City Loan Fund to Aid Repair of Mobile Homes

The owners of quake-damaged mobile homes and mobile home parks can now apply for zero-interest city loans to make repairs and anchor their dwellings against future quakes if nobody else will help them, the Los Angeles City Council decided Tuesday.

By a unanimous vote, the council agreed to set aside about $7 million in housing repair funds to help restore the thousands of mobile homes that were rocked off their foundations or otherwise damaged by the Northridge quake.

The program, which will be managed by the city’s Housing Department, will also offer loans to mobile home park owners who suffered infrastructure damage, such as broken sewage pipes and collapsed walls.

The loans are considered a funding source of last resort because to be eligible, applicants must have been rejected by other federal and state emergency loan programs.

“We are at the tail end of it to fill in what other programs can’t cover,” said Ralph Esparza, director of the Housing Department’s rent stabilization division.

Although apartment buildings and single-family homes suffered most from the quake, mobile homes sustained dramatic damage. Thousands were flung from their foundations. Another 184 burned to the ground in fires fueled by ruptured gas lines, one of which killed a 92-year-old Chatsworth woman.

The Jan. 17 quake rendered about 5,600 mobile homes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties uninhabitable. As of last week, that number had dropped to 1,650, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the agency responsible for safety inspections of mobile homes.

Department spokesman John Frith said that based on the number of repair permits issued by the state, he expects that number to drop by another 1,000 or so in the next couple of months.

The Housing Department put together the mobile home loan program at the request of City Councilman Hal Bernson, whose northwest San Fernando Valley district contains about two-thirds of the city’s mobile home parks.

Bernson’s chief of staff, Greig Smith, said the councilman witnessed severe damage to mobile homes as he toured his district with Mayor Richard Riordan soon after the quake. He said Bernson realized that many mobile home owners would not be able to afford repairs.

“These are a lot of retired people who don’t have the funding to do this,” Smith said.

Esparza said the most common damage involved mobile homes knocked off their foundations, sometimes crashing down on gas and water lines.

In July, Gov. Pete Wilson signed a law requiring mobile home owners to bolt them to foundations for safety. The cost of anchoring them to cement moorings ranges from $1,700 to $3,300, Esparza said.

The city’s program offers a maximum loan of $35,000 per mobile home owner, with no payments due for the first six years. For park owners, the Housing Department can administratively approve loans of up to $525,000 per owner, with larger loans requiring the approval of the City Council.

Staff writer Julio Moran contributed to this story.