Religious Group Prays Its Community Can Be Saved

House by house, apartment by apartment, a group of predominantly young Christian couples is buying up and renting run-down dwellings on two Van Nuys streets, intent on turning a neighborhood in decline into a shining haven for good family life.

In the heart of downtown Van Nuys, an area targeted for redevelopment because of stagnant businesses and deteriorating neighborhoods, this group of homeowners has quietly established what they call the City of the Lord, a Christian community of 91 adults and 77 children. Members of the group, after searching throughout Los Angeles for a place to settle, started moving to Van Nuys in the late 1970s.

They have taken over housing once occupied by motorcycle gangs and drug dealers, and now own more than 30% of the single-family homes on the 14700 block of Friar Street and several houses on the same block of Sylvan Street. Members live in almost every apartment building on both blocks.

The City of the Lord is one of about six “Christian Covenant Communities” throughout the United States, made up predominantly of Catholics who believe they can lead more spiritual lives by living together, said the Rev. Thomas P. Rausch, assistant professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University.

Community Life

Members of the community regularly pray together. Their children play together. They fix up each other’s homes and share everything from vacuum cleaners to homemade jam. Fresh paint, vegetable gardens, flower boxes and swing sets are characteristic of properties once overgrown with weeds.

“In today’s world, this is the best thing available for us,” said Sharon Hoffman, who lives on Friar Street. “We all share the same values and commitment to family life. We’ve worked hard to build this community.”

But a recent proposal by state Sen. Alan Robbins to redevelop a 50-square-block area of downtown Van Nuys, which includes their neighborhood, is sending shudders through the tight community.

Its leaders said they fear redevelopment could force them out of their neighborhood because of the city’s power to exercise eminent domain in a redevelopment area.

Although they agree that improvement is needed along the Van Nuys commercial strip and in other residential areas, they said they do not want to be included in a government plan to redevelop the City of the Lord.

Leaders are publicly voicing opposition to the proposal at Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. meetings and Los Angeles City Council and committee meetings. They want to let public officials know they think their neighborhood is fine just the way they have built it.

Moreover, they say, their campaign is just beginning.

The Van Nuys redevelopment proposal is in its infancy, with possibly a year or more of study ahead, city officials said.

Proposed By Robbins

The plan was suggested by Robbins in October to revitalize the center of his state senatorial district. He proposed replacing decaying areas of the Van Nuys Boulevard commercial strip with a shopping, office and restaurant complex.

The targeted residential area west of the boulevard includes the City of the Lord neighborhood.

“Some of the area is in pretty good shape and some areas need some help,” Robbins said. “This is the type of community that could be helped by more park space, a greenbelt, more nice shops, places to eat.”

Members of the City of the Lord are praying over the issue.

Privately, about 25 adults gathered in a cozy living room last week and opened a meeting with bowed heads. “We ask the Lord to take care of us, whether it’s our family or our home. In this case, our home,” prayed Theodore Cullen, whose family was one of the first to settle in the area.

No Need Seen

“I don’t want people who don’t live here making decisions about our neighborhood,” Cullen said. “We have already redeveloped this neighborhood. Why do we need to be included in redevelopment? People who don’t live here don’t know what we value. They don’t know what we experience in the neighborhood.”

Dan Sauer, coordinator of the City of the Lord, said members of the community have made a lifelong commitment “to live according to covenants and agreements.”

“We choose to follow the Lord and practice his teachings, support one another and agree to speak rightly about one another,” Sauer said. “I don’t think we portray religious fanaticism. We just want to serve and care for one another. I know I will be with these people for the rest of my life. And that’s comforting.”

According to Loyola Marymount’s Rev. Rausch, the communities grew out of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a spiritual movement that began 20 years ago in large prayer groups at Catholic colleges and universities.

“What happened out of the renewal movement is that you had people who began to feel they had been called to live a more intense type of Christian life, and they began to form real communities together,” Rausch said.

Independent Movement

The covenant communities are independent of the Roman Catholic Church and accept members from all Christian faiths, Rausch said.

Besides Van Nuys, the City of the Lord has communities in San Diego, Monterey, Phoenix and Jerusalem, with a total membership of more than 500, Sauer said.

The City of the Lord grew out of a prayer group of almost 1,000 people who gathered weekly at Loyola Marymount University beginning in 1972, he said. Worshipers came from all over Los Angeles and Orange counties.

“By 1976, many of us wanted to make a deeper commitment; we needed to do more than meet once a week. In order to preserve our Christian values, we needed to live close together,” he said. “So we actively pursued trying to find a neighborhood.”

The group looked for six months in the Chavez Ravine area and the Wilshire District, but neither offered the housing diversity, in price and in mix of single-family homes and apartments, that the group needed, Sauer said.

“We had just about given up on the idea of finding a neighborhood,” he said.

Then they found Friar Street.

Sauer’s brother owned a rental house on the street that Sauer and his family moved into in 1978.

“After we moved in, things just began to happen,” he said. “As houses opened up for rent or sale, members of the community grabbed them. We bought an apartment complex for our offices and for other members.”

Prices Were Lower

Cullen said the lower prices of houses in the aging neighborhood made it easier for young couples to buy homes. That many of the houses needed major renovations did not deter members because they agree to help each other financially as well as with their labor.

“If you only could have seen this street seven years ago,” said Barbara Bareda, another of the first homeowners on the street. “Most of it was rental property; most of it was unkept, with weeds growing four feet tall. It was just plain seedy.”

As Bareda talked with several other women, they began exchanging stories of patching up bullet holes in their walls, digging out marijuana plants from their backyards and peeling off psychedelic wallpaper in a bathroom.

One longtime Friar Street resident didn’t realize what was happening on the street until about two years ago.

“You know, 10 years ago, I thought I would be pushed out of this neighborhood because of all the problems. Houses were going up for sale and a bad element was coming in,” said Marcella Strange, 72, a widow. “Then all these nice young people started moving in. They would go out of their way to talk to me and check in on me.

“I used to see them carrying all their food down the street getting together for these big parties, greeting each other with hugs and everything,” she said. “They call themselves ‘the community,’ but they are just a nice bunch of kids. After all these years, it’s turned into an old-fashioned neighborhood again. I’ll never move.”

Cullen said that, except for the outdoor dinners and gatherings that they have three times a month, it would be difficult for an outsider to detect that they are an organized community.

Large Families Prevail

Most of the women stay home to care for large families. The men hold jobs that range from physicians to engineers to sales representatives. If one family is in financial need, they can dip into the “community share account.”

Members attend Bible study classes, and have community gardens for members who live in apartments. Once a week, married couples go out on a “date night” while other members baby-sit.

“We don’t consider ourselves out of the mainstream at all,” said Marilyn Cullen. “But we do run counter to the thought that you have to be on the move and acquiring possessions to be successful.”

Sauer said the community will continue to grow the same way it has, expanding farther onto Sylvan Street.

“If this redevelopment is done in a sensitive way so that homeowner rights are protected and our community is not affected, it could be a good thing,” Sauer said. “But we are going to protect what we have here.”

Ultimate approval of a redevelopment district rests with the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley.

Neither Councilman Joel Wachs nor Marvin Braude, whose districts include downtown Van Nuys, have taken a stand on the redevelopment proposal, waiting for the completion of a preliminary feasibility study.

The study, being prepared by the City Council’s Planning and Environment Committee and the Community Redevelopment Agency, is intended to determine whether a redevelopment district would benefit Van Nuys and, if so, what the boundaries should be. It will take several months to complete.

The Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. has not taken a position on the project, but the Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce supports the idea, leaders of those organizations have said.