End of Aid Could Give Earthquake Victims a Jolt : Housing: Hundreds of displaced, lower-income families have come to rely on federal rent subsidies, which for many will end in July.

By MACK REED

April 9, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Before the Northridge earthquake, Keith and Bridgette Smith had a cozy $600-a-month country home.

By day, they plucked oranges and avocados from trees outside their 1920s bungalow in Grimes Canyon near Fillmore, and they fell asleep at night to the cries of coyotes.

Then came the 6.8-magnitude quake.

It fractured the Smiths’ house, polluted their well and forced them into temporary government-subsidized housing--a cramped, costly two-bedroom condo with no yard in Simi Valley.

Worse still, government aid--which pays $184 of their $900 monthly rent through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development--is about to run out.

“It really helps to give us the rent reduction,” said Keith Smith, 27, a union carpenter. “I’d love to get my family back into a place with a yard.”

Like 350 other families of earthquake refugees from Fillmore and Simi Valley and 100 more from the San Fernando Valley, the Smiths have come to rely heavily on the HUD aid.

And, like the others, they are unsure how they will get along without it.

Immediately after the earthquake, HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros opened his department’s coffers to earthquake refugees, issuing rent subsidies locally through the Ventura County Area Housing Authority.

As a quick stopgap to the sudden housing shortage, HUD offered 18-month rent subsidies for lower-income earthquake victims of up to 70% of their annual income.

For many, those 18 months will end in July.

Those who cannot make up the lost aid on their own will be forced out into a harsher rental market, housing officials say. There, many cheaper rental units are still being restored after heavy earthquake damage, and rents across the board have been inflated by the increased demand.

Last week, however, the government threw out a safety net called Mobility Plus.

HUD hired Interface Children, Family Services of Ventura County to run the program, which will give the ousted renters job-hunting classes, retraining for higher-paying jobs, subsidized child care and help finding affordable housing.

Terry Miller, Interface’s assistant executive director, said they will be facing “housing that’s probably going to cost them an average of $300 or $400 more than they were paying before.”

“We will try to negotiate with the existing landlords, to see if we can negotiate a rent that can be less than the fair-market value, but more than the subsidized rent (residents) have been paying,” Miller said. “A lot of them will have to upgrade their employment.”

Not all the HUD-subsidized renters are truly needy, conceded David Roddick, who has overseen the subsidy program for the county Area Housing Authority.

Early on, he said, the authority eliminated several dozen applicants who either were not needy enough or outright frauds.

It also gave HUD aid to some earthquake refugees who could have recovered more quickly, such as Cal State Northridge students who had been living three or four to an apartment and suddenly were given rent-subsidized single apartments, Roddick said.

“My opinion is that there’s a good 20%, 25% of the people who receive this who were in position in their lives where they probably could have turned things around quicker than 18 months,” he said.

“To Cisneros’ credit . . . he did the best he could with the tools he had to work with,” Roddick added. “But I think we used a chain saw where a coping saw might have done better.”

However, he said, most of the refugees living on rent subsidies are legitimately needy.

The Smiths are not even among the worst-off of the HUD-supported families.

About one-third are big families with small salaries, Roddick said, another third are single-parent families, and the rest are elderly or disabled people with limited income.

Among these is Mercedes Lupercio.

Lupercio said that she and her husband are paying $122 a month on their subsidized $900 apartment in Simi Valley, plus $110 a week in child care for their three young children.

Job hunting has been tough for him, and his work as an auto window tinter has been sporadic, Lupercio said. Her salary as temporary sales assistant for a Thousand Oaks cosmetics firm barely pays for everything now, she said.

The family had been paying $595 a month for a one-bedroom house in Simi Valley before the earthquake damaged its roof and jammed its doors.

And they lost half their security deposit. The landlord kept it, Lupercio said incredulously, because they failed to give 30 days’ notice they were moving out.

“Like, how are we supposed to give notice if we don’t know the earthquake’s going to happen?” she said.

For about two months, the family lived with Lupercio’s mother, but they finally sought longer-term relief through the HUD program--and got the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that costs them substantially less.

When the subsidy expires in September, she said, they are unsure what will happen, and they welcome any help from Interface.

“We’re trying to think of something to do,” said Lupercio, 23. “We’re going to have to move into a smaller place. We won’t have enough to pay for something like this.”

Interface’s Terry Miller said her agency will try to connect families like the Lupercios with the Job Training Policy Council of Ventura County. The council will be able to train some for better-paying jobs and may be able to find them temporary work doing government-funded earthquake repairs, Miller said.

Interface also will try to help earthquake refugees find permanent affordable housing. That may be crucial for elderly and handicapped people who are leaning heavily on the HUD rent subsidy, Miller said.

Esther Woldman is one of those people.

Woldman, 85, said she has no idea how she will get along if she has to leave her subsidized apartment in eastern Simi Valley.

The earthquake badly damaged her son’s house in Chatsworth, and she does not want to move back in when it is repaired, she said. There will be no room for her at her daughters’ homes in Simi Valley and Santa Monica, Woldman said.

Roommates are out of the question, and she will be hard-pressed to find an affordable single apartment on the $618 she gets each month from Social Security, she said.

Instead, she said, she would like to stay in the little $640-a-month apartment in a family neighborhood where she is living at a subsidized cost of only $116 a month.

“I’m capable of living alone,” Woldman said last week. “If something could be done for seniors that can be out on their own but can’t afford it financially . . . it would raise their spirits so much.”

She added, “I hope I never have to move from here. I wouldn’t have the strength to go moving again. At my age, it’s hard to go moving.”

Roddick, director of the housing authority, said that while it is “gut wrenching” to hear the stories of elderly people and others who are anxious about losing the rent subsidy, the program was only meant to be a temporary help.

“This was meant to mitigate the effects of the earthquake, and it’s done that,” he said. “People who were eating cat food before the earthquake are going to go back on a cat food diet.”

For some, though, the earthquake brought a permanent loss.

Keith and Bridgette Smith say they can never go back to their little house in Fillmore. Oil from nearby wells has permanently contaminated their water, and the landlord has offered them no hope that he will repair the place any time soon.

Wistfully, they talk about finding a place they can afford, when their rent subsidy ends, that is just as sweet.

And they remember the good days, back when Keith Smith could take his .22-caliber rifle hunting in the hills out back any time he pleased.

Bright, delicate friezes of hearts and flowers still decorate the kitchen and hearth where Bridgette Smith stenciled them in the family’s first year in the house.

But the big, grassy yard where they hoped their two young sons could play is thick with weeds, and vandals have already sprayed graffiti on a neighboring abandoned house.

“It was a nice place,” Keith Smith said recently as he and his family toured the empty house. “The only noise you’d ever hear was the traffic going by, and after a while, you didn’t hear that. I can’t even compare it. This was the best.”