Mobile Home Residents Ordered to Repay Quake Aid

When the 1994 Northridge earthquake shook hundreds of mobile homes off their jacks here, the Federal Emergency Management Agency doled out millions of dollars in aid.

Now the agency wants much of the money repaid, and is even threatening to take away the quake victims’ wages, Social Security benefits and income tax refunds.

The mobile home residents are furious, saying FEMA led them to believe that the money was a grant to be spent on repairs.

But FEMA officials insist that the aid from its Emergency Minimal Repairs Program was meant only to fill in gaps in homeowners’ insurance, not to double-pay the victims who received compensation from their insurance companies.

Nearly 100 mobile home owners crowded into a meeting Wednesday night in Simi Valley organized by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), where FEMA representatives tried to explain the misunderstanding.

FEMA official Judy Burgard explained: “The law will not allow us to pay for all of the repairs that your home needs, only those that make your home safe to live in.”

The law also requires aid recipients to return any money that might be duplicated by insurance settlements, Burgard said.

The crowd began to mutter, many grumbling aloud that they should not be penalized for failing to return the grant money immediately when they had no idea they had to return it at all.

“If the money is grants, why do we have penalties and interest?” asked Susan Dragoo. “If they owe that money and that’s legitimate, then that’s fine. But additional money? That’s not right.”

Added her husband, Gary Dragoo, “There’s a lot of people here who are really frosted by the government not asking for the money back, but really demanding the money back.”

Mobile home owner Rhonda Ruppel complained that many of her neighbors live on Social Security benefits and could never afford to pay back the interest as well as the grant.

As the griping in the community room at Simi Country Mobile Home Park grew louder, Burgard adjourned the meeting and recommended that homeowners bring their cases individually to FEMA workers who were standing nearby.

Clutching sheets, folders and thick envelopes packed with 23 months of disaster paperwork, people in the group began to slowly sort out their cases.

FEMA officials assured the homeowners that they could appeal their bills to a panel of FEMA officials.

Earlier, FEMA representatives said they had given ample warning to the mobile home residents, including a notice on the aid application papers.

“The money was given to them so that we could get people back onto the road to recovery quickly,” said Vallee Bunting, a FEMA spokeswoman, during an interview before the meeting.

“They received documentation that stated that if homeowners had existing insurance, they would have to repay the amount [of the grant] that the insurance covered,” Bunting said.

FEMA grants were supposed to be used to pay for the quake victims’ insurance deductibles, and for earthquake-resistant braces used to bolt their homes to their foundations, Bunting said.

“Any other costs that may have been covered by insurance is what’s being recouped at this point,” she said.

In an interview earlier, Susan Dragoo said that FEMA had never mentioned any of this--in conversations or in aid paperwork provided--to her or her husband.

Now, the couple faces a FEMA bill demanding they repay $2,909 of the $4,983 grant they received when the earthquake rumbled through the Simi Country Mobile Home Park and cracked their home in half.

“I went in [to FEMA’s Simi Valley office] a dozen times and I said, ‘Are you sure I can cash this?’ ” recalled Dragoo, vice president of the Simi Valley Mobile Home Owners Assn. “They said, ‘This is a non-repayable grant.’ It’s not a loan; I never signed any documents.”

But FEMA has even mailed letters to some mobile home owners, threatening penalties for those who do not pay, Dragoo said.

The letters threaten to garnish the quake victims’ wages, attach their Veterans Administration and Social Security benefits, even to reduce their future federal income tax refunds to recover the grant money, she said.

“They’re turning this into a loan with interest, and penalties are being charged,” Dragoo said. “The people that have received these grants, they’re devastated. . . . We did not sign for a loan. We did not ask for interest and penalties. What they did to us was wrong. It was completely wrong.”

But FEMA directors say the mobile home owners from Simi Valley and Fillmore who complained to Gallegly’s office were amply warned.

“They’re not the only ones being recouped,” said Burgard, FEMA’s human services officer, said in an earlier interview. “We’ve sent letters out to 16,000 people--they fall into different categories--in all three counties involved. . . . They got the notice when they received the check. If they get insurance [settlements], they can use this money as an advance toward repairs, but they have to pay FEMA back. It’s explained right up front.”

Betty Chandler said she and her husband were told repeatedly--by an ever-changing succession of FEMA workers handling their case--that the $8,600 they received was a grant.

After the couple’s earthquake insurance paid off the remaining amount on their mortgage, the Chandlers used the FEMA grant as a down payment for a new mobile home, only to receive a bill for repayment last summer.

Now, grudgingly, the couple have begun paying back the $5,000 FEMA says they owe, at $100 per month. At that rate, she said, they will be paid off in 1999.

“We were angry at first; then we just got around to counting our blessings,” said Chandler, whose mobile home at Friendly Village was destroyed by the rough quake.

“It’s disappointing,” she said. “I’m just wondering why they’re handling it this way.”

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FYI

FEMA officials plan to visit Fillmore on Monday night to explain the earthquake aid recoupment process to mobile home owners. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at El Dorado Mobile Estates, 250 E. Telegraph Road.