House-Hunting Woes Haunt Those Displaced by Quake

Evicting residents by the tens of thousands, the Jan. 17 earthquake created a corps of newly homeless exceeding the populations of some mid-size cities.

Seven weeks later, the encampments that dotted the landscape have vanished and the last of the shelters have closed. Their lives have been uprooted and their nerves frayed, but these quake victims--mostly poor renters but some middle-class and wealthy homeowners as well--are slowly, quietly finding new places to live. Along the way, they are confronting an array of obstacles.

A disabled woman struggled for three weeks to find a wheelchair-accessible apartment. An African American couple have been met with suspicious stares and prompt rejections from wary white landlords. A mother and her seven children spent a month in a friend’s living room while she searched for a landlord who would accept her large family.

“This disaster is really hundreds and hundreds of individual disasters,” said Peggy Hinz, a Red Cross spokeswoman.

Although many people have found new homes--sometimes better than the ones they left--the hunt continues for thousands more who remain in motels or with friends and relatives. “There’s still a big gap and a lot of people who need help in getting housing,” said Marshall Kandell of the Los Angeles Housing Authority.

Many rentals are still available in Los Angeles, a reflection of the pre-quake vacancy rate of 12%, one of the highest among the nation’s urban areas. To lure quake victims, many apartment complexes are advertising special earthquake discounts.

But rents remain prohibitive for many prospective tenants, highlighting a shortage of affordable housing that worsened when the quake damaged many low-cost apartments. And a significant number of landlords--fearing government red tape and problem tenants--are hesitant to accept low-income families who have been given emergency housing vouchers, one of the principal sources of post-earthquake aid.

Of the 18,000 households who have received these Section 8 vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development--which pay most of the tenants’ rent for 18 months--fewer than one-third have moved into new apartments.

It’s uncertain how the housing market will absorb the flood of victims shaken out of their homes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given out more than 51,000 checks for two or three months of rental assistance. City officials estimate that the vacancy rate in the San Fernando Valley has already shrunk to 2.5%, although apartment industry officials dispute that estimate as too low.

For many of the displaced, there will be little respite. The 18-month rent subsidies will end sometime next year, forcing many recipients into the market anew. Then, the numbing routine begins again--scanning the “For Rent” signs, filling out applications, packing boxes, and, ultimately, moving in.

The experience of half a dozen homeowners and renters over recent weeks shows that house-hunting can be a frustrating and painful experience, but one made easier by the massive influx of government aid and by the help of family and friends.

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Karen Singer was one of the last to leave her 88-unit condominium complex in Granada Hills.

The water and gas had been turned off, but unable to find a new place accessible to her wheelchair, she stayed on for three weeks after the quake. Using water from the pool to flush her toilet made the condo take on the air of a campsite. The unsanitary conditions made her sick.

“I had to find a place I could get into, a place that had a ramp,” said Singer, 41, noting that the shelters lacked special access facilities. “I had to stay in the condo, even though everyone else had left.”

Finally, after combing classified ads and enlisting the aid of relatives, friends and members of her church, Singer discovered a Mission Hills apartment designed for the disabled.

She is paying $750 a month for a two-bedroom flat, more than the mortgage for her damaged three-bedroom condo. She received a deferment in her mortgage payments but wonders how long she can afford the rent while she waits for FEMA to provide her with emergency housing assistance while her condo is being repaired.

Despite the uncertainty, Singer enjoys her new place.

“Who knows what I’ll do?” she asked. “I like this new apartment so much, maybe I’ll try to sell my condo and stay here.”

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For Loree Smith and Mark Harris, the search for new housing brought them face to face with an old adversary: discrimination.

Few landlords seemed enthusiastic about renting to the black couple, whose studio apartment near Lafayette Park was declared unlivable a month after the quake, when their ceiling belatedly collapsed.

With her 18-month housing voucher, Smith said she was determined to move to a safe neighborhood for the sake of her 13-year-old son.

“I know we could go to Watts, or Compton or someplace like that and find an apartment right away,” said Smith, who is unemployed. “But I don’t want to live out there. Too many gangs, too much violence. I’m not going there. I’ll build me a cardboard hut first. I just want to live in a place for once that’s in a safe neighborhood and is up to code.”

Her son, Brett Smith, agrees. “Whatever you do, mom,” the mother said the eighth-grader had told her, “don’t move to South-Central.”

With the federal voucher, Smith and Harris will pay about $200 a month for a two-bedroom apartment--a third of what they were previously paying for a studio in the high-crime Westlake district. A Hollywood landlord was interested when a Red Cross worker telephoned on the couple’s behalf. But their arrival dimmed his enthusiasm.

“He was stunned when he opened the door,” Smith said. “He told us: ‘When you get a job, come back.’ ”

She doubts that money was a factor: The two collect $776 in monthly welfare payments, more than enough to cover their $200 share of the rent.

