One Step Away From the Street
The rickety wooden doors of the garage swing open to reveal not a parked car, but a living space, complete with a refrigerator, a hot plate and a color television with a picture that often flickers into black and white. In the garage next door, it is the same.
“We’re comfortable here,” Estela Franco says in Spanish from one of the garages beneath a duplex apartment in Boyle Heights. “There’s a lot of people [living] here. It’s not just us.”
The converted garage--rented by the couple for $150 a month--is one of tens of thousands scattered across Los Angeles’ poor and working-class neighborhoods. The prevalence and the dangers of such substandard and illegal dwellings were tragically illustrated by an early morning fire in Watts that killed five children Thursday.
Given the tight housing market in Southern California and the surge in low-wage jobs, the converted garage will probably remain a permanent fixture in the urban landscape. The alternative--evicting people from dwellings that violate building codes--could mean homelessness for many.
Interviews on Friday with people who live in garages revealed a wide range of attitudes about their circumstances. Some bemoaned the cold nights and the lack of bathrooms. Others praised their landlords as generous people who offered them a place to live when no one else would.
Many, like Franco, 50, and her husband, Esiquel Martinez, 52, a minimum-wage maintenance worker, don’t see the danger of living in a dwelling with only one exit, a condition that proved fatal in the Watts fire.
Asked about the blaze--which may have been ignited by an electric space heater placed next to a door--Martinez said: “I think that when that happened, they just turned up the heat too high.”
Martinez and Franco have lived in their garage dwelling for about a year. The room is barely six feet high; Martinez can almost touch the ceiling even when he’s sitting. The concrete floors are damp and chilly, even when the sun is shining and the day is warm outside.
Before living in the garage, the couple lived in a nearby trailer, where they paid $250 a month. Even that was too high. Until recently, Martinez said, he earned about $300 every two weeks. Living in the garage, they would have a little money left over after paying the rent.
But then in September his foot was crushed in an accident. Doctors amputated one of his toes. He went to the government office to apply for aid, but he has been turned down. To pay the rent the couple collect cans and “borrow a little” from friends. “We go to the churches where they give away food,” the husband said.
The garage has a homey feel. A plastic curtain separates the bed from the rest of the room. Flowers sprout from a vase over the refrigerator. Nearby, a pot of beans simmers and crackles on a hot plate. The landlord knows about Martinez’s accident and has been flexible about payment, the couple said.
The problem of converted garage living, experts say, is that what starts out as a temporary way to survive in tough times drags into a permanent style.
“Virtually anyone in that situation wants to get out, especially when you have kids,” said Susan Yeich, associate director of Beyond Shelter, a Los Angeles organization that helps the homeless find permanent housing. Parents living in garages are secretive, fearing that authorities will take the children away because of perceived dangers, she added.
A converted garage is the only home Reyna Fernandez’s 2-year-old son has ever known.
Fernandez, 24, has spent the last four years living in garages. The one she and her husband live in now in Pacoima is much bigger and cleaner than the dirty and cramped garage they lived in until last year. The rent is higher too: $400--as much as some apartments. There’s enough space for now but there might not be soon--she’s pregnant.
“We must stay here,” she said. “We can’t afford anything else.”
Bertha Lara endured four months of garage living with her children in another Pacoima neighborhood until they moved into a shelter. The garage was chilly and leaky, on an alley lined with similar ramshackle, illegal dwellings.
“It was very uncomfortable,” the 23-year-old single mother recalled at the North Hollywood shelter run by L.A. Family Housing Corp. “There were a lot of mice and rats and the water would come in through the roof. It was so cold for the children.”
Lara, her 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter shared the garage with a woman friend from her church who lived there part time. The total monthly rent was $300, which also gave them the right to use a communal bathroom on a breezeway attached to the front house. The garage had its own tiny kitchen. Lara and her friend purchased an electric space heater and extra blankets for the youngsters.
At the time, she could no longer afford her apartment. She had lost her job as a trimmer in a garment factory and did not attempt to receive welfare benefits because she is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Her share of the garage was only $130 a month.
“I was grateful,” she said. “It was the first thing I found that I could afford and it was the first thing I took.”
Other friends later took Lara and the children into their apartments until the family found refuge Nov. 11 at the shelter. The rules allow them to stay for three months. And after that? Lara said she hopes she can avoid going back to the garage, but, she says, “I really don’t know.”
Salvador Velasquez, her case manager at the shelter, said her future is difficult because only her daughter is a U.S. citizen and eligible for government assistance to help pay the rent.
“I do see a lot of this,” Velasquez said.
Times staff writer John M. Gonzales contributed to this story.
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Donations for Fire Survivors
Fire officials said Friday that they had yet to determine the cause of a fire in a converted Watts garage that killed five children Thursday morning. The parents, Alan Curtis and Sabrina Burnett, and their infant survived the blaze.
Officials said donations to the family may be sent to the Curtis Family Trust, care of World Savings Bank, 3326 Imperial Highway, Lynwood, CA 90262.
