Now that Steve and Kathy Valentino pay rent, they’re struggling to buy food. But for the most part, they feel lucky to have four walls and a roof two weeks after a fire burned the structure they lived in for 8 years in the Sepulveda Basin.
There’s little doubt they are the fortunate ones – nearly all of the 100 people displaced in the fire and subsequent encampment cleanup remain in the park.
With more cleanups on the way and scarce emergency housing options, advocates have scant hotel vouchers or emergency housing options to offer newly displaced people and fear that hundreds will end up on streets of neighboring Van Nuys, Lake Balboa and Encino. But they have found limited success in other ways like shared housing in single-family homes.
The Valentinos are now renting a room in a North Hills shared house geared to tenants with limited income, thanks to the help of a local homeless agency. The couple that marked 18 years of marriage on Wednesday are breathing easier, but they have a long road ahead.
“I feel so blessed,” said Kathy, who is also 53, of their new home. “I’m terrified of going back to that way of life. We were stuck there for 8 years.”
Immediately after the fire, the two were put up in a motel for a few nights with the help of friends and good Samaritans on social media before an outreach worker with LA Family Housing secured them – and their two cats – a spot at ‘Loving Home Care’ in North Hills.
The home is owned and operated Amy Bacashihua, a woman who ran group homes for the elderly most of her life. She currently has ten tenants and beds at a base rate of $1,000 a month – but has a policy of leniency motivated by her Christian faith.
She’s giving the Valentinos a significant break on the rent, and LA Family Housing are giving them supplementary assistance for a couple months until the couple can save money. She also accepts rent by way of Social Security or disability insurance.
A welcome sheet and mission statement for the home calls it a “collaborative housing program” and “a never-give-up experiment to reduce homelessness among a diverse group of people in the area who are unable to afford housing by themselves.”
Tenants do not sign a lease but must have some form of monthly income, stick to two to a room and “follow a set of rules, including doing chores and attending counseling sessions.” Bacashihua, who lives at the home, said she sometimes struggles to manage behavior issues related to substance abuse.
“I do it because I have hope that they can get out of this situation,” she said from outside the home Tuesday, suggesting the model is part of a growing network of shared low-income housing serving formerly homeless people.
“It’s a big relief off my shoulders,” said Steve, a 53-year-old Iran native who grew up in the San Fernando Valley of the home. “But just because we got a roof over our head don’t mean we’re in the clear.”
Steve has limited employment options due to his immigration status, and wavers between collecting cans and construction or landscaping day jobs. Kathy plans on looking for work at restaurants and cafes.
The two ended up in the Sepulveda Basin after falling on hard financial times nearly a decade ago. Longtime restaurant managers, they were evicted from a one-bedroom apartment not long after losing jobs when the kosher shawarma joint they ran closed down.
If they can’t get back on their feet here, the two are considering moving to Kathy’s native Rhode Island for more affordable rents and connections to family – going back to the basin doesn’t appear to be an option.
“It’s a big relief off my shoulders. But just because we got a roof over our head don’t mean we’re in the clear.”
— Steve Valentino
The Sepulveda Basin is a four-mile wide stretch of recreational area and a nature preserve bordered by Encino, Van Nuys, and Lake Balboa neighborhoods. It wraps around a section of the Los Angeles River, with a dam and flood basin at the east end designed to prevent major flooding in urban areas downstream.
The space is host to golf courses, baseball fields, dog parks, a wildlife reserve and a Japanese garden – the bulk of it owned a by the Army Corps of Engineers. The LA Police Department has enforcement jurisdiction over much of the basin on a lease agreement with the federal agency.
Starting in 2016, the LA Homeless Services Authority point-in-time homeless count showed a 34% increase in people living in the Sepulveda Basin — from 78 people to 105. Yet in 2017, 253 people were counted and in 2018, just 32. That number is 105 this year. Advocates and dwellers of the basin estimate that at least 300 people live there.
L.A. City Councilwoman Nury Martinez announced an effort to clear the homeless encampments and enforce laws restricting use of the park’s city-controlled areas past sunset after the fire displaced the Valentinos and others. Her district encompasses the area.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. A grenade was also recently found in the area – affirmation, agencies say, of the public safety threat posed by the park’s human habitation.
Martinez said other city departments like Recreation and Parks and Sanitation will collaborate on the cleanup that began two weeks ago at the ‘Army Field’ encampment south of the Orange line at Victory and Balboa earlier but is slated to continue once permits have been secured.
Eric Montoya, an outreach worker for LA Family Housing, says the Valentinos are the only two people out of their encampment who have secured semi-permanent housing. Four others are in the process of receiving beds at a North Hollywood bridge-housing facility or through various housing vouchers.
“We have to find creative ways to make an impact, because everyone wants permanent supportive housing and it’s not going to happen right now,” said Montoya. “Shared housing is starting to become common with prices and rents going up. We’re seeing it a lot more.”
But of course, space in homes like Bacashihua’s are limited. And not every unhoused individual would make a good fit.
That leaves Montoya and other local advocates stressed in anticipation of the full evacuation of the basin, some fearing backlash from residents of nearby affluent neighborhoods upset by an influx of newly visible homeless neighbors.
“I just hate to see so many people displaced at one time, and theres no plan. There needs to be a plan,” he said. “I don’t know where everybody’s supposed to go.”