“We just got to keep looking,” said Harris, hardly despondent about this and other similar rejections. “We have to be out there. It’s not going to come to us.”

To date, federal authorities say they have received more than 300 complaints alleging housing discrimination against earthquake victims, usually tied to their race, or because they are single mothers with children.

“You take the typical problems we see on a daily basis concerning racial discrimination and, for the earthquake, you multiply them,” said Michelle White, who heads the Fair Housing Congress, which monitors housing issues. “Landlords are restricting who they are letting in the door to even look at the unit.”

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The federal government told Tracy and Melvin Green that their Mid-City house was inhabitable and that they were not entitled to aid.

The couple knew better.

Their foundation had shifted almost a foot. The chimney had crumbled. Big cracks had appeared in the master bedroom’s walls and ceilings. The city had even posted a red tag.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which issues short-term emergency housing grants for renters and homeowners, later acknowledged that a computer glitch had caused the error. Disaster housing aid would be forthcoming after all.

While the couple waited for their check, it was Tracy Green’s employer who helped the family back onto their feet.

Centinela Hospital Medical Center, where Green works as an executive secretary, put the family up at the Airport Hilton.

Then the Inglewood hospital, which was criticized after the 1992 riots for firing two employees who were afraid to report to work, paid the family’s moving expenses and a security deposit for an apartment in Westchester, several miles away from their old home.

The Greens’ home remains unrepaired while the family awaits insurance claims and federal aid. Their children, Gary, 14, and Frances, 2, who previously had their own rooms, now share a small loft. Their mother misses her washer and dryer. The family dog spends its days on a small patio--not the spacious yard where it once roamed.

But the Greens consider themselves lucky. Their search for a new place took a single day. Soon, the family hopes to start repair work on their home.

“We’re cramped in this apartment but we know things could have been a lot worse,” Tracy Green said. “It would have been disastrous without the hospital. We would have had to parcel out the children to relatives.”

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“This is like Christmas,” said a stunned Pamela Price, her eyes welling with tears, as she toured the Warner Center Apartments complex in Woodland Hills that is her new home.

Among the amenities: four swimming pools (one heated), four spas, six tennis courts, two air-conditioned racquetball courts, a volleyball court, a fitness room and picnic areas. The setting is far removed from the cramped and badly damaged rented house in Winnetka where the family had been residing.

“It’s like a dream come true,” Price said.

After the quake, she and her two sons pitched a tent on their lawn for two weeks. Apart from the emotional duress and the daunting prospect of finding a new home, the disaster had further strained the family’s tenuous finances. Price’s eldest son lost his sales job when the hard-hit Northridge Fashion Center shut down. Price is an unemployed secretary still recovering from injuries suffered in an auto accident more than two years ago.

Initially, Price was nervous about approaching the crowded assistance center in Winnetka, where thousands of people were seeking help. With some trepidation, Price finally ventured inside.

She got lucky: A worker with Beyond Shelter, one of a handful of nonprofit agencies assisting quake victims in finding housing, helped shepherd her through the baffling housing thicket.

“Sometimes people are overwhelmed by the system,” said Del Richardson, housing resource director for Beyond Shelter, which has provided transportation, housing referrals and other help, including hooking up willing landlords with needy tenants.

The next day, housing voucher in hand, Price found her “dream home”--a two-bedroom apartment in Warner Center. Ironically, she had fantasized about moving into the complex years earlier, but had dismissed the notion as unrealistic.

Thanks to the voucher, Price is paying $243 a month for a spacious two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. That is almost $200 a month less than her rent at the cramped house.

“It’s like night and day,” Price said after signing the contract, credit check and other potential hurdles behind her. “This whole thing is a complete miracle. I just can’t believe it.”

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When the earthquake crunched Adela Rodriguez’s building in the Mid-City area, the single mother faced a particular quandary: Where would she find an apartment whose owner would welcome her seven children, ages 6 months to 13 years?

Like many parents, she was determined to remain near her old home, thus sparing her already traumatized offspring the upset of changing schools.

“My kids are well-behaved, not wild like some others,” said Rodriguez, who emigrated from Mexico 15 years ago. “But the landlords don’t know this.”

Homeless, her household moved into the family car and later to an emergency shelter. Looters, meanwhile, broke into their abandoned apartment, stealing the children’s clothing and most of their Christmas gifts--including three new bicycles.

From the shelter, the family moved to a friend’s living room, sharing sleeping space on a sofa and floor. The search continued.

She finally found a suitable three-bedroom place in the Palms area, but she wondered about the future. The family may have to move again in 18 months, she said, as the $740 rent would be too much without the subsidy.

But her problems turned out to be more immediate.

Her prospective new home had structural problems of its own, sending her back in search of “For Rent” signs.

“At least we’re better off than those who have nothing,” Rodriguez concluded. “With God’s help, we’ll be all right.”