Trapped in a motel way of life
Vicious circle: With weekly rent payments and rising housing costs, many residents cannot save enough to move into cheaper apartments
By JAMES RAMAGE and CHRISTOPHER MOSS/Staff Writers
Victorville (CA) Daily Press
Sunday, December 5, 2004
http://www.vvdailypress.com
There are two beds, a small bathroom and a kitchen that
doubles as an eating area for the eight people who live
there.
The kitchen stove has four burners, but only one knob.
A fork operates the light switch in the bathroom, which is on
a timer. There is no living room and only a few chairs
perched atop the dingy carpet.
The view out the back is of some old beat-up cars — at
least that was the view before the manager sealed shut the
back door. Some new playground equipment sits near the old
cars, but the five children who live in the room are not
allowed to play on it. Management's rules.
Regina Hines said she pays $332 each week — or $1,328 a
month — to live there, one of 20 units at the Apple
Valley Motel at Highway 18 and Kiowa Road in Apple Valley.
That's a monthly rental nearly twice the price of nearby
two-bedroom apartments.
"At times it's rough," said Hines, who has lived in
the motel since April. "If I weren't in church praying,
I don't know how I'd make it. I wasn't raised this way.
Things are just real tight."
Hines and the four generations of her relatives who live
there are among an increasing number of High Desert residents
who make their homes in a motel, social workers and academics
say.
As housing prices and rental rates rise faster than wages,
more people with little education, few skills, bad credit and
who are unemployed or work low-paying jobs are spending what
little they have each month to put the roof of a motel room
over their heads.
The cost to the community can be high. Many residents living
in motels are on public assistance, so taxpayers often foot
the bill. And because of their circumstances and the high
rental costs, residents don't find a way to support
themselves or are unable to move.
The Hines household receives $1,626 a month — $836 from
Aid for Dependent Children and $790 from Regina Hines'
mother's Social Security check. Hines received $404 a month
in disability pay for a bad knee, but that assistance lasted
only a year, she said.
Kevin Patel, manager of the motel, defended the high rents he
charges tenants. He said overhead costs are high for the
motel and that he cannot afford to charge lower rental rates
normally associated with apartments.
Patel said he has to respond to problems immediately and
change the linens of each room twice a week. He said property
taxes, electricity and water all have to be paid by
management, resulting in guests paying a higher price than
they would pay for an apartment or a house.
"This is a temporary place, and so, it's
expensive," Patel said. "But (guests) don't need to
worry about anything, it's all included."
Little breathing room
Hines shares the motel room with five of her daughter's
children and her mother. Sometimes a cousin stays with them.
The children are all under age 10. Their mother spent several
months in jail and then worked at a topless bar in Hesperia.
Hines said that her daughter fell in with a bad crowd, so she
decided to take care of the children.
"There's no extra anything," said Hines, who says
she has $150 to spend on the kids after paying the rent,
storage costs and other minor expenses.
In August, Hines went school shopping for the children, $30
for each. But she wasn't able to buy everything, and one boy
went without new shoes. She ended up short on rent.
The last time she fell short on rent, her belongings were
left outside their room, Hines said. She was a day late.
"That's the scary part about wondering whether to buy
some clothes or not," Hines said.
She once had an apartment lined up in Adelanto for $550 a
month but things fell through when the apartment building
sold.
Motel living can be dangerous
Motels can be dangerous, filled with drug dealers and
prostitutes, said Janine Ingram, the executive director of OC
Partnership, a homeless services advocacy agency based in
Orange.
It's difficult for families living in a motel to eat
properly, said Lois Fox of Samaritan's Helping Hand, a
Victorville organization that provides food and services to
the needy. Rarely are motel facilities equipped with much
more than a microwave oven and a small refrigerator, she
said.
"It's just a heat-and-eat type situation," Fox
said. "No dishes. No silverware."
There's also the "car Catch-22," Fox said. Families
are typically bound to public transportation, borrowing rides
from friends or walking, as hardly any can afford to have a
car, she said.
"It's impossible to get a job up here without a car, and
that means registration and insurance," she said.
"How can you pay for that without a job?"
Research lags the problem
Julie Speia, with Housing California, said research lags on
long-term motel living.
The OC Partnership is conducting a group study on the topic.
The organization is studying motel life in Anaheim and taking
a sample size of 1,000 rooms for the report, expected to be
released next year.
"We've always had some portion of people that are living
in hotels," Ingram said. "I think that the concern
right now is the sheer numbers of people."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau report for the year 2000,
the number of people living in emergency transitional
shelters — which includes motels — was 170,706, of
which 27,701 were Californians.
In the report, emergency transitional shelters are defined as
"shelters for children who are runaways, neglected or
without conventional housing; transitional shelters for
people without conventional housing, and hotels and motels
used to provide people shelter for people without
conventional housing."
The state's housing problem can be ascribed to three factors,
according to Steven Frates, a senior fellow at the Rose
Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna
College.
First, the state was short almost 275,000 housing units in
1989 — a shortage that is more acute today, Frates said.
Second, the Pete Wilson administration shifted property taxes
away from cities and counties and over to schools, leaving
cities with little incentive to build low-cost housing, he
said.
Finally, years of redevelopment wiped out much of the state's
supply of older, and more decrepit, low-cost housing, Frates
said.
Those factors, placed alongside the rapid erosion of
manufacturing jobs at which low-skilled workers once could
earn a living, have combined to leave the working poor in
desperate straits, Frates said.
"You slam the door, and it hurts the guy barely making
it through the worst," Frates said.
Arnquist said that even though San Bernardino County has the
most affordable rents in Southern California, they're still
not affordable for a low-income family.
According to Susie Hollenbeck, executive director of High
Desert Homeless Services Inc., in Victorville, it's difficult
to find a Victor Valley apartment for less that $700 a month.
And the rising rents have increased the number people
knocking on her organization's door seeking temporary
housing.
Hollenbeck said the shelter housed almost 900 people last
year from throughout the Victor Valley, Barstow and the
unincorporated county areas. The number of people requesting
shelter in 2003 rose by 30 percent over 2002, and a 50
percent increase was seen in 2002 over 2001, she said.
The shelter supervisor estimated that up to 45 percent of the
people staying there go on to a motel after they leave.
Displaced Victor Valley residents can stay at the shelter for
a maximum of 90 days, Hollenbeck said.
End of the road?
"I know that, for lots of people, (motels are) where
they end up," said Jeanette Arnquist, director of the
office of social concerns for the Roman Catholic Diocese of
San Bernardino.
Ingram said the OC Partnership found that a surprising number
of people end up in motels because they become ill or are
injured. People may have been living in an apartment, were
injured, applied for disability and then were evicted from
their apartment because it takes so long for disability to
arrive, Ingram said.
Eviction leads to bad credit, which makes it harder to
qualify for traditional home rentals.
Racism can also pin families to motels, Arnquist, said.
Sabrena Powell, who lived in the Green Spot Motel on C Street
in Victorville, said she and her husband, Darren, were kicked
out of their apartment in Riverside because of a racist
manager.
Powell received $790 in Social Security income and $368 in
welfare income, while her husband looks for a job and she
looks for an apartment.
They're also trying to save for a car, she said.
The room they lived in was similar in size to Hines' Apple
Valley room. Clothes, books and food were neatly organized,
but greatly limited the open space in their room.
The Powells paid $740 a month for the room. She said the main
thing that keeps them out of an apartment is the cost of the
first month's rent and a deposit.
It's the reason why many motel residents are stuck.
James Ramage can be reached at james_ramage@link.freedom.com
or 951-6242.