Crime-Ridden Buena Clinton Could Be an ‘Oasis’ in Orange County, Expert Says

After two days of meetings with Buena Clinton residents, police and Garden Grove officials, the directors of a Florida slum-busting program expressed optimism Friday that their program could help improve the run-down neighborhood considered Orange County’s worst slum.

“I think we could make a difference in Buena Clinton,” said Bill Lindsey, director of the Fort Lauderdale Housing Authority and pioneer of the so-called Oasis program. Lindsey was invited by city officials to tour Buena Clinton this week and spoke at an afternoon press conference.

Describing the squalid, crime-ridden community as “a zero on a scale of one to 10,” Lindsey said he and his associates will soon make detailed recommendations to Garden Grove about implementing a local version of the Oasis program.

‘Designed to Fail’

“Buena Clinton is a neighborhood that looks like it was designed to fail,” Lindsey said, summing up his brief impressions of the blighted community less than three miles from Disneyland. He added:

“From the beginning, it was overcrowded and poorly designed. It has been exploited by people charging the highest possible rents. But the neighborhood can be turned around.”

If the Garden Grove City Council decides to hire Lindsey and several assistants to implement the program--at an estimated cost of more than $100,000--the Oasis project could be operating in Buena Clinton in less than three months, Lindsey said.

The project would presumably be paid for with federal funds, according to city officials. Garden Grove has applied to the federal government for a variety of housing assistance grants to be used in Buena Clinton.

Why the interest in a Fort Lauderdale program?

Garden Grove council members said they learned about Lindsey from federal officials, who praised his success--and his limited budget--in upgrading several Florida slums.

“We heard that this guy, with relatively little money, worked wonders out there,” said Councilman Milton Krieger. “We heard that he had brought about lasting improvements in a once-blighted area and cut crime. So we decided to take a closer look.”

Program Restores Stability

In a nutshell, the Oasis program attempts to coordinate the actions of police and housing officials and thus restore “stability” to a slum, Lindsey said in an earlier interview.

By rewarding tenants who are “constructive” forces in a neighborhood and isolating “bad” tenants who contribute to crime, drug use and other problems, a local government can gradually gain control over slum problems, he explained.

For example, officials can provide special funds for tenants and owners who try to improve their slum properties, and thus create a role model for other neighbors, Lindsey said. Conversely, the program could crack down on problem tenants and work with landlords to evict them as soon as they begin to cause trouble.

The Oasis technique requires officials to keep track of who lives in a neighborhood and compels police and housing officials to work together on a daily basis, Lindsey said. In most cases, he added, the program does not require a heavy infusion of funds.

In recent months, federal officials have been calling attention to Lindsey’s program. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, is offering demonstration grant funds to see if other cities can implement versions of the Oasis program.

Alan Greenwald, a HUD official, said he told Garden Grove officials about Oasis earlier this year because Lindsey’s efforts to combat suburban blight in Florida mirrored the city’s problems with Buena Clinton.

More important, Greenwald stressed that the program did not cost a great deal of money. Given the Reagan Administration’s retrenching on domestic spending, the Oasis technique deserves a “serious look” by Garden Grove, he added.

High Crime Rate

Lindsey conceded Friday that he and his associates would face a myriad of problems in Buena Clinton, a 39-acre tract of deteriorating, two-story apartment buildings that house an estimated 7,000 residents.

The neighborhood’s crime rate is four times higher than in the rest of Garden Grove and building inspectors have repeatedly cited the area’s absentee landlords for numerous housing code violations. Health inspectors have said the area has the worst slum conditions of any Orange County neighborhood.

No one at Garden Grove City Hall believes Lindsey will end these problems by himself, but some officials contend that they think he deserves a chance to try.

“I think he could get something positive going out there,” said Krieger, who predicted that his colleagues will look favorably on the Oasis proposal. “Frankly, I don’t see what we have to lose.”