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Bad ideas, if they were ever widely accepted, have a curious way of sticking around. That's because they give rise to institutions that have a momentum of their own. We've long known there are better ways to fix blighted neighborhoods than simply pressing "reset" -- that is, letting the government tear down old buildings and put up new ones. But we remain saddled with a system of public housing that keeps looking for ways of, well, pressing reset.
And now that bad idea is coming to Watts, with an estimated price tag of $1 billion. What we have, then, is not just a bad idea but a really expensive bad idea.
Here's what we know so far. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles -- with the support of the mayor, the City Council and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) -- plans to tear down the 700-unit Jordan Downs housing project and replace it with a 2,100-unit, mixed-income development -- one with stores, restaurants, perhaps even an elementary school. There are also plans to refurbish nearby Jordan High School. In the end, it is hoped this ambitious project will not only fix Jordan Downs but set the stage for a recovery throughout Watts.
Now, the idea of getting rid of Jordan Downs isn't intrinsically bad. Nor is the idea of spending a billion dollars on Watts. But specifics matter. I might want a necktie, and I might want $1 million, but I don't want a $1-million necktie.
With $1 billion, we could give each of the roughly 700 families in Jordan Downs $1 million and still have $300 million in hand. Of course, the actual $1-billion plan includes housing and amenities for 2,100 families. But even if we allowed, say, $400 million for retail and infrastructure (or the price tag for the massive Americana at Brand in Glendale), the per-unit cost would still be close to $300,000. Meanwhile, perfectly habitable three-bedroom houses in Watts are going unsold at prices of $150,000 or less.
Then there's the question of who's overseeing the redevelopment. That would be the Housing Authority, which many residents of Jordan Downs distrust. That's understandable. The agency has for decades treated them -- and taxpayers' money -- with highhanded neglect or worse. In the 1990s, for example, a multimillion-dollar renovation left residents with sewage in their kitchen sinks. In 2004, the agency's top two officials left abruptly -- one after a scandal involving overpayment of subsidies and the other after a federal audit uncovered $1.7 million in overbilling, improper spending and unsubstantiated costs.
Today the agency has new leaders but, sadly, many old habits. In 2007, a top manager, Victor Taracena, was fired for allegedly directing more than $800,000 worth of contracts to family members. In August 2008, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the Housing Authority had improperly used more than $27 million in restricted funds to cover its operating losses. And in November 2008, 63% of Housing Authority-subsidized, privately owned units that HUD inspected "did not meet housing quality standards." Added to all this is a striking lack of transparency. For instance, Housing Authority officials declined numerous requests for interviews about the financial details of the Jordan Downs project.
Supporters of the redevelopment acknowledge these concerns but consider the idea of a fresh start for Watts too inspiring to refuse. They point to places such as Atlanta, where government renewal projects revived dangerous neighborhoods. They also mention Boyle Heights, where the Housing Authority's redevelopment of the Aliso Village projects had a positive effect.
But such projects also included the dispersal of many of the residents. While this was often carried out in an ugly and unfair way, it at least cleared out many tenants who were dangerous or otherwise undesirable. (Fewer than 300 out of 1,200 displaced families returned to Aliso Village, for instance.) The Jordan Downs plan calls for no one to be displaced. That's good news for the residents, but it's unlikely to replicate the revival in Atlanta.
Los Angeles has other choices with Jordan Downs. City officials seem to believe that clearing away blight is the key to attracting jobs and reducing crime, but couldn't it work the opposite way? In New York in the late 1990s, when crime rates dropped, neighborhoods quickly saw the economic benefits. In Brooklyn, according to City Journal, after crime dropped by 45% along blighted Franklin Avenue, 22 new stores opened in 16 months. In Harlem, where shootings were once daily occurrences, the turnaround has been so dramatic that people now complain about new arrivals like Starbucks.
In Watts, the Los Angeles Police Department, partnering with groups such as the Watts Gang Task Force, brought homicide rates down by 50% between 2006 and 2008, and community-police relations have significantly improved. This is a promising foundation on which to build -- with increased community policing and incentives for businesses -- and it wouldn't involve the Housing Authority spending millions on the construction of new housing amid a housing glut.
Not that Jordan Downs and its inhabitants should be left behind. Here's a better way to spend $1 billion in Watts: Have the agency buy every family in Jordan Downs a $300,000 renovated house nearby, and you've spent $210 million. That leaves a clean $790 million for more law enforcement, new and improved schools and so much more.
As for Jordan Downs itself, the city could help plug its deficit and get additional residential units into Watts by selling the complex to a builder who comes up with a blueprint for pleasant, affordable, market-rate housing. Or it could help create tenant-owned cooperatives, much like what the nonprofit Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation has been doing in San Diego. Or it could convert the land into a much-needed park.
I know: Urban renewal doesn't work this way. While it would be nice to have $1 billion to divvy up creatively, redevelopment depends on existing funding mechanisms, such as tax credits, federal assistance and a bureaucracy locked into hitting reset. But this only underscores what a straitjacket our public housing system has become.
None of this is to deny that, by supporting the Jordan Downs plan, many officials are fighting honorably to help an area in need. But that doesn't make the project a sensible answer to the question of how to revive Watts. The potential for waste and perhaps even fraud, the lack of a truly imaginative plan, the indications that the Housing Authority is very much as it ever was -- all of this suggests we're about to misspend a lot of dollars at a time when dollars are scarce. The plan for Jordan Downs is, in short, a very bad idea. And today, good ones are all we can afford.
