Long Beach Extends Fix-Up Loans, Grants to 8 More Aging Areas

To David Greta, it was paint from heaven.

“If you want to know the truth, I was praying for enough money to paint my house,” said Greta, 35, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Then, last month, the city included Greta’s home in its neighborhood-improvement program.

“Some people would call it lucky,” Greta said last week as workers scraped weathered yellow paint from his small North Long Beach house. “I call it an answered prayer.”

The $1,500 paint job was free to Greta and his 30-year-old wife, Pat, who live on Neece Street in the shadow of the Artesia Freeway.

Their neighborhood is one of eight in Long Beach where $6 million in federal funds is expected to be spent this year as part of a program begun in 1976 to extend redevelopment from the city’s high-rise downtown into its many aging neighborhoods. About 38,000 of the city’s dwellings, 24% of the housing stock, are at least 45 years old.

‘Should Be Top Priority’

“This program is a classic example of how to get at our deteriorating neighborhoods,” said Councilman Warren Harwood, whose 9th District includes Greta’s house. “This should be our top priority, not just the fancy buildings downtown.”

The $6 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is distributed through the city-run Neighborhood Preservation Program. The money will reach families in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods--in downtown, the central city, Westside and North Long Beach.

Neece Street, where the Gretas live, is not among the poorest. It is clean and well-kept with small wood-frame houses and large elm trees.

But its residents are mostly young families and the retired elderly, who have little extra money for home maintenance. And just north of Neece is a low-income, high-crime stretch of Long Beach Boulevard so notorious that police have dubbed it the “war zone.”

Snowballing Effect

“If you leave a neighborhood like this alone, there is a snowballing effect where the homeowners move out,” Harwood said. “But we have a feeling that things are getting better there now, and things like this program are why.”

A neighborhood can qualify for home-improvement assistance if most of its households have annual incomes of less than 80% of the regional median. For a family of four, the qualifying income is $23,050; for a single person, it is $16,150.

Once a neighborhood qualifies and the city designates it a “preservation area,” all residents are eligible for some assistance, regardless of income.

Every family may be reimbursed up to $500 for house paint and $500 to rent painting tools. If a resident is over age 62 or physically handicapped, such as David Greta, he can hire others to paint his house, with the city paying a maximum of $1,500. Eligibility certificates must be obtained from the city before work begins.

Trash Hauled by City

In addition, all residents can use large metal trash bins to dump refuse that will be hauled away by the city. All homes are also eligible for graffiti cleanup by city workers, and the city will provide additional paint for later touch-ups.

(In the Willmore City area in southwestern downtown, some residents have even begun painting the houses and apartments of absentee landlords, who have given their written permission, city officials said.)

Low-income residents, those earning less than 80% of the household median, also qualify for up to $25,000 in low-interest home-refurbishment loans that do not have to be paid back until the property is sold. This program has been applied citywide, not just in the preservation zones.

Apartment Owners Helped

And, in a new $500,000-a-year program, the city also lends central-city apartment owners up to $5,000 a unit for renovation if the owners will match the city dollars with their own. No interest is accrued for five years and no payments are required for 10 years. Fourteen owners had borrowed $187,000 and committed $250,000 of their own money by June 30.

The home-loan program is the oldest in the city’s housing-renovation effort, which began on a shoestring in 1976. The renovation program has grown dramatically since 1983, with annual budgets of about $6 million in the last fiscal year and this one.

“The city is starting to pay a significant amount of attention to this side of redevelopment,” said Greg Devereaux, who runs the renovation program out of the Department of Community Development.

About $23 million in federal funds has been spent here on home

renovation and public improvements that have been offered in 34 designated preservation areas in the last nine years. Of that amount, $15.4 million--an average of $20,000 each--has been borrowed by 772 homeowners to replace roofs, wiring, insulation, foundations and ceilings in old homes, Devereaux said.

Historically, restoration money has been distributed in preservation areas for only one year, then shifted to a new set of neighborhoods the following year. That has begun to change, said Devereaux, and expenditures probably will be made in the current eight zones for at least two years.

Among the most popular programs is graffiti removal, with city crews cleaning 11,000 dwellings since 1982.

But efforts to get residents to paint their own homes have been less successful. Just 228 residents have applied for the $500 paint rebate in the three years it has been offered.

Residents Skeptical

A major problem, officials said, is that skeptical residents have a hard time believing they can really get something for nothing. James Wilson, councilman in District 6 in the central city, said residents didn’t understand the program and were “a little suspicious.”

With that in mind, the city has redoubled its efforts to let residents know what it has to offer.

In the Gretas’ North Long Beach neighborhood, for example, Devereaux’s troops have attended at least two community meetings, and mailings have been sent to all residences. And, with a promoter’s flair, the city has offered a $500 gift certificate donated by Dooley’s hardware store for the most improved home in the area.

The response has been encouraging, Devereaux said, with about 100 residents inquiring about paint rebates during the last two weeks. Program officials intend to further canvass the neighborhood by car, noting homes in need of painting, and notifying owners and renters about the program, he said.

Playground Improved

“We are going to keep pushing in that area as long as we can, until we see some appreciable difference,” Devereaux said. “I think we’ll be working there for at least a year.”

Already, city workmen have spruced up Coolidge Park at the eastern end of Neece Street, installing playground equipment, replacing a broken water line and improving a softball diamond.

Neece Street is the base for a particularly active community improvement group that patrols the street from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. to deter criminals, said residents. Several attended one of Devereaux’s meetings and have spread the word to their neighbors.

Several homeowners have agreed to swap labor as they paint their homes on consecutive weekends, resident Juliana Llanas said.

It Will ‘Help a Lot’

“We just moved in in February, and house payments are such a huge amount that so little is left for improvements,” said Llanas, 30. “This is going to help a lot. We were going to paint the house; now we won’t have to spend our vacation money on it.”

The Llanas household will get both the $500 paint rebate and up to $500 to help pay for a sandblaster to remove layers of old paint, she said.

“It’s too hard to believe,” she said of the program. “We thought there might be a lien placed on our house or they’d take a cut of it when we sell, because it just sounds too good to be true.”

Some neighbors remain reluctant to participate, however, because “a lot of people can’t put the money up front for the paint,” she said.

Crime Rate High

The overall success of the North Long Beach effort depends on how well the program is accepted north of the Artesia Freeway, where most of the preservation area lies.

“This is an area where crime has been rampant, where people were afraid to walk the streets,” Councilman Harwood said.

And, despite extra police patrols and special law enforcement programs that reduced crime last year, the neighborhood east of Long Beach Boulevard and north of Artesia Boulevard still had the highest rate of violent crime and home burglary in the city.

That has not scared off longtime residents like Doris Bendel, 77, who said she has noticed an improvement on her street. She used a 1982 city loan to make her leaking, poorly wired, under-insulated home livable again.

Bad Leaks Repaired

“I couldn’t have lived here,” Bendel said, as she cuddled her small dog. “I would have had to move into a (nursing) home or something. The roof was leaking real bad.”

Devereaux said the city has begun making before-and-after videotapes of the neighborhoods in order to document whether the rehabilitation lasts.

Councilman Wilson, whose district has included several of the preservation areas, said he believes the changes will be permanent. “These areas have been very well kept up,” he said. “These people really have a stake in them.”

The fresh paint has also had an important spinoff effect, Wilson said.

“In some cases they have said, ‘If Miss Jones can do that over there as poor as she is, then I ought to be able to do it with me and my wife working,’ ” Wilson said. “It’s been very effective, with people following suit.”