No Place to Turn : Riot aftermath: In hours, the Jimenezes lost the $25,000 clothing inventory that supported them and their children in Honduras. The family has been denied federal aid and faces eviction.

It took nine years for Angela and Rosalio Jimenez to scrape up enough money to start their clothing business in a swap meet at 7th Street and Union Avenue. It took only a few hours for them to lose everything when the swap meet burned down during the riots.

Now, left almost penniless, the immigrant couple--caught in a bind that has entangled many riot victims--face eviction from their apartment because they have fallen behind on the rent.

“I feel like I’m a child, being led blindly from one place to another,” said Angela Jimenez, 58. “It feels like a cruel joke.”

The Jimenezes have applied for riot-related assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but, because of complications in aid procedures, have initially been turned down.

“We never asked for government money before. We have always just worked harder to get enough,” said Angela Jimenez, who came to the United States with her husband in 1981 and later won permanent resident status. “Now that we really need it, we have to wait for it.”

The family had been having financial troubles and was unable to pay its $550 monthly rent in April. The riots added to the Jimenezes’ ordeal, sending a $25,000 clothing inventory up in smoke.

But because they had not paid their rent the month before the violence erupted, the Jimenezes--whose business supported seven children and one grandchild, six who live in Honduras--have been denied emergency rent aid.

And now, even if federal assistance comes through--three months after their initial application--the family may be forced from its home. As they waited anxiously for word from FEMA, their landlord grew impatient, the couple said. Days after they paid him about a third of what they owed in back rent, he ordered them to leave.

According to court records, landlord James Oronoz obtained a judgment granting him permission to evict the family. The Jimenezes say that Oronoz has refused to discuss a compromise or allow them to remain in the South-Central Los Angeles apartment they share with sons Eluin, 10, and Daniel, 21, while the matter is settled.

Neither Oronoz nor his attorney could be reached for comment. FEMA officials said that because of confidentiality requirements they could not comment on the case, though a spokesman said the agency takes steps to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly.

Dan Barba, an attorney with Urban Recovery Legal Assistance, a nonprofit group working to solve the Jimenezes’ dilemma, said Oronoz is within his rights to evict the family. In the meantime, the legal aid group is appealing FEMA’s rejection of the family’s aid application.

The Jimenezes, he said, are only one of hundreds of families sharing similar predicaments.

The group has seen a sharp increase in evictions among riot victims, for the most part because of what he described as the long and complicated aid application process.

“The facts may be different in the cases, but for the most part we’re seeing problems with clients getting access to aid even if they have applied,” Barba said.

For now, the Jimenezes have no idea where to turn.

When their small business went up in flames, the couple lost the papers proving their legal residence status. That has held up their attempts to obtain welfare benefits.

“We don’t know where to go,” said Angela Jimenez. “We don’t know people here. There’s pretty much nothing we can do.”