Mother’s Housing Search Takes Center Stage : Key Santa Monica Rent Control Board Member Is Using Her Plight as a Test Case for Landlords

Her friends say that Keryl Cartee is the kind of woman people look up to.

Shunning welfare, the 33-year-old single mother of five works in an insurance office even though she could receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children and earn nearly as much staying at home.

A devoted mother, she shuttles the children between school and state-provided day care in an old car that needs a tuneup. On weekends, she sings in a church choir and serves as volunteer director of a Sunday school and children’s choir.

“She’s one of the pluckiest people I know,” said the Rev. Clarence Crites, pastor of the Santa Monica Church of the Nazarene. “In the face of difficult circumstances, she always manages to keep things in order.”

But even the minister acknowledges that with his parishioner unable to find a landlord in Santa Monica who is able, or willing, to rent to a single mother with five children, Cartee faces an uphill struggle.

No longer able to afford the rent for her two-bedroom apartment in Palms, and with her landlord wanting her to move next week, Cartee’s four-month search for an apartment in Santa Monica--where she works and the children attend school--has become a nightmare.

And it has also become a cause celebre for a key member of the Rent Control Board who is threatening to pull the plug on a proposed major change in Santa Monica’s rent control law unless some landlord comes to Cartee’s rescue.

Tests the Hearts of Landlords

“I view this as a test case,” rent commissioner Wayne Bauer said. “If (the landlords) aren’t willing to open up their hearts for this woman and her children, then I think it signals they’re not going to be concerned with helping low-income people.”

In June, Bauer spearheaded a compromise with several influential landlords for a program that would allow landlords to roughly double the rents on some vacated apartments if they set aside an equal number of apartments for low-income tenants.

He and two other members of the rent board have favored the so-called Inclusionary Housing Program, with two remaining members of the panel opposed.

Now, however, with the panel expected to vote in three weeks on whether to implement the program, Bauer has announced that he will “in all likelihood” change his mind and vote against the program unless a landlord comes forward to help Cartee.

Although he has never met Cartee in person, having only talked with her by phone, and acknowledges that “this may not be the best way to do public policy,” Bauer is adamant in his position.

“I want to see some good faith. I want a token. If I don’t get an apartment for this woman, I will read that as a sign the program will be corrupted,” he said. “It would signal that the landlords are going to be more interested in filling low-income apartments with their friends and relatives rather than with the people who really need help.”

But landlords, citing the scarcity of three- and four-bedroom apartments in Santa Monica, accuse Bauer of being unreasonable, saying that he is demanding the impossible.

“(Cartee’s) is a heart-rending story, but one case involving a woman with five children doesn’t provide a measure of what any program can do,” landlord James Baker said. “I think Wayne is just reacting a little emotionally.”

Baker, who helped fashion the compromise program, is among a handful of landlords who say they will participate in the voluntary program if it becomes law. The overwhelming majority of Action, Santa Monica’s largest landlord organization, is on record as opposing the program.

Surprised and Puzzled

Amid such opposition, some landlords said last week that they were surprised and puzzled by Bauer’s stand.

“If he’s trying to threaten us by killing inclusionary housing, that’s hard to understand, since most of us don’t want it anyway,” said one landlord, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Carl Lambert, president of Action, called Bauer’s position regarding the program disingenuous.

“He’s been strangling landlords for 10 years with rent control that has created the housing shortage in Santa Monica, and yet he expects a small group of landlords to come up with a three- or four-bedroom unit for someone just like that,” Lambert said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Cartee’s troubles began in late May after she was notified by the Santa Monica Housing Authority that her long-awaited application for Section 8 housing assistance from the federal government had been approved.

Given Certificate

Under the program, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she was given a certificate to present to landlords, guaranteeing government reimbursement on the rent of a three- or four-bedroom apartment.

Such certificates are considered valuable in Santa Monica, where their face value often represents more money to a landlord than he or she could otherwise collect as the maximum allowable rent under the city’s strict rent control law.

But Cartee, who had been on a Section 8 waiting list for more than a year, soon ran into a problem.

“Nobody wanted to rent to a single mother with five children,” she said.

“Everything would be fine, and then they would hear, ‘five children,’ and suddenly, an apartment wouldn’t be available anymore,” she said.

Once, a landlord told her that an apartment she was shown was no longer available, but when a co-worker called three days later, the landlord offered to show the co-worker the same unit, she said.

Another time, she said, “a landlord called twice to assure me that I had the apartment, but the next time we spoke, he suddenly was saying something different. I found out later that he rented it to a woman with only three kids.”

60-Day Extension

When her certificate expired after 60 days early in July, she was able to get a 60-day extension, the maximum allowable under HUD rules, but she was still unable to find a place.

After the extension expired last week, she reapplied for Section 8 benefits, but with a waiting list of about 9,000 people, housing authority officials say that, even with her special circumstances, it may be nine months to two years before she has another chance.

That was a bitter pill for Cartee, since she says she can no longer afford the $630-a-month rent she pays, without any assistance, for the cramped two-bedroom apartment in Palms that is home to her and the children, ages 2 1/2 to 11.

The apartment became unaffordable two months ago, after she reluctantly cut back her hours as an office worker from 40 to 24 in order to continue to qualify for government-assisted medical care for herself and the children. She receives $313 a month in food stamps to supplement her $900 monthly income.

“It was a real Catch-22,” she said. “If I continued to work full time, I wasn’t considered medically needy enough to obtain Medi-Cal benefits for the kids. But now that I’ve voluntarily cut my income by $300 or $400 a month, I can’t afford a place to live.

“The alternative is going on (Aid to Families with Dependent Children). But that doesn’t appeal to me either. I don’t want welfare payments. I just want to work, and be able to afford a decent place for the kids.”