Both Sides Are the Home Team

Not that there’s a bad guy in the case of Fullerton versus Elsie Thompson, but I find it easy to root for Thompson.

Thompson’s house, hit by fire six years ago, is a stark neighborhood eyesore. Many of its windows remain covered with plywood. Touch the charred wood of its exterior and it comes off in your hand in black flakes. Inside, the place is frightening squalor, which she shares with four beloved dogs: Bunny, Blackie, Mandy and Silvie.

But home is home. And Elsie Thompson, 71 and in failing health, has owned this house on a quiet street in the south part of Fullerton for 45 years.

She was thinking the other day, after coming back late from a dog show, “it’s just nice to have a bed of your own to crash in.”

A bed is just about all she has.

She’s parted the house’s clutter just enough to create a path for herself from the front door to her bedroom. The four other rooms remain heavily damaged from the fire. “You can’t go back there,” she told me when I asked to see the bedroom. “You’re too big to squeeze through.”

The city this week filed an injunction seeking to get the courts to either force Thompson to meet fire and safety standards or get out.

It’s not difficult to see the city’s side.

A fire hazard, a health hazard, numerous building code violations--the place is a danger to Thompson as well as her neighbors, says the city’s lawyer, Kimberly Hall Barlow.

Something needs to be done so that both sides can win on this one. But that won’t be easy.

The trouble began six years ago when Thompson was hit with just about the worst luck around:

She was in her bedroom tending to a poodle and her six puppies while Santa Ana winds were whipping wildly outside. Two power lines along her street were thrown together, caught fire, and spread flames to the front eaves of her house.

As the house filled with fire and smoke, Thompson was injured trying to pull the frightened puppies from underneath her bed. She managed to get them all out, including the mother, though all eventually died from smoke inhalation.

Thompson, who lives alone, survives on Social Security checks. She had no fire insurance or money for repairs. She sued Southern California Edison but lost.

For a time, Thompson lived in a small motor home she had used for long trips to dog shows. Friends and a church group tried to help her get things in order, at least enough so she could move back in. But some city officials complain that Thompson wasn’t very cooperative with their efforts to get her house in living condition.

For example, the fire chief at the time brought his Rotary group over to clean out the inside. Thompson is still bitter about that day. She stopped them after they’d cleaned just one room. They were throwing out her best stuff, she said. The items were water- and smoke-damaged, but they were still things that were important to her.

The city claims she has resisted other attempts to help her. She wouldn’t apply for low-interest loans or grants the city told her about. Too many strings attached, Thompson said in explaining to me why she wouldn’t.

In the meantime, the city was getting flooded with complaints from neighbors. Thompson’s yard was growing up in weeds, and the whole place looked like the neighborhood dump.

“I’ve never seen a case where city officials went so far out of their way to help someone who refused to be helped,” Barlow said.

Last year, city officials decided to give Thompson 45 days to comply with necessary repairs. But when she said that would be impossible, they backed off and agreed once again to try to help her.

But now, Barlow said, the city has run out of patience. It wants a judge to rule that Thompson has to make necessary repairs and clean up the squalor, have the house razed or sell it to someone who will fix it up.

Thompson, in response, has followed her survival instincts: She has herself a lawyer. Irvine attorney Bernard Gaffaney saw her case posted in the Public Law Center’s bulletin and took up her cause.

Gaffaney met with Thompson for the first time this week. It’s too early to determine a course of action on her behalf, he said, but he wants the city to know it’s in for a fight.

“There’s an inherent unfairness about all this,” Gaffaney said. “She’s already suffered greatly through no fault of her own. It’s a shame it has to come down to a court case.”

City attorney Barlow says it’s a shame too. But she’s not content to let conditions remain status quo.

“That house is not in livable condition,” she said. “Something has to be done, for Ms. Thompson’s own good.”

For Thompson, it’s a narrow issue: “This is my home. I’d planned to be here until I die. But you can only fight the city for so long. I don’t know how much fight I have left.”

Thompson’s attorney, Gaffaney, and Barlow have yet to meet. When I interviewed Barlow on Friday, she didn’t even know Gaffaney had taken Thompson’s case.

Something tells me that these two lawyers will discover that their goals are not that far apart.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823, by fax at (714) 966-7711 or by e-mail at jerry.hicks@latimes.com.