Earthquake: The Road to Recovery : Project Houses Victims Who ‘Fell Through the Cracks’

Before the Northridge earthquake, Elizabeth Kasper lived modestly in a 22-year-old mobile home in Newhall with her husband, Jeff, and their two daughters, Joy and Grace.

After the temblor knocked their trailer from its foundation, the Kaspers not only found themselves without a home--they discovered they were ineligible for government housing assistance because their yearly household income, $29,500, was too high.

“We fell through the cracks,” said Elizabeth Kasper, 32. “We were not low-income enough, but we had no place to live.”

But thanks to a new Salvation Army program, the Kaspers are now living better than ever--in a two-bedroom condo in Sylmar with a vaulted ceiling, pool, Jacuzzi, and a private parking garage--all for $86 a month.

Under Project EARTH (Earthquake Aid for Relocation and Transitional Housing), the Salvation Army is helping to fill a void by leasing condominiums--most of them in the San Fernando Valley--and offering them for low rents to people made homeless by the quake. To qualify, the participants must earn between 50% and 80% of the median household income for Los Angeles--too much money to receive government assistance, but too little to fend for themselves.

According to estimates from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, $43,000 is the median income for a family of four in Los Angeles.

Any family displaced by the quake with a household income of less than half of the local median is eligible for housing subsidies through HUD’s Section 8 program. But Project EARTH coordinator Jerry Hill said thousands of displaced families in the Valley do not qualify for Section 8, yet also are too financially stretched to take out a government loan.

Project EARTH is meant as transitional housing, and anyone who stays in the condos longer than three months will pay a considerably higher rent. For a two-bedroom condo, for instance, the rent would jump from $86.40 to $518 for each of the following three months. The deadline for moving out completely is Dec. 31, Hill said.

The program was created one week after the earthquake, but it took a while to get under way because the Salvation Army had to find apartments to lease. About 100 people have applied to the program as of Thursday, and 18 have been accepted, Hill said.

So far, the Salvation Army has leased 45 condos, all owned by HUD, in Pacoima, Arleta, Sylmar, Panorama City, Mission Hills, Canoga Park, Valencia and Van Nuys. They intend to lease 100 in all, Hill said.

People who call inquiring about Project Earth have usually been referred by HUD, the Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency, or other agencies unable to help them, Hill said.

The application process involves filling out a one-page form listing the applicant’s former address and landlord, their current job, their income and some form of identification. If they pass a brief review, they are accepted.

Once people are accepted into the project, Salvation Army workers try to place them at the apartment closest to their former home.

The rent-controlled Sherman Oaks apartment where Gloria Wilson, and her mother, Trudie, had lived for the past 17 years was condemned after the quake. They moved into a friend’s home for two weeks, uncertain of what to do, until they learned about EARTH from a FEMA worker.

“We had gone to FEMA, went through the whole rigamarole,” said Gloria Wilson, 24, a CSUN graduate student who works to help her mother pay the rent. “We were basically shoved around, sent from place to place, and we were finally told that we made too much money to be eligible for anything.

“It’s very frustrating. You have no home, and the people who are supposed to help you say they can’t. There are low-income people, and people who can start out again, but most people are like me. We’re standard middle-class people. We work for a living.”

At $31,000, the Wilsons’ household income was far too high to qualify for government assistance, but still put them within EARTH’s boundaries because they are supporting Earl Wilson, Gloria Wilson’s retired father who also lives with them. The three Wilsons are now living in a two-story, two-bedroom condo in North Hills, and plan to stay there until they have enough money for rent and a security deposit somewhere else.

Chris and Danielle Beck, who were married only three months ago, had only acquired a few joint possessions when the quake destroyed their Saugus apartment. Now they are living in a one-bedroom EARTH apartment in Valencia.

“It gives us a chance to save a little money, and replace some of the things we lost,” said Chris Beck, 21, a student at Master’s College in Santa Clarita. “She went out and bought a set of dishes.”

Beck and his wife both live on her $24,000 secretary’s salary, which put them over the Section 8 housing level.