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Morning News

Booming Economy Driving Up California Real Estate Prices, Squeezing Poorer Families

Aired October 30, 2000 - 9:22 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The booming economy certainly has been good to many, but others are being treated with an adverse effect. Real estate prices are so high in some parts of the country that thousands of families cannot afford the housing.

CNN's Jim Hill now with a look at the problem in California and how authorities there are now trying to help fix it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Yolanda Miramontes (ph) and her family of five, home in Anaheim, California is the size of a small motel room. That's because it is a small motel room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's hard on the kids. Although they call this home, I still can't accept it.

HILL: As many as 2,000 people in this otherwise thriving city of 310,000 are full-time residents of cheap motels, many of them working families who can't afford even an apartment because of the region's skyrocketing real estate prices.

The city of Anaheim says it's working with 30 charitable organizations to find housing for the needy, but it's also declared war on the half dozen motels that it says are, in fact, cheap apartments, charging the poor $600 a month for a 300-square-foot room.

DAVID MORGAN, CITY OF ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA: It tends to draw criminal elements, it tends to draw drug use, prostitution.

HILL: To stop the practice, the city has decreed that, come January 15, the motels cannot rent to anyone for more than 30 days in a three-month period. Motel owner Ben Karmelich says he'll fight the order in court.

BEN KARMELICH, MOTEL OWNER: It's terrible for the tenants if you need a place to live, if you're trying to save money and get on your feet and every 30 days you have to pack up your belongings and move someplace else.

HILL: Economic success is running up real estate prices in Orange County, California, home to such tourist magnets as Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, and where the average price of an apartment is $1,200 a month.

Other hot real estate markets are also effected, and HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo is pledging the largest budget increase in 20 years to help people pay high rents.

In the meantime, charities supply motel dwellers with food, clothing and school supplies for the kids. And motel dwellers like Charlotte Beatty (ph) remain...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Depressed, very depressed.

HILL: ... in an otherwise booming economy.

Jim Hill, CNN, Orange County, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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