Time Running Out for Family Seeking Rental

They left home in Indiana after Christmas to seek a better life in Orange County. But after seven days on the road, the Abbott family’s California dream turned into a nightmare.

Driving down a hill in the Mojave Desert in early January, Jim Abbott lost control of the family station wagon when the sway bar attached to a 20-foot travel trailer snapped, causing the trailer to swerve. Both the car and trailer rolled over, with the car landing on the side of the road and the trailer winding up at the bottom of the hill.

Fortunately, they were all wearing seat belts, and no one was injured--not Abbott, 30, nor his wife, Kim, 25, nor their four children, ages 5 to 8.

Unfortunately, both the car and the trailer, which they were counting on using as their home while Abbott looked for work, were beyond repair.

In one terrifying instant, the Abbotts had joined the ranks of the homeless.

Today the Abbotts are living in the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter, a temporary emergency housing facility in Costa Mesa which provides free food and lodging for 60 days.

Since arriving there on Jan. 12, the family’s fortunes have improved. On Feb. 8, Abbott landed a building maintenance job in Irvine, and, as the eight-week shelter program dictates, they have been saving at least 80% of his $254 weekly take-home pay to move into a rented house or apartment. Combined with a part-time job and Aid to Families with Dependent Children they received earlier, they have saved nearly $3,000 and put a small down payment on a $2,000 1977 Dodge wagon.

But their problems are far from over.

The Abbotts are now faced with a dilemma that shelter officials say has become a common problem for Orange County’s homeless--particularly those with large families: They have been unable to find affordable rental housing.

It’s not that they can’t find a three-bedroom house or apartment for rent in their price range of around $700 a month. Kim Abbott said she has called or visited more than 50 prospective landlords.

But because they live in a shelter, have a low income and a large family, the Abbotts contend that they are being discriminated against by many landlords using a variety of legal and possibly illegal methods to avoid renting to them.

“It’s frustrating,” Kim Abbott said. “We would be out of the shelter if we could.”

What makes their situation even more desperate is that their time at the shelter technically ran out three weeks ago. “There are other families that need to move in,” shelter director Peg Schmitz said.

Schmitz said the Abbott family “is doing what they should be doing: They’re working; they’re not trying to milk the welfare system. But because they’re poor, homeless and down, the landlords think they’re a poor risk. One of the problems is the large family; the more children in the family, the more difficult it is to find a place.”

The Abbotts are not an isolated case, she said. “There just is very little low-income housing in Orange County. And what happens is these people remain homeless.”

Return to the Street

Scott Mather, chairman of the board of directors of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter and a board member of Share Ourselves (SOS), a private Costa Mesa agency helping the homeless, agreed: “We’re finding (at SOS) that even when we get people on their feet, they can’t get themselves out of the problem of homelessness. They’re ready, and yet because of the housing situation in Orange County, they end up back up on the street again.”

David T. Quezada, executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Orange County, considers housing discrimination against the homeless or large families “a very serious problem. But the common denominator to most housing problems in the county, including the homeless, is the lack of sufficient affordable housing,” he said.

A spokesman for the Orange County Environmental Management Agency said there were an estimated 197,020 rental units in the county as of March 1984, but the agency statistics do not reflect the number of low-cost units. The rental rate for a low-income, affordable two-bedroom apartment currently is $859 or less a month.

Barbara Howard, a housing rights consultant for the council, said the private, nonprofit organization has received 1,745 complaints of unlawful discrimination over the past 12 months, with 560 of them involving families with children.

Howard, who is investigating several of the Abbotts’ allegations of housing discrimination, said it is illegal to discriminate because of one’s group affiliation, whether the group be women, blacks, families with children or even men with tattoos.

The California Supreme Court in 1982 ruled that adult-only apartments were an unlawful form of discrimination and were in violation of public policy. Landlords, however, have found ways of circumventing that decision, Howard said.

Limit on Numbers

One method is “occupancy limitation,” she said. Some apartment owners say they will rent a two-bedroom apartment only to two people or a three-bedroom apartment only to three people. “So a family like the Abbotts, who most of us would think can fit in a three-bedroom apartment, will be denied rental,” Howard said.

Quezada said that occupancy limitation is not necessarily illegal but that “it’s certainly suspect because there is no apparent justification for the limitation.”

Howard said another practice that has “a severe, disparate impact on young families with children” is that of landlords who require renters to have a gross monthly income approximately three times the rent.

Quezada said landlords have an economic justification for rejecting an applicant for not having a large enough income, “but because of extremely high rent rates in the Orange County market, this precludes a substantial amount of people.”

Ray Maggi, past president and current member of the board of directors of the Apartment Assn. of Orange County, said there is no question that a landlord requiring an income of three times the monthly rent in Irvine or Newport Beach “is going to knock 90% of the low or moderate (income) people out because the cost of the buildings is too great in those areas.”

Maggi said low- or moderate-income housing cannot be built in Orange County today “with the current construction costs and land prices without some government subsidy. But what could happen is, if we built enough more expensive housing, then a lot of the low and moderate housing will open up because the American people tend to rise one level beyond their economic means.”

Purpose of Limitation

Maggi said the association, an educational and advisory group of about 3,000 income property owners, supports owners’ rights to set the number of people who can occupy an apartment within reason. “If you don’t have reasonable limits, you end up with blighted housing through massive overcrowding,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think housing discrimination is common among landlords. “I talk to a lot of owners, and 99.9% of them are reasonable people. Our basic philosophy is to be fair to all people and to follow the law, and that’s what we advise all our members.”

The Abbotts are convinced, however, that they are rejected by landlords because of what Mather refers to as the stigma attached to people who have come out of a shelter--”the assumption that if you’re homeless, you’ve failed somehow.”

Kim Abbott spends most of her day on the pay phone in the shelter office and in the family car following up classified rental ads in the newspaper.

“It’s tiring because you’re constantly out looking, and it’s hard on the kids because they don’t understand why they have to be cooped up in the car,” she said, seated with her husband on the sofa in the sparsely furnished living room of the shelter apartment they share with another family.

But they have no other choice. Returning to Indiana, where Abbott worked in a paint factory, is not an option they will consider.

They said that their 5-year-old daughter, April Lynn, was constantly ill with bronchitis when they lived in the small town of Dunkirk and that the bitter winters there were not good for her. Abbott did not have any medical insurance through his job, and “the bills were eating me alive,” he said.

‘Nicer Out Here’

Abbott said his new job is better paying and has medical insurance. Besides, he added as a warm breeze pulled the white living-room curtain through the screenless window behind him, “it’s a hell of a lot nicer out here, and it’s better for the health of our daughter.”

The Abbotts, who praise the support they have received from shelter officials, said they are not sure what they will do if they have to leave without having found housing.

They still have hope, however.

After one round of apartment hunting late last week, Kim Abbott found a job through a temporary agency packing medical supplies for a surgical supply company. She started work Monday. Her salary will increase their weekly gross income by $210 a week, so they are not limited to $700 a month rent. “We figure we can go up to about $825 a month rent,” she said.