Alarcon Calls for Task Force on Garage Dwellings

On the day that two young girls and their grandmother were buried, victims of a searing fire in the illegal garage apartment where they lived, City Councilman Richard Alarcon called for a task force to study ways to make the city’s estimated 50,000 to 100,000 illegal garage dwellings safer.

“We can no longer turn a blind eye to the problem,” said Alarcon, whose district includes the Sun Valley neighborhood where Maria Gonzalez died last Wednesday with her granddaughters, 7-year-old Joanne Lizette Paz and 2-year-old Janessa Naomi Paz.

As envisioned by Alarcon, the task force would include representatives of several city departments, including Building and Safety, Water and Power, Police, Fire and city attorney.

If approved by the council next Tuesday, the task force would be charged with finding means to remove families from dangerous situations while working with landlords to make apartments conform with city codes.

One possibility, he said, is to charge landlords for the relocation costs of families who must move.

The issue is a touchy one because people who live in converted garages are for the most part poor and unable to find other housing.

For that reason, Alarcon said, the city must be somewhat flexible in dealing with these units while acting to prevent another tragedy.

“We need to create a system that recognizes that if we force all of these people out of their homes, we’re going to contribute to homelessness,” he said.

At the same time, he said, allowing people to stay in the apartments could pose liability problems for the city if something goes wrong. And many of the units may be in single-family neighborhoods, where apartments are forbidden under city zoning codes.

At the Forest Lawn mortuary in the Hollywood Hills on Tuesday, several hundred mourners paid their last respects to the girls and their grandmother.

Jesus Hernandez, whose late wife was a close friend of Maria Gonzalez, read about the tragedy in the newspaper and drove all the way from Coachella to say goodbye.

Friends and relatives wept openly at the sight of the gold casket that held Gonzalez and the two white ones that contained the Paz girls.

Their deaths, which have spurred citywide debate on affordable housing and homelessness, occurred just four months after five children were killed in a similar garage apartment fire in Watts.