After Losing All in Fire, Woman, 9 Grandchildren to Have a Home

William Glenn Swain and his helpers worked double-time Friday, hurrying to get Bertha Jones’ gift ready before Christmas.

The all-volunteer crew spackled holes and painted walls, repaired cabinets and hoped that a new wall heater and window panes would arrive in time to be installed in the apartment on Figueroa near 77th Street in South-Central Los Angeles.

Jones’ family will be much too large for the tiny one-bedroom unit, even after the work is finished, but it will be a major improvement over what the family has had to endure so far this holiday season.

Everything owned by Jones, 42, and her nine grandchildren, aged 2 months to 14 years, was lost on a cold night nearly four weeks ago when a Christmas tree fire spread through their three rooms. Luckily, they survived.

Two Nights in Motel

The devastated family spent two nights in a motel room provided by the Red Cross, then slept on the floors in the already crowded house of a relative. For the last week they have lived in one room of a homeless shelter run by the grass-roots Citizens for Community Improvements, a nonprofit group operated by Swain, who lives in Rancho Cucamonga, and his family.

The apartment being refurbished is next door to the shelter and was acquired by Swain three weeks ago through a lease with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Refurbishing of the four-unit building was scheduled to begin weeks later, but work was started immediately in one unit because of Jones’ plight. Swain and others are paying for the materials themselves.

The immediate goal is to have a safe, warm home in which Jones and the children can celebrate the holidays. The long-range concern is to provide the family with a place where they can be together and get help.

Ironically, the fire may have been the first stroke of luck Jones has had in years. It uncovered a set of circumstances that Swain and others say is all too common in areas of the city ravaged by drugs. The attention may finally bring the help she needs.

All but two of the children in Jones’ care were born to her two oldest daughters, women Jones’ unhesitatingly describes as hopeless cocaine addicts whom she rarely sees.

Largely because of their addictions, she said, the daughters have all but abandoned their children to the care of Jones, who herself had been a mother at age 13. Jones has received little or no financial help from the two daughters.

County welfare money that was sent to the women for the children’s care has apparently gone instead for drugs, Jones and other family members say. The third daughter comes and goes, also leaving her two children in Jones’ care. Jones’ other daughters have seven children among them.

Authorities did not learn until after the fire that Jones has for months been caring for the nine children, supporting them almost solely on her monthly income of $1,100. Half of that is Social Security money Jones collects as a result of permanent disability brought about by an emotional breakdown four years ago. The rest is a welfare payment for the two children for whom she is the legal guardian.

“There are only a couple of things unique about Bertha’s case,” Swain said Friday afternoon as he took a break from the work on the apartment. “First, the number of kids involved and the fact that there are three sets of them.

Kids Raising Parents

“Also it’s different in that at least you’ve got a grandmother or someone there. We are seeing cases in which kids are out on the streets or are raising their parents, hiding the checks so they can’t buy drugs.”

He estimates that up to 85% of the homeless people, including families, he has dealt with at his shelter and at a 150-bed facility he operated for the city in 1986, were homeless directly or indirectly as a result of abuse of alcohol or other drugs.

“Since 1983, when the crack (cocaine) hit the street, the community has really felt the impact,” Swain said.

That assessment is shared by Mattie Gardette, director of the county Department of Public Social Services’ south-central district. “But it’s not just in South-Central,” said Gardette, “it’s in cities and towns all over the country, wherever drugs are prevalent.”

Asked why she put up with so much for so long with so little help, Jones replied: “Because I love my grandbabies. I’m just trying to do for them what I couldn’t do for my own children.”

Gardette said that while Swain provides the emergency housing for Jones, her case is being evaluated by a protective services worker who has stopped welfare payments to Jones’ daughters and is trying to determine the needs of Jones and the children.

The first order of business, Swain said, is to get Jones a permanent address, to lessen the chance that the children will be separated.

Swain credits the discovery of Jones’ plight to the persistence of Germaine Blue, 31, of Inglewood, who was Jones’ landlord at the apartment that burned on Dec. 5.

Blue was one of the first people at the scene of the 2 a.m. blaze that apparently began when a space heater Jones had set up in the living room ignited a Christmas tree. Jones and three of the children were sleeping in the room on a hideaway bed. The rest of the children were sleeping nearby on the floor. They were awakened by the wails of the 2-month-old.

Blue, a clothing company receptionist, spent the next several days calling government and private agencies trying to find housing for a family of 10. After running in to a slow bureaucracy and what she considered callous treatment, she finally got Swain’s name from an employee of a local television station. She has since collected food and clothing for the family from friends and co-workers and has bought a toilet for Swain to install in the new apartment.

“I knew I wasn’t supposed to have a family that large in a one-bedroom apartment in the first place” Blue said last week, “but I felt so sorry for them, and I couldn’t let them be out on the street.”