Making a Dent in Homelessness : Trailer homes help some families, but the program has not overcome the political problem of placing the dwellings or the drawbacks of a long waiting list.
Just a few years ago, Elisa Goulet lived in a beautiful home--”with a pool and a gardener”--and drove around in Cadillacs and Jaguars, depending on what was available from her husband’s used car lot.
Today, Goulet, 57, can barely afford the bus. For the last six months she has lived in Ramona Gardens, an East Los Angeles public housing project, in a row of city-owned trailers for homeless families.
Sitting in the living room of the three-bedroom trailer last week, Goulet relished the memory of better days when she and her husband, on a whim, would fly to San Francisco or San Diego for dinner. His sudden death of a heart attack two years ago began a downward spiral that sent Goulet and two grandchildren she cares for careening toward homelessness.
Hit Bottom
In ill health and alone for the first time in her life, Goulet ended up living with friends, relatives and in a garage. “I pawned all my jewelry to eat,” she said.
And Goulet, a cheerful woman with a contagious laugh, said she considered suicide for the first time. Her prayers were answered, however, when she received word that her application for temporary housing at the trailers had been accepted.
In one of the few programs of its kind, 61 three-bedroom mobile homes have been made available for homeless families throughout the city. Generally, the families are allowed to stay as long as six months--long enough, it is hoped, for them to get back on their feet and save the required first and last month’s rent for a home.
Finding a place to put the trailers has been a problem, however. Several City Council members have been reluctant to have trailers in their districts, reflecting their constituents’ opposition to housing homeless families in their neighborhoods.
About two-thirds of the trailers have ended up at five public housing projects in the city, a move criticized by homeless advocates who say that the crime-ridden areas are no place for the homeless. They point to the only two trailer sites available near residential areas outside the projects--one on Veterans Administration property near Westwood and the other on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood--as model programs.
Trailers Unused for Homeless
Nearly two years after Mayor Tom Bradley announced plans to purchase 102 trailers for $1.5 million from a Utah public utilities agency, 41 of them remain in storage or are being used temporarily as offices.
Last week, Bradley announced that 18 of the trailers soon will be installed on a state Department of Transportation parcel along the Century Freeway corridor, in the Watts-Willowbrook area. Although he said he expected the remainder to be placed within a few weeks, mostly on property volunteered by churches and other private groups, city officials directly involved with the program are less optimistic and say it may take until the end of the year.
So far, more than 175 homeless families have gone through the program and more than 75% of them have graduated to permanent housing, according to city officials. The remainder either drop out of the program or, unable to comply with the rules, are evicted.
Some of the community agencies that operate the programs have found themselves in the awkward position of sending homeless families who have overstayed their six-month welcome back on the streets to make room for others on the long waiting list.
Though most officials and community agencies involved in the program agree it is still too early to assess its effectiveness, they generally regard it as a success because it has helped most families find permanent housing. The program also offers an array of social services, including job training and placement, a mandatory savings plan, and child care.
The goal, Bradley said, is to “bridge the gap between homelessness and mainstream society.”
Burglaries and Vandalism
But community agencies that operate the trailer program at the city housing projects say that trailers have been burglarized, vandalized and, in at least one instance, destroyed by arsonists.
At the Hacienda and Pueblo del Rio housing projects in South-Central Los Angeles, about 90% of the 18 trailers have been vandalized, many of them extensively, said Ted Watkins, director of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, one of six community agencies or “service providers” that have contracted with the city to operate the trailer program.
Some homeless families prefer living on the streets or crowding into garages to exposing their children to drugs or a stray bullet at the projects, said Cheri Miller, associate director at Harbor Interfaith Shelter in the South Bay area, which operated a trailer program for the city last year.
She said that several trailers at the Normont Terrace housing project in Harbor City, where Miller’s group worked, were pockmarked with bullet holes. And staff members never went into the projects alone, she added.
“When homeless people are afraid to go to a shelter program, there is a problem,” she said. She suggested that the city “look more seriously” at this “huge drawback” in the program.
Even Housing Authority director Gary Squier agrees that “it doesn’t make a lot of sense” to place homeless families, struggling with their own problems, in the projects’ troubled environment.
Watkins, of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, added that “if you really want to change the situation of poor people, you have to put some effort into giving them an environment that is conducive to positive living.”
And while full of praise for the “transitional housing” concept, advocates for the homeless also note that the program is a drop in the bucket in the face of mounting homelessness--a “stop-gap measure,” Squier said.
Families make up about one-third of the county’s estimated 35,000 homeless population, according to officials.
“A shelter is not the answer,” said Miller of Harbor Interfaith, which operates an emergency family shelter and a longer-term transitional training program for the homeless. The answer, she and other homeless advocates agree, is permanent affordable housing.
Squier, who said that the city loses 5,000 low-income units each year, acknowledged that “we’re not going to make up for it with a couple hundred mobile trailers.”
He noted that an estimated 40,000 families live in garages and that about 150,000 in the city pay more than half their income for housing. For those living so close to the edge, “the first little crisis” can send them tumbling into homelessness, Miller added.
Solving the housing crisis is going to take a broad effort--everything from more employment programs to new low-income housing construction, Squier said.
For Goulet and her neighbors, however, having a place to call home, even for six months, is a godsend.
Unicorn Figurines
Ernastina Gallegos, 23, and her three small children live a few doors down from Goulet, in a trailer the young woman keeps spotless and decorated with dozens of unicorn figurines and wall hangings.
It is the first home the children have known, Gallegos said. In fact, it is the first home Gallegos has had since she was in 8th grade, when her own family lost their home after her stepfather’s death. A straight-A student, Gallegos said she had to drop out of school when her family started moving around after becoming homeless.
“I don’t want the same thing happening to my children,” she said.
Gallegos said she had saved enough money from her welfare checks to rent an apartment, but could not find a landlord willing to rent to a young welfare mother with three children and another on the way. Then, the money was stolen.
“Things got so bad,” she said, that if it had not been for the trailer program, Gallegos said she might have given up the “only thing I have”--the children--to county juvenile authorities.
Now, with services offered by the Chicano Service Action Center, which operates the trailer program at Ramona Gardens, Gallegos is looking forward to returning to school and renting her first apartment.
