Father of 7 Hopes New Job Means End to Living in Motels

Bill Loyer has been given a 1978 Chevy and free trips to Disneyland for his family. He’s also been offered a full-time job and even a few hands in marriage.

But the 37-year-old bricklayer, who has been rearing his seven children single-handedly in motel rooms for the past year, still has not found a home.

“People have been great,” said Sally Karanek, founder of Mothers and Others Against Child Abuse, a nonprofit organization that has been giving groceries to Loyer and his children.

“They have donated so much. But as of yet, a house has been just outside our reach.”

Since Loyer’s plight was publicized a month ago, donations from area residents have been “great,” Karanek said. Still, “no one will rent to a single father with seven kids,” she said.

From 6,000 to 12,000 people--many of them families--in Orange County cannot find affordable housing or a landlord willing to rent to someone with children, a spokeswoman for the county Community Development Council said.

So they live as the Loyers do, a nomadic existence, traveling from one motel room to another, paying motel bills week to week.

In the Loyers’ case, when motel officials found out that seven children were living in one room with no adult supervision during the day, they usually evicted the whole family.

At the Ha’Penny Inn in Costa Mesa, however, where the family has lived for four months, the manager moved them to a bigger unit when he learned of their plight--and for the same price.

Loyer is handling the pressure well, Karanek said. But the children, two of whom are his estranged wife’s by a different father, are the ones she worries about. “They blame themselves for the problems,” she said. “They are always making ‘too-many-kids’ jokes.”

Also, she said, the children are confined to the motel room too much and need to have more private time away from each other.

Loyer is optimistic that his situation will change soon. “Everybody has been great to me,” he said. “I am a lot happier. Everything is turning around for me.”

He expects to begin a full-time construction job this week with Valley Masonry in Costa Mesa, earning more than $500 a week.

Loyer said he hopes that the permanent job will convince a landlord to rent to him.

With the help of the Mothers and Others group, which has collected $1,200 in a trust fund for the family, Loyer said he can make the first and last months’ deposit on an apartment or home.

Although landlords still are tentative about renting to him, Loyer said, he has heard from owners of homes in Chino and Riverside who said they might consider it.

“They sound good,” he said, “but I am looking for something closer so that I won’t have to pull my kids out of school again. Right now, they need to stay in one place and finish up the year in school.”

Two weeks ago, Loyer’s 17-year-old daughter Regina, who for the past year has taken care of the youngest child, 4-year-old Jimmy, moved out of the motel room and in with Loyer’s mother-in-law.

Without Regina, Loyer has had to pay $60 a week for Jimmy’s care, which is provided by Mothers and Others.

“(Regina) was a big help,” Loyer said, “but I couldn’t tie her down anymore. She’s gotta do what other 17-year-olds are doing.”