WHEN A HOUSING BUREAUCRAT ERRS, VICTIMS GET PUNISHED.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

Even for a lifelong cynic, it's disappointing to have your worst fears about government confirmed. And this tale of a hapless woman getting dumped by the Housing Authority of Los Angeles only renewed my subscription to Cynicism Monthly.

It is the authority's responsibility to administer money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help low-income people afford housing. It's a mission that is particularly important in high-rent markets such as Los Angeles.

Karla Gomez is the perfect example of someone whom HUD and its Section 8 program were meant to benefit. A single mother of a 7-year-old boy, she works full time and saves part of each paycheck for an eventual down payment on a house. She is no welfare drain lounging at home and feeling entitled to government assistance. She is someone who grasps how lucky she was to find this help.

Yet, instead of helping her, the Housing Authority is now evicting her. Why? Because she flubbed and didn't follow the agency's arcane rules.

It all began in February when relentless rains damaged the house that Gomez was renting with her Section 8 assistance. The roof partially collapsed. Water leaked in everywhere, and mold started growing inside the wall. Her landlords, Sabrina and Francisco Martinez, knew they had to move their tenant out and fix the damaged house.

The Martinezes, who are my neighbors, aren't rich landlords. They are modest-income people who used their savings from his two decades as a U.S. postal worker to buy two income-generating properties, in addition to their small primary home. They chose to rent to tenants with Section 8 vouchers, even though they could have rented the units for much more in this hot market.

They didn't have a lot of accommodation choices to offer Gomez during the renovation, so they decided to give up their own home and rent a couple of rooms elsewhere while the house was fixed.

Meanwhile, Gomez checked with her Section 8 caseworker, Araceli Meza, to get the emergency move approved. Gomez had been on the Section 8 waiting list for five years and didn't want to lose the status she had finally gained. Gomez said Meza initially told her it was fine.

This is where things broke down. Turns out it was not fine. It would have been fine if they had made a new contract with the Housing Authority before the 30-day emergency time limit was up. But Gomez and Martinez said their calls to the caseworker weren't returned, so they assumed things were OK.

Housing Authority officials say the caseworker didn't get those calls. Still, the agency continued to pay for Gomez's housing assistance through May - reinforcing the belief by Gomez and the Martinezes that the temporary move was in compliance.

It wasn't until May - when Martinez and Gomez went in person to the agency's office to say the house was fixed - that someone at the authority decided, oops, something was wrong.

Housing officials quickly cut off Gomez and ordered the Martinezes to repay more than $1,800 the agency had paid for Gomez's rent - a flat-out mistake that the authority admits. But apparently it's OK for Housing Authority employees to make a mistake, not their clients.

Now the Martinezes say their status as Section 8 landlords is in question, making it unclear whether they will be forced to uproot two other low-income tenants - one of them physically disabled.

I first heard about this from Sabrina Martinez, who stopped by Saturday afternoon in tears. Even though the housing agency was no longer paying for Gomez's rent, the landlady didn't have the heart to ask the young mother and her son to leave. She was calling every office she she could think of - including offices of top officials at the authority, City Council members and even U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein - to see whether she could get her tenant reinstated.

``I'm trying everything,'' Sabrina said.

But the authority has no mechanism in place to appeal decisions. Ever. If you don't follow the rules - even if you got misinformation - too bad. You're out. No second chances. And one of the 100,000 people on the waiting list gets your spot.

``Some things in life don't seem fair,'' Housing Authority spokesman Hugo Garcia said about the reasoning for this particular action. ``But that's the way it is.''

It's my job to deal with bureaucracies, digest the information they produce and translate it into regular words for readers. Still, after 30 minutes, I was hopelessly confused by Garcia's explanation of the case.

It probably doesn't matter anyhow. The agency operates with almost no oversight. Even the City Council doesn't have jurisdiction over it. If the authority makes a bad decision, there's little that any one person, particularly one of limited means, can do.

In conclusion, let's recap: One act of God, one misunderstanding, one imperious bureaucratic agency, some incompetence by a government worker, and as many as six people's lives upset.

That's quite an accomplishment, even for a government bureaucracy.

Mariel Garza [phone]

mariel.garza(at)dailynews.com