T.A. Frank is an Irvine fellow at the New America Foundation.
And now that bad idea is coming to Watts, with an estimated price tag of $1 billion. What we have, then, is not just a bad idea but a really expensive bad idea.
Here's what we know so far. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles -- with the support of the mayor, the City Council and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) -- plans to tear down the 700-unit Jordan Downs housing project and replace it with a 2,100-unit, mixed-income development -- one with stores, restaurants, perhaps even an elementary school. There are also plans to refurbish nearby Jordan High School. In the end, it is hoped this ambitious project will not only fix Jordan Downs but set the stage for a recovery throughout Watts.
Now, the idea of getting rid of Jordan Downs isn't intrinsically bad. Nor is the idea of spending a billion dollars on Watts. But specifics matter. I might want a necktie, and I might want $1 million, but I don't want a $1-million necktie.
With $1 billion, we could give each of the roughly 700 families in Jordan Downs $1 million and still have $300 million in hand. Of course, the actual $1-billion plan includes housing and amenities for 2,100 families. But even if we allowed, say, $400 million for retail and infrastructure (or the price tag for the massive Americana at Brand in Glendale), the per-unit cost would still be close to $300,000. Meanwhile, perfectly habitable three-bedroom houses in Watts are going unsold at prices of $150,000 or less.
Then there's the question of who's overseeing the redevelopment. That would be the Housing Authority, which many residents of Jordan Downs distrust. That's understandable. The agency has for decades treated them -- and taxpayers' money -- with highhanded neglect or worse. In the 1990s, for example, a multimillion-dollar renovation left residents with sewage in their kitchen sinks. In 2004, the agency's top two officials left abruptly -- one after a scandal involving overpayment of subsidies and the other after a federal audit uncovered $1.7 million in overbilling, improper spending and unsubstantiated costs.
Today the agency has new leaders but, sadly, many old habits. In 2007, a top manager, Victor Taracena, was fired for allegedly directing more than $800,000 worth of contracts to family members. In August 2008, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the Housing Authority had improperly used more than $27 million in restricted funds to cover its operating losses. And in November 2008, 63% of Housing Authority-subsidized, privately owned units that HUD inspected "did not meet housing quality standards." Added to all this is a striking lack of transparency. For instance, Housing Authority officials declined numerous requests for interviews about the financial details of the Jordan Downs project.
Supporters of the redevelopment acknowledge these concerns but consider the idea of a fresh start for Watts too inspiring to refuse. They point to places such as Atlanta, where government renewal projects revived dangerous neighborhoods. They also mention Boyle Heights, where the Housing Authority's redevelopment of the Aliso Village projects had a positive effect.
But such projects also included the dispersal of many of the residents. While this was often carried out in an ugly and unfair way, it at least cleared out many tenants who were dangerous or otherwise undesirable. (Fewer than 300 out of 1,200 displaced families returned to Aliso Village, for instance.) The Jordan Downs plan calls for no one to be displaced. That's good news for the residents, but it's unlikely to replicate the revival in Atlanta.
Los Angeles has other choices with Jordan Downs. City officials seem to believe that clearing away blight is the key to attracting jobs and reducing crime, but couldn't it work the opposite way? In New York in the late 1990s, when crime rates dropped, neighborhoods quickly saw the economic benefits. In Brooklyn, according to City Journal, after crime dropped by 45% along blighted Franklin Avenue, 22 new stores opened in 16 months. In Harlem, where shootings were once daily occurrences, the turnaround has been so dramatic that people now complain about new arrivals like Starbucks.
In Watts, the Los Angeles Police Department, partnering with groups such as the Watts Gang Task Force, brought homicide rates down by 50% between 2006 and 2008, and community-police relations have significantly improved. This is a promising foundation on which to build -- with increased community policing and incentives for businesses -- and it wouldn't involve the Housing Authority spending millions on the construction of new housing amid a housing glut.
Not that Jordan Downs and its inhabitants should be left behind. Here's a better way to spend $1 billion in Watts: Have the agency buy every family in Jordan Downs a $300,000 renovated house nearby, and you've spent $210 million. That leaves a clean $790 million for more law enforcement, new and improved schools and so much more.
As for Jordan Downs itself, the city could help plug its deficit and get additional residential units into Watts by selling the complex to a builder who comes up with a blueprint for pleasant, affordable, market-rate housing. Or it could help create tenant-owned cooperatives, much like what the nonprofit Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation has been doing in San Diego. Or it could convert the land into a much-needed park.
I know: Urban renewal doesn't work this way. While it would be nice to have $1 billion to divvy up creatively, redevelopment depends on existing funding mechanisms, such as tax credits, federal assistance and a bureaucracy locked into hitting reset. But this only underscores what a straitjacket our public housing system has become.
None of this is to deny that, by supporting the Jordan Downs plan, many officials are fighting honorably to help an area in need. But that doesn't make the project a sensible answer to the question of how to revive Watts. The potential for waste and perhaps even fraud, the lack of a truly imaginative plan, the indications that the Housing Authority is very much as it ever was -- all of this suggests we're about to misspend a lot of dollars at a time when dollars are scarce. The plan for Jordan Downs is, in short, a very bad idea. And today, good ones are all we can afford.
T.A. Frank is an Irvine fellow at the New America Foundation.
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