But cracking down on garage owners will not help unless the crackdown is coordinated with programs that will provide someplace for garage dwellers to go. Despite cuts in federal funds, local government still provides some public housing and some money to subsidize rents, but poor families have always outnumbered the decent places and the waiting lists are so long that getting a place can take years. The odds of an abrupt increase in low-rent housing are slim because the Reagan Administration has made deep cuts in federal housing funds and there are enough votes in Congress to stall legislation that would restore the funds.

New private investment in housing would help cure the problem and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has been moving in that direction. He also has appointed his first housing director, Gary Squier, a strong and knowledgeable advocate for the poor and the homeless, and has challenged area corporations to invest $20 million to build and renovate low-income housing. The Atlantic Richfield Co., First Interstate Bank of California, Great Western Financial Corp. and Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance have responded. That is a laudable beginning, but it is cold in some of those garages and more responses are needed.

Area landlords can also help. They can make it easier for a family to get out of a garage and into an apartment by allowing tenants to stretch the hefty first and last month rent payment over several months.

Area homeowners can help by welcoming poor families and low-income housing to their community and by pressuring their representatives to make affordable housing a condition of any and every new commercial or residential development in California. Every voter can help by insisting that housing become an urgent priority.

Maria Torres is a working mother. She earns $3.35 an hour, the minimum wage, as a seamstress. Someday, she and her children hope to live in a home that has a bathroom, hot water, heat, and a window. That is not much to ask. Southern California must move more quickly to give the right answer.