Released: December 10, 2006

Los Angeles seniors get help with houses

Source: Jennifer Delson, Los Angeles Times (Free Registration)

On a quiet residential street in Cypress, where a basketball hoop waits for children to come home from school, secrets lie behind the pink facade of Sylvia Finn’s house.

They are hidden by universal assumptions in a wealthy suburb, where water, electricity and heat are taken for granted. In Finn’s house, more than half the rooms go dark at sundown. The 65-year-old grandmother shivers through the winters without heat. The oven doesn’t work. The toilet or sink doesn’t work in each of three bathrooms.

“I don’t have any help,” said Finn, who is raising a teenage granddaughter and manages with a monthly $1,500 Social Security check and funds from refinancing. “My priority has been my granddaughter, and as things fell apart, I just looked the other way and counted my blessings.”

Housing experts say she is like thousands of other older, low-income residents in Southern California who have significant equity in their homes, if not outright ownership, but have trouble maintaining them.

The owners say they do not have the money to keep up their homes, lack the ability to move and would rather suffer than ask for help. Others distrust contractors, and they fear using up the equity in their homes before they die. They are also confounded by refinancing options.

A growing number of seniors are getting help from nonprofit organizations that provide basic home maintenance.

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