Girl’s Wish Comes True as Family Gets a Home at Holidays

Lying in bed in a temporary trailer at a Pacoima housing project earlier this month, Sonia Vega, 17, closed her eyes and made a wish.

In August, Vega’s father, Eduardo, lost his job as a carpet layer, and shortly afterward Sonia, her sister, Tracy, 9, and her parents were evicted from their Reseda apartment. Since then the family has lived in their car, in a friend’s garage, in a homeless shelter and in a two-room trailer at San Fernando Gardens.

On Christmas Eve, Sonia Vega said her wish came true as she and her family moved into a new, two-bedroom townhouse that is part of a three-unit complex known as Gentry Village.

Located in North Hollywood, Gentry Village was built in just 40 days under the auspices of the Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., a nonprofit charitable corporation.

The goal was to demonstrate that affordable housing for the homeless can be built quickly at a reasonable cost, said Arnold Ross Stalk, executive director of the charity. Crews worked from dawn until 10 p.m. in an effort to complete their work in time for Christmas.

The construction cost of $270,000 was funded by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and a private foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation.

Also moving into the complex Sunday were Dexter Porter, 26, his wife Alice, 26, and their children, ages 7, 5 and 4. A third family, Maria Hernandez and her seven children, will move in later this week.

The families are expected to stay at least two years. Each will pay $350 a month for a unit and there were no move-in costs, Stalk said.

The Vega family was not able to afford an apartment at market rate because of the high move-in fees, even after Eduardo Vega found a new job three months ago, Sonia Vega said. With their savings depleted, the family did not have enough money for first and last months’ rent and a security deposit, she said.

“We were trying very hard to find a place to live, but you need so much money to move in,” she said.

Vega, who graduated in June from Monroe High School in Reseda, said her dream of going to college to study psychology had to be put aside so she could help her family. When looking for a job, she used her aunt’s phone number so potential employers would not be aware of her family’s predicament.

Now working as a legal secretary, Vega said that living in a shelter was embarrassing and isolated her from friends. The temporary trailer in the San Fernando Gardens was frightening, she said, because of the gang activity.

“You heard gunshots all the time,” she said. “I thought we were going to be like that forever.”

Moving into the new apartment, she said, was “the best Christmas present.”

Dexter Porter tells a similar story. Porter fell on hard times when he moved from a small town in Florida to Los Angeles in search of a job. Porter, who worked in a warehouse in Florida, was unemployed for three months.

He found his way to a city housing shelter, where he was hired as a security guard, but even after he had a job, he could not afford to move into a new apartment.

In the seven years it has been in operation, the Los Angeles Family Housing Corp. has built two shelters, Chernow House and Valley Shelter, in addition to other transitional and permanent housing complexes providing homes to more than 300 people throughout the Los Angeles area.