REGIONAL REPORT : For Poor, Help Isn’t Always Just a Telephone Call Away : Utilities: 5% of state’s households shun the service. Many already face language or cultural barriers.

For Rodrigo Torribo, not having a telephone meant one less monthly bill to worry about until a desperate evening last year when his 9-year-old daughter fell to the kitchen floor, writhing in pain.

Panic-stricken, Torribo tried to get the attention of his neighbors on both sides of his small Midway City home, but when no one answered he sprinted three blocks to a liquor store pay phone and dialed 911, the emergency number.

His daughter survived what turned out to be a severe case of food poisoning. Although it could have been worse, the family still does not have a telephone.

“We tried it for a couple of months, but the bills got too high and they shut it off,” Torribo said.

While the telephone is often taken for granted as an essential tool of modern life, substantial numbers of poor and immigrant California residents such as the Torribo family lack basic phone service. The problem is especially acute among non-English-speaking immigrants hampered by language and cultural barriers.

Pacific Bell, which serves about 80% of California homes, estimates that almost 30% of the state’s Spanish-language population does not have basic phone service, while the percentage of Asian households without telephones is somewhat less.

Overall, 5%--or roughly 520,000--of California’s 10.5 million households do not have a phone, according to a Pacific Bell study of census data last year.

“Up the Central Valley through Salinas, patches of migrant farm workers in San Diego, Salvadorans in South Central Los Angeles, Watts and Compton, Stockton and San Jose, there are pockets throughout the state where numbers of residents do not have phones,” said Maury Rosas, vice president and general manager of Pacific Bell’s Latino and Asian center.

The reasons are both financial and social. Based on their experiences in home countries where it can take months or even years to install a telephone, some immigrants believe phone service costs too much and can be extremely difficult to get.

In addition, phone companies in many countries are owned by the government and some immigrants retain a healthy fear and mistrust of authorities--and the phone company--when they come to the United States. Many undocumented immigrants believe they will be identified and deported if they apply for phone service, according to social welfare workers.

Making matters worse is a pattern of ongoing exploitation of poor residents who have phones by friends and relatives who do not. The bottom line is often discontinued service as the mounting bills go unpaid.

“That is a constant complaint we get,” said Robbie Williams, a social worker at the Rakestraw Memorial Community Education Center in South Central Los Angeles. “If you are on Social Security and only get $650 a month, and you have people coming in and using the phone, it’s impossible. The phones get cut off, and they can’t afford to get them back on.”

For those who have lost service, emergency medical assistance is hard to summon, and families and individuals can become isolated from the social service agencies designed to help them.

“For service providers, it means your clients are very hard to reach,” said Jean Forbath, director of Share Our Selves, a Costa Mesa charity. She estimated that roughly 40% of her clients lack phones.

“In some cases with medical tests, we have to go to their homes to give them the results,” Forbath said. “It’s a horrendous disadvantage for the low-income and in emergencies it’s awful. It’s something else that the rest of us take so for granted.”

A partial solution to the problem of affordability is a discounted residential service called Universal Lifeline. Although it has been available in California since 1983, studies show that many people who would qualify for the service are not aware of it.

“The low level of service in limited English-speaking communities points to the fact that the phone companies are not being responsive or accountable in providing information,” said Carlos Rodriguez, an attorney for the San Francisco-based Latino Issues Forum.

Funded by a state Public Utilities Commission grant, the forum is in the midst of surveying the use of Lifeline by non-English speakers in Sacramento, Fresno, Anaheim and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Preliminary data from the Fresno survey found that out of 125 households, 90% of which qualified for discounted service, only two actually used it. Early data from the San Francisco survey reflect similar patterns. Most of the residents said they were unaware of the service or did not know enough about eligibility requirements.

Many activists who monitor utilities blame some of the under-use on the fact that Lifeline only provides basic, local calls for half-price to those who meet the income requirements. Customers can either get unlimited local calls for $4.18 per month or 60 untimed local calls for $2.23 a month.

About 15%--or 1.3 million--of Pacific Bell’s customers have Lifeline. But officials do not know how many potentially qualified customers are going without service. To get into the program, a one- or two-member household can make no more than $14,300 a year, while a family of six can earn up to $26,800 a year.

Audrey Krause, executive director of TURN (Toward Utility Rate Normalization), a utility-watchdog group, questioned the effectiveness of phone company outreach programs. She said the PUC should investigate whether to broaden Lifeline benefits, specifically for long-distance calling.

“That is especially a problem for immigrant groups, and it has not been addressed,” said Krause, who serves as chairwoman of the PUC-appointed committee that oversees the Telecommunications Trust Fund.

Other advocates for the poor argue that the emphasis should be on providing basic service to more residents and ensuring that qualified customers obtain Lifeline.

“The question is, who is going to pay for expanding Lifeline benefits? Is it fair to put that on regular rate-payers?” asked Randy Chen, consultant to the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce.

Phone company officials concede there have been problems reaching low-income residents, especially non-English speakers, yet, they say, outreach programs have been improved over the years.

Pacific Bell has established centers around the state that cater to Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese-speaking customers. The company also works with community leaders to increase awareness of available services.

“I believe we are way out front of any other corporation in trying to reach the Latino community, but we do need help in letting people understand that it is easy to do business with us,” said Rosas of Pacific Bell.

Despite the improvements in outreach programs, phone company officials point out that some low-income residents still choose not to have a phone.

“Some don’t want the disruption, some have a concern that they may not be able to manage the bill even with Lifeline, others feel that with the ready accessibility of coin phones their needs will be met that way,” said Linda Bonniksen, a spokesperson for Pacific Bell.

Cynthia Jones, a Garden Grove mother of five, has lived without a phone for more than a year after it was disconnected for failure to pay a $68 phone bill.

Jones, who depends on welfare payments and income from her boyfriend’s forklift job to get by, says she has gotten accustomed to living without it. Instead, Jones uses a pay phone by the apartment building laundry room and her downstairs neighbors have agreed to let her use their phone in case of emergencies.

“I think we would get one again, but when our financial situation is more stable. Right now, it’s a bill that’s not there,” said Jones, one of many low-income people for whom a telephone is the most expendable service, given the limits of their welfare check.

“Many aid programs have allowances for other utilities except a phone,” said Shirley Christensen, district director in the Rancho Park office of the Los Angeles County Social Services Department. “When you have to utilize a welfare check the best way you can, usually the phone is a last priority.”