Alarcon Urges Study on Illegal 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 safer the city’s estimated 50,000-100,000 illegal garage dwellings.
“We can no longer turn a blind eye to the problem,” said Alarcon, whose district includes the Sun Valley neighborhood where Maria Gonzalez died 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 from several city departments, including Building and Safety, Water and Power, police, fire and the city attorney’s office.
At Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills, several hundred mourners turned out to pay their last respects to the girls and their grandmother. Friends and relatives wept at the sight of the gold casket that held Gonzalez, and the two white ones that contained the Paz girls.
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