Help Coming for Displaced Tenants

One night last September, Cecilia Bryan lost everything she owned in an apartment fire.

Through a haze of ash and disbelief, she watched the destruction. Then the single mother of four arrived at the same stark question every survivor eventually asks.

“I kept looking at my kids [thinking], ‘What am I going to do now? Where am I going to go?’”

Each year scores of people lose their homes to a variety of calamities. With affordable housing in short supply in Los Angeles, the loss of a home can mean a long search for another home--or homelessness.

Now a study being conducted by the city’s Housing Department is laying the foundation for a citywide relocation policy for low-income residents who are displaced from their homes.

“The bottom line is, we don’t want people to become homeless,” said Sally Richman, manager of policy and planning at the Los Angeles Housing Department.

Members of the Los Angeles City Council, which requested the study, expect to have a policy in place by the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Although statistics are not kept on the number of people displaced from their homes each year, local officials say the need is significant, particularly for those who lose homes because of slum conditions.

The Los Angeles study, which includes an examination of services offered by 21 local nonprofits, is revealing what many survivors know: Little exists for tenants who are the victims of unscrupulous or negligent property owners.

“There’s really not anyone to help them right now,” said Julie Chavez, who is coordinating the study.

The Red Cross provides services to those displaced by house fires and other calamities but does not assist residents who must move because of code violations.

Such crises have sometimes ended up at the office of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“A council office [would] call saying, ‘Hey, this building is going to close. Can you help us relocate these people?” said Natalie Profant Komuro, director of policy and legislative affairs for the Homeless Services Authority.

The idea of a relocation policy and fund has been bandied about for years, but the need was underscored by a tragic building collapse in December 2000. The 24-unit apartment building fell, killing one resident and leaving scores homeless. Most were poor immigrant families.

In 2001, the Los Angeles City Council allocated $500,000 to an emergency relocation fund but still lacked a clear policy for use of the money.

By August, officials were tapping that fund to assist residents of the Palomar Hotel, a residential hotel that burned down, leaving two people dead and dozens of tenants with no place to live.

In both the building collapse and the fire, the City Council made payments ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 to help residents move into new homes.

The city spent $125,000 to assist 64 adults and 38 children from the collapsed Echo Park building. Another $101,000 went to the 35 residents of the Palomar Hotel, housing officials said.

For David Barling, a former resident of the Palomar, the help from the city has meant the difference between a corner on skid row and a roomy apartment in Hollywood.

“If the city had not done that, I don’t know what would have happened to all of us. We had nothing to help us, nothing at all,” Barling said. “I would have had to go live on the street.”

Barling found a unit in a Hollywood apartment building where his rent is $350, or $30 less than what he paid at the hotel. Not everyone was so fortunate, he said.

“A great many people did not find housing,” he said. “There are many people that had to move downtown.”

Housing advocates hope to keep tenants off the street by raising awareness of their needs--but also, in some instances, teaching them how to budget and set priorities for housing.

The Inner City Law Center, which administered the funds to residents of the Echo Park building and the Palomar, did more than hand out checks. It first had to identify the true residents of the building--not an easy task when many had lost purses and wallets containing identification in the blaze. In some cases, the center shuttled residents to the bank and made arrangements with a bank to cash checks for tenants without identification.

Supporters of the policy under study by the city acknowledge the near-impossibility of offering assistance to every family. “I think we need to quantify how many people we’re talking about. Obviously we can’t do earthquakes,” said Rod Field, executive director of the Los Angeles Housing Law Center, who helped draft a new state law that allows municipalities to provide relocation assistance to tenants of substandard buildings, then recoup the money from building owners. Cities across the state are now implementing that law. The current study will begin to answer key questions: Under what circumstances will residents receive assistance? Who will be eligible? What restrictions will be placed on the use of the funds?

An interim policy limits relocation payments to tenants of older, rent-controlled buildings, although the City Council can approve assistance for renters in structures built after 1978.

Inspectors with the L.A. Housing Department issued orders to vacate 126 units in 2001, leaving scores of people either temporarily or permanently without a place to live.

Other agencies, such as the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, can also order buildings vacated.

Landlords are required to offer relocation assistance to these tenants. Often, though, landlords cannot be found, or simply do not obey the law. Sometimes the only remedy for tenants is costly and lengthy lawsuits.

Under the new state law, written by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), cities can advance money to tenants, then recoup the money from landlords at a rate of 1 1/2 times the amount the city put out. That money can be used to help replenish the relocation fund.

A requirement to pay relocation benefits will also deter landlords from driving tenants out of substandard buildings, only to repair the units, bring in new tenants and charge higher rents, said Tai Glenn of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

For now, though, the Red Cross provides much of the assistance to those who find themselves suddenly homeless. In 2001, the agency’s local chapter found shelter for 2,896 people, including Cecilia Bryan and her family. For Bryan, whose apartment burned Sept. 11, the help turned a tragedy into a testimony.

The night of the fire, Bryan, a clerk, had $200 and no family or friends who could help. The Red Cross became the network she lacked.

The agency helped with hotel vouchers, finding an apartment, moving costs, furnishing, clothes. Workers gave her the boost she needed to begin again.

“All I had to do is move in and start all over again,” she said, her voice full of emotion. “But without them, believe me, I would be struggling.”