Was Burned Abode a Home or Motel?

When Thuy Pham was considering moving to Orange County from Arizona, she spotted a newspaper ad for a $250-a-month room in a home near Anaheim.

“This is a decent place to live if you can’t afford anywhere else,” the Huntington Beach receptionist said Friday as she returned to get her belongings from the fire-damaged house, which is divided into a honeycomb of 17 small bedrooms.

Pham shares a bathroom with three people and has no kitchen access. “We’re not allowed to cook, so we buy fast food all the time,” she said. “It’s not a big problem. It’s cheap.”

County inspectors condemned the structure after a fire Wednesday night, leaving Pham and about a dozen other tenants in motels while they look for a new place to live. Owner Robert Truong Tran is in a dispute with authorities over whether he was operating a makeshift student motel or merely giving relatives somewhere to stay.

For a home to be expanded for an extended family or run like a boarding house is not uncommon in Orange County, social-service experts said.

“Housing is the No. 1 major problem,” said Marianne Blank, executive director of St. Anselm’s Cross-Cultural Community Center in Garden Grove since 1975, when the first Vietnamese refugees arrived in Orange County. “It’s a constant struggle for immigrants, but sharing is how they get on their feet and become successful.”

The house, which is in an unincorporated area, has been doubled in size since Tran bought it 11 years ago. It drew authorities’ attention when paramedics responding to a medical-aid call discovered a fire. County inspectors are investigating whether building codes were violated.

County records show that Tran had a permit to expand the two-bedroom house and use the added area as living space. The area is zoned for residential and business uses.

Tran, 64, said he added the maze of bedrooms to accommodate relatives, many of them students. He described them as guests and said he does not charge rent.

“They’re all my relatives and nephews,” he said Friday as county officials examined the house. “We’re all in the family. We stick together.”

With housing scarce and costs soaring, “People are willing to sacrifice their privacy because of rent prices,” said Lan Q. Nguyen, a Garden Grove community leader. “The living situations come first,” especially for recent immigrants, who often have little money and no jobs. Families often start out sharing a car and pooling funds for groceries and utilities.

The ground floor of Tran’s house has a kitchen and 13 bedrooms for family members, including his parents and his five children, ages 17 to 32. It is such a maze that Tran needs a map.

“It’s like a mansion,” he said with pride Friday. “Neighbors misunderstand us. They think we live like rats. But we’re very orderly.”

Tran, who fled Vietnam in 1975, bought the house in 1988 for his family. At the time it was 1,100 square feet with three bedrooms. Five years ago, he expanded the second story and added four bedrooms and a bathroom with the help of his children.

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Times staff writer Matthew Ebnet contributed to this report.

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A House Divided

2nd-floor fire