L.A. City Council Expected to OK Bryant-Vanalden Area Renovation

At long last, the Los Angeles City Council this week is expected to approve an unusual, tax-supported plan to transform the slum-like Bryant-Vanalden area of Northridge into a pleasant, gated community. With the new image is proposed a new name: “Park Parthenia.”

The plan is the second one suggested for the area, which has long been criticized for bringing crime and blight to an otherwise middle-class neighborhood. The first plan died after protests that it would result in mass evictions of poor renters.

Although the plan up for approval this week is not expected to be as controversial, a legal aid attorney said he still is concerned that the plan would force out some of the 3,000 low-income Latinos who live in the Bryant Street-Vanalden Avenue apartments.

In the largest program of its kind in city history, the Community Development Department has recommended that the city issue $20.8 million in tax-exempt bonds and lend another $4.2 million to assist a developer in buying and fixing up 462 apartments in the blighted neighborhood.

Increase in Rents

Under the plan, the developer can raise rents to recover the cost of improvements. The city proposes to soften the blow by using taxpayer money to subsidize the rents of low-income tenants.

The city has renovated 3,047 units of low-income housing throughout Los Angeles under a program instituted in 1980. Until now, the largest single project has been the rehabilitation of 120 units in “Sherm Alley,” a drug trafficking center in the Crenshaw district, said Craig Avery, director of the Community Development Department’s housing division.

The Bryant Street-Vanalden Avenue plan is scheduled to go before the City Council’s Grants, Housing and Community Development Committee on Tuesday and before the full council Wednesday, when a legally required public hearing will be held. It also needs Mayor Tom Bradley’s approval.

Council approval is expected because Councilman Hal Bernson, whose district includes the Bryant-Vanalden area, has enthusiastically endorsed the plan. Council members generally defer to colleagues on projects in their own districts.

The complex financial agreement, which was in its final stages late Friday, is being rushed through the council in order to beat a Dec. 15 deadline imposed by the state for the sale of the bonds. The deadline is the result of a provision of the new federal tax reform law that will limit the amount of tax-exempt bonds that cities can issue, Avery said.

Residents in the middle-class neighborhood surrounding the three-square-block Bryant-Vanalden area have long complained about crime and unsightly conditions there. In a controversial move in August, 1985, Bernson won preliminary council approval for a proposal to make it easier for landlords to evict 3,000 predominantly low-income Latino tenants from the neighborhood. The landlords would have then been able to fix up units and rent them out at higher prices.

Bernson withdrew the plan in the face of strong opposition from civil rights activists, tenants’ groups and Mayor Bradley, who claimed it was unfair to tenants.

Another problem with the earlier plan was that its prime mover, Lance Robbins, a large property owner in the Bryant-Vanalden area, faced criminal charges for alleged violations of the fire and health codes in apartment buildings he owns in other parts of Los Angeles. This made the plan difficult for Bernson to sell to his colleagues.

Leading New Effort

Spearheading the latest effort to clean up the neighborhood is Devinder(Dave) P. Vadehra, a 48-year-old native of India who has worked with the city on similar, though smaller, apartment rehabilitation projects in Hollywood and the mid-Wilshire area.

Vadehra has acquired options to buy 50 buildings containing 462 of the 645 apartments in the area, including all of Robbins’ holdings. Vadehra is negotiating to buy the remainder but said he can proceed without them.

Explaining his plans for the area in a report to the council, Vadehra said the number of units he now has an option to own will provide him “with dominant control of the neighborhood insofar as enforcement of property-management policies is concerned.”

The principle cause of the area’s problems, Vadehra said, is the “highly fragmented ownership” of the apartment buildings. Vadehra said records show the neighborhood’s 60 apartment buildings have had 40 different absentee owners “exercising little or no management supervision.” Many of the buildings have fewer than 16 units. City law requires that there be on-site managers for apartments with more than 16 units.

“Little coordination exists between the various owners, and problems created by undesirable tenants persist since evicted tenants can simply move into close-by units,” Vadehra said.

The new plan, like the previous one proposed by Robbins, calls for the developer to make a number of improvements, including installing a security gate and fence around the project and renovating units. Also under consideration is closing Bryant Street and making it a greenbelt, and opening a child-care center.

Vadehra said that when he completes the renovations, the spruced-up buildings should look like they did in 1964 when they were “brand new.”

Strict Controls Proposed

Vadehra proposes to implement a “stringent management” program: placing pictures of tenants on file “to control subleasing and overcrowding” and periodically inspecting units “to assure they are being maintained in a safe and sanitary condition.” He also proposes to limit access to alleys--which he says have become “a breeding ground for drug dealing and violence”--to tenants with “entry cards.”

Also proposed is a private security patrol with guards on duty 24 hours a day at the entry points to the project.

