Josefina is always at the clinic where I work in south Los Angeles. She has terrible asthma and needs frequent treatment. Four of her six children also have asthma, and they have more than their fair share of coughs and colds. But it goes beyond that. She’s there for a prescription refill or the simplest rash. She’s there in the lobby in the morning, walking through the door in an early afternoon. She comes by to show off her oldest daughter’s report cards, and a bit less frequently, the grades of her sons.
Our clinic is not a nice place to just hang out. The lobby is crowded and noisy, with two rows of plastic chairs that are in short supply. Food is not allowed, and patients can wait a very long time. I had always known that her house was miserable. I figured that it had to be bad in order for her to want to spend so much time with us.
My clinic takes as its mission not only to bring the community members in, but also to reach out beyond the confines of our doors to improve the living conditions of our neighbors. Two years ago, we partnered with a legal team to provide free legal services to our clients. And we established a housing clinic.
As soon as we recommended our housing clinic to Josefina, she was our best customer. Mold, leaks, holes in the floor. It was all making her asthma worse, and she knew it. Her asthma, and her children’s. Josefina has always been a dedicated homemaker, determined to scrape together the best for her family and finding joy and pride in the process. In conversation, she always refers to herself in the third person as “La Mama.” With the support of the lawyers and clinic doctors telling her that her children deserved more, she set out to get it.
On a recent afternoon, I went with our lawyer and a case manager to visit La Mama at home. Josefina lives on a residential street near the clinic. Two orange stucco units, vaguely Spanish in style, are enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. The gate opens onto a central walkway with five stoops on either side. That afternoon, the central area was filled with activity, some children playing ball and other residents chatting on the steps. Josefina’s front door opens directly into the main room. Two metal bunk beds flanked the front door. A queen-size mattress had been propped against one of the bunk beds, revealing a pock-marked square of linoleum. A small TV and entertainment center were placed against the far wall.
Two doorways opened off the main room. One led through a closet and into the bathroom. The other led into a narrow kitchen with an efficiency-size stove and refrigerator. Buckets collected dripping water in the kitchen sink, under the kitchen sink, in the bathtub and in the vanity. I realized why there was so much activity outside—no one could actually sit down inside the apartments.
Back in the main room, Josefina showed off the top bunk of one of the beds. While nondescript to my uninitiated eye, it was her oldest daughter’s academic retreat. Every night after supper, her daughter retired to the top bunk to study. Her youngest daughter slept on the bottom, and the four boys shared the other bunk bed. The youngest children slept on the bottom for safety reasons since there were no rails, but the top beds had begun sagging so dramatically that Josefina felt she needed to reverse the sleeping arrangements soon.
We would have seen mold, Josefina told us, but as a result of a letter from the housing clinic, the landlord had finally repainted. A brand new vacuum cleaner was wedged behind a bunk bed, and a HEPA filter, perched precariously on a tiny chest of drawers, emitted a faint hum. These were donations the housing clinic staff had found for her to improve her asthma.
For this apartment, Josefina pays just under $600 per month. The welfare support that Josefina receives for the two of her children who are eligible for services just barely covers the rent, and her husband’s income is unreliable and spare. Governor Schwarzenegger’s latest proposal to resolve California’s budgetary woes includes eliminating Cal-Works completely, the general relief fund that pays Josefina’s rent.
Not to mention that fresh paint, a HEPA filter and new vacuum cleaner do not make Josefina the landlord’s favorite tenant. Like many in the area, the landlord is absentee and interested primarily in the bottomline. Tenants who feel they desrve more are not appreciated. Indeed, the tension has been building over the past several months. Josefina was threatened with eviction and then served with a 60-day notice. The landlord threatened to call Immigration, and most recently, per Josefina, the landlord has done it.
Our lawyers have been at Josefina’s side each step of the way. They have seen this all before. They are confident that, in the end, Josefina and her family will be safe. They hope that she will achieve some improvement in her living conditions. They hope that her battle will add momentum to broader efforts for housing reform. “The real problem,” our lawyer said, “is that there is nowhere else for Josefina to go.” Even if she moved away from this apartment, and away from this landlord, the cycle would repeat itself endlessly in the slums of L.A.
Ellen Rothman, HMS ’98, practices at a community health center in Los Angeles.
The names used in this column are pseudonyms, and the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University.
