Some Still Haven’t Taken the First Step : More quake victims must be persuaded to apply for aid

It’s good to hear that a Los Angeles City Council committee has given tentative approval to a $900,000 loan that will restore a crumbling Reseda apartment complex for new tenants. The structure had been left vacant by the Northridge quake and had already fallen into foreclosure.

It’s also reassuring to know that the owners of quake-damaged mobile homes can now qualify for $7 million in no-interest loans, as long as they have exhausted other efforts to obtain funds to rebuild. That may help several such owners who have been denied federal assistance.

And we’re pleased to note that an accord has been reached on the City Council that will open up another small pot of federal grant money that will help senior citizens recover from the January temblor.

But these are small victories in a major conflict, and every week seems to bring a new list of casualties. One of the more recent to succumb was a small establishment, the Bakers Square coffee shop on Tampa Avenue in Northridge. The shop survived the main temblor and the major aftershocks, but could not survive in the midst of a ghost town of vacant buildings and departed customers. Bakers Square served its last patron on Sept. 9.

Such stories are cause for concern for officials such as Los Angeles Controller Rick Tuttle, who feel that much more needs to be done to rebuild such ghost towns by reaching out to all who may qualify for aid but have not applied for it.

Yes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began, this month, to send out 620,000 letters to everyone who registered for quake aid. Those letters contain additional information about who may qualify and gives the requisite toll-free assistance numbers. But Tuttle and others are concerned that the letter might not be sufficient, and they are probably right.

As a recent story by Times reporters Hugo Martin and Julie Tamaki so thoroughly pointed out, the ghost towns could linger on for years.

One-quarter of the owners in the 15 ghost towns around Los Angeles do not plan to rebuild. Another 20% still have not decided whether they will rebuild. Owners who have obtained repair estimates have, in some cases, seen those estimates double as vandals strip their structures of everything of value. Six percent of the most badly damaged structures are already headed toward foreclosure.

That is part of what brings Tuttle back to the list of people who haven’t turned in aid applications. As of Wednesday, for example, more than 105,318 applications for business loans had been taken out, but more than 71,700 of them had not been turned in. About 33,900 economic injury loans had been sent out, but only 15,000 had been turned in for consideration.

One letter is not likely to be enough to persuade more folks to apply for aid. It will require a more spirited response from federal, state and local officials. It will take telephone calls and even site visits to help convince weary and discouraged owners that it is possible to rebuild.