Families Find Low-Cost Shelter in City Trailers, but Sites Are Scarce
Enrique Chavez is an unemployed mechanic trying to make ends meet for his pregnant wife and two sons. Under normal circumstances, Chavez said, he and his family would be living in a van on a city street.
But thanks to a 3 1/2-year-old shelter program for poor families, the Chavez family lives in a furnished, lighted, three-bedroom trailer at the San Fernando Gardens housing project in Pacoima. The rent: $100 a month.
It’s not the American Dream, but the trailer is a safety net from the abyss. For the next five months, social workers from the L.A. Family Housing Corp., a nonprofit homeless assistance agency, will try to help Chavez find a job and permanent housing. He has applied for a federal rent subsidy and hopes to move into an apartment in Burbank or North Hollywood.
“I like the trailer because it’s big enough for us,” said Chavez, 22, who moved into the trailer a month ago after the family spent 10 days at the Valley Shelter for the homeless in North Hollywood. “The children can play outside and we can save money.”
The Chavez family is one of 250 families that have stayed in trailers purchased by the city in 1987 from a Utah power company. The trailers had been used by the company to house workers during a massive power plant construction project.
Originally proposed by Mayor Tom Bradley to a skeptical public and City Council, the Mobile Home Transitional Housing Program is now considered a success by city housing officials and advocates for the homeless.
In part because of its success, the trailer program is being viewed by Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro as a model for a pilot project to house low-income families in vacant houses in North Hollywood for up to six months at a time.
The plan, which received preliminary approval last week from a City Council committee, will rely on the same social service agency--L.A. Family Housing Corp.--used by the trailer program to screen prospective tenants.
The trailer program is operating on a far smaller scale than first envisioned by Bradley, who wanted to buy enough trailers to house 2,000 people. Bradley backed off after council members objected to placing the trailers in their districts. Even now, only about half of the 102 trailers purchased are in use.
“The irony is that we have a very viable program, but we haven’t been able to grow any more,” said Robert Vilmur, the city’s homeless coordinator.
Nevertheless, the program has largely overcome a series of problems that dogged it in its early days, project administrators said, and officials hope to soon find sites for 20 trailers that are in storage. The Los Angeles Community Development Department, which oversees the program, is asking the City Council to appropriate about $550,000 a year to fund the additional sites and improve the existing programs.
“My strong feeling is that if the trailers are properly managed, this program can be a resounding success,” said Dushyant Rajan, manager of the San Fernando Gardens project, which has operated eight trailers since December, 1987.
Of 32 families that participated in the trailer program at San Fernando Gardens, 24, or 75%, moved on to permanent housing, according to a recent study by the Community Development Department. Another six families are living in the trailers.
Overall, 79% of the 250 families served throughout the city in the trailer program have moved into permanent housing, according to the city study. The city pays seven private social service agencies about $100,000 a year to operate the trailer programs at city housing authority projects and private assistance agencies.
According to the Community Development Department’s report, the trailer program initially ran into trouble because of inadequate screening of tenants. In the program’s first months, less than 50% of tenants went on to permanent housing and many drew the city into time-consuming eviction proceedings when they refused to move out, the report said.
The social service agencies, including L.A. Family Housing Corp., refined their screening methods and now perform detailed credit checks on prospective tenants. They also try to weed out drug users and the chronically homeless, Vilmur said.
Still, trailer tenants occasionally attract sellers and buyers of drugs, according to some longtime residents of the San Fernando Gardens project, which has 448 units for low-income families.
“You don’t know what kind of people they are going to be,” said Victoria Martinez, who lives in an apartment next to two of the trailers.
“If I were to go into a microscopic perspective, yes, there are problems,” Rajan conceded. “But there’s a xenophobic attitude to newcomers in all places. This place is no different.”