A city official said the practice of keeping tenants’ pictures on file is not unusual, even in high-priced apartment buildings. But David Pallack, an attorney with San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services who has worked with the Bryant-Vanalden tenants, said he is concerned that the practice may infringe on tenants’ right to privacy and could discourage illegal immigrants from continuing to live in the Bryant-Vanalden area.

Vadehra’s plan calls for renaming the entire neighborhood “Park Parthenia” to “get away from the image of Bryant-Vanalden,” said city housing director Avery. The neighborhood is just south of Parthenia Street.

Vadehra said he expects to complete the renovations in two to three years.

How the plan would affect tenants is still unclear.

Neither Vadehra nor city officials have explained their plans directly to the tenants. Vadehra said that is the city’s responsibility.

Avery said the city has complied with the legal requirement of publishing a public notice of Wednesday’s hearing in the newspaper. Beyond that, he said, no one in his department has presented the plan to tenants.

“It is not something that we have ever done in any bond issues that we have worked on; talked to people on site to see if they like it or don’t like it,” Avery said. “In this instance, we have been talking with tenants’ organizations over time. We know they want to see improvements. . . . This plan is an effort to protect the existing tenants.”

No Evictions Contemplated

Vadehra and city officials say they have no plans to evict law-abiding tenants. They added that there is no plan to evict tenants because of their immigration status.

“We are not going to evict people out there except those who are committing illegal acts,” said Barbara Zeidman, director of the city’s rent control program.

As a condition of using tax-exempt bond financing, Vadehra must set aside for 17 1/2 years at least 20% of the housing in the Bryant-Vanalden area for low-income families. For example, under this designation, a family of four would earn a maximum of $16,600 a year. Vadehra also is limited in how much rent he can charge low-income families in these units.

Vadehra said he may have to move tenants to vacant apartments while their units are being renovated. He said he should have no problem finding temporary housing in the neighborhood because of a high turnover rate there. According to rent control director Zeidman, tenants in 45% of the apartments in the area are not the same ones that were there six months ago.

A Community Development Department report projects that under the plan, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment, now $500 a month, would go up to $625. The average rent for a three-bedroom apartment, now $600 a month, would go up to $775.

The city proposes to offer rent subsidies to an unspecified number of low-income tenants. Under the federal program, tenants who qualify for subsidies have to pay only 30% of their income in rent; the government pays the rest. The maximum annual income to qualify for a rent subsidy is $16,900 for an individual or $24,150 for a family of four.

In some cases, said Avery, this could result in lower rents for tenants. For example, if a tenant now is paying $500 a month for a two-bedroom apartment and makes $1,000 a month, he would have to pay only $300 in rent if he qualified for a subsidy.

However, the Reagan Administration has proposed to restrict rent subsidies to legal residents of the United States. If such a policy goes into effect, Vadehra acknowledges that it would result in “a large loss of tenants” in the Bryant-Vanalden area because many are illegal aliens. Legal aid attorney Pallack said he recently won a court case that he believes bars the policy, at least for the present, and possibly permanently.

But even if such a policy is not implemented, it is unclear how much money the city Housing Authority, which provides the rent subsidies, would make available for tenants in Bryant-Vanalden.

Not Enough Subsidies

Zeidman said she doubts that everyone in the Bryant-Vanalden area who would qualify for a subsidy would receive one. “There aren’t enough to go around,” she said.

Pallack agreed that there may not be sufficient subsidies and added that he is fearful that “people who barely make enough to scrape by but don’t qualify (for subsidies) are going to be left out in the cold, with increases they cannot afford.”

Housing director Avery said there may be some tenants who will be forced to move because they will be unable to afford rent increases of as much as $175 a month. But, he said, he believes the number will be low. And he said the developer has agreed to provide relocation assistance.

City officials say they hope to use the rent subsidies to end the crowding, which they blame for the rapid deterioration of apartments. Earlier this year, city officials found 29 people living in a four-bedroom apartment in the Bryant-Vanalden area.

“We have a density problem out there,” Zeidman said. “We’ve got to reduce density.”

City officials say rent subsidies will allow families to live in their own apartments rather than share units with other families, as many do. Only one family receiving a subsidy can live in an apartment.

Because many families now share apartments, living alone--even with a rent subsidy--could result in higher rents for tenants, Zeidman said. But she asked, “Would you rather spend $300 to live on top of another family or pay $375 to live alone?”

Zeidman said the city hopes that a lot of the low-income families will use the subsidies to move into better housing somewhere else. Once a family qualifies for a rent subsidy, it receives the assistance anywhere in Los Angeles, never paying more than 30% of its income in rent.

“A lot of those families don’t want to be there,” Zeidman said. “They want to be somewhere else. They’re locked into Bryant-Vanalden by economic circumstances. If we can provide them a means, and they choose to voluntarily leave, I think that is good.”