Quake Aid for Poor Inadequate, Groups Say

Federal disaster relief authorities have failed to provide adequate assistance to thousands of people displaced from low-income housing by the October earthquake, 20 legal aid and poverty groups charged Wednesday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency dismissed the complaints as “false and without any basis in fact” and criticized the poverty groups for publicly airing their charges before giving federal officials a chance to respond.

In a petition to the agency, the groups asked FEMA to hire interpreters to help non-English-speaking Latino and Asian quake victims, to lease or purchase short-term housing for them, and to provide long-term rental assistance.

The 27-page petition is designed to pressure FEMA into acting. Failing such action, the groups could sue.

Ken Zimmerman of the Legal Aid Society of Alameda said several hundred poor people, many of them disabled and on pensions or government assistance, have found no alternative housing since a dozen residential hotels in San Francisco and Oakland were closed by the disaster.

“They’ll be on the streets as the Red Cross shuts down its shelters this winter, and earthquake homelessness will be a long-term part of the landscape now,” Zimmerman said.

However, Red Cross spokeswoman Chris Garrett said the private relief agency plans to keep its emergency shelters open at least until mid-February. Further 30-day extensions are possible as long as such help is needed, Garrett said.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland have formed a task force, which met for the first time on Monday, to map long-term low-income housing solutions. The goal is to find permanent homes for the 540 “low-low-income” people left in shelters, as well as for an unknown number of others believed to be sharing rooms in the low-income hotels left standing.

Virtually all of those people lived in old and inexpensive residence hotels that catered to welfare recipients and were badly damaged during the quake. City officials fear the cost of repairing and improving the buildings could force landlords to raise rents beyond the reach of their former tenants.

Most of those former tenants live on $360-a-month general-assistance grants from San Francisco and Alameda counties; many spend most of their time on the streets, renting a hotel room only when needed to bathe or keep warm.

Julia Lopez, general manager of the San Francisco city Department of Social Services, said the disaster cost “thousands of low-income units in a city that already had a housing shortage before the earthquake.”

She said the city has the money, including federal disaster aid, to “grab whatever comes on the market before they (housing units) are lost forever.” That process could take a year or more, she said, and in the interim the city must house displaced residents.

If the Red Cross cannot shoulder that burden--and Garrett said donations have made up only about $9.5 million of the $15.9 million the private relief agency expects to spend on the Bay Area quake--more federal help will almost certainly be required.

Lorri L. Jean, deputy federal coordinating officer for FEMA, promised help to all earthquake victims eligible to receive federal assistance. So far, she said, FEMA has distributed $6.9 million in emergency housing assistance to 3,782 individuals or families.

“Those who need and qualify for help from FEMA and other organizations receive it now and will continue to receive it,” she said.

Zimmerman, the legal aid lawyer, said the problem is that, before FEMA can give such aid, federal law requires poor tenants to prove they have lived at the same address for 30 days. He noted that residential hotel managers ask tenants to move every 28 days so that building owners will not have to comply with local rent-control laws.

Seasonal workers in the Salinas Valley similarly lack proof that they have stayed in the same places for a month or more. Low-income families often share quarters with two or three other families, making it impossible to produce a single rent receipt.

Because of these problems, Garrett said the Red Cross has relaxed its standards for providing emergency housing aid. FEMA, as yet, has not.

Zimmerman said the problem is particularly acute in hard-hit small towns, including Watsonville. Watsonville had a 1% vacancy rate before the Oct. 17 temblor, in which it lost 8% of its housing stock.

“They have no alternative, and that’s what makes FEMA’s conduct so shameful,” Zimmerman said.