Tenants of 7 Projects Pull Together to Fight Crime

It seemed that tenant leaders and apartment managers in the northeast San Fernando Valley’s largest public-housing projects had reached the breaking point about the same time.

“We just couldn’t afford to lose one more child to drugs or gangs. We had to do something,” said Mary Cooley, a tenant at the Lake View Terrace Apartments.

Frustrated by persistent drug trafficking outside their doors and a dearth of youth programs for their children, managers and tenants of seven government-subsidized housing projects in the northeast Valley recently formed an unusual coalition that is part crime-watch group, part social-service organization and part support group.

Leaders have yet to come up with a catchy name for the organization, which represents more than 6,000 tenants. But, after only three meetings, they have garnered promises of support from every elected official in their area, as well as federal and local housing officials and police.

It is the first time a tenants’ group from Valley housing projects has formed a large-scale crime watch and service coalition, according to U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials and local police.

Projects involved are La Cannon, Casa Bien Apartments, Van Nuys Pierce Park and San Fernando Gardens, all in Pacoima; the Lake View Terrace Apartments and Butlong Manor, both in Lake View Terrace, and Astoria Gardens in Sylmar.

2 Projects Toured

Earlier this month, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City); Benjamin Bobo, Southern California regional manager of HUD, and Leila Gonzalez-Correa, executive director of the Los Angeles City Housing Authority, toured two of the projects--Van Nuys Pierce Park and San Fernando Gardens--at the urging of the tenant group.

Berman said he would seek money to improve security at San Fernando Gardens, and Gonzalez-Correa said city officials intend to obtain state funding to build a recreation center at the project.

“Just because we live in a housing project does not mean we do not have strong voices,” Cooley said, adding that the group is not going to forget the promises.

“When you keep hearing people say how bad things are in Pacoima, you start accepting it,” she said. “But I think we have underestimated our power for too long.”

Cooley and other tenant leaders said the need to organize a communitywide coalition against crime has been simmering for some time. Rampant drug dealing at individual apartment complexes prompted tenants to form crime-watch groups and push their managements for more security.

“We had little groups of people all over Pacoima trying to do what they can to fight drugs,” said Cooley, a 49-year-old secretary at California State University, Northridge who has emerged as the leader of the group. “But we seem to just push the problem into someone else’s neighborhood.”

Pushed Into Action

But the fatal shooting of a Los Angeles police officer across the street from the Astoria Gardens project in June, followed by the July fatal shooting of a 10-year-old boy playing at Pacoima Park, pushed leaders into action.

Tenants and managers of the seven federally subsidized apartment projects have agreed to meet weekly at their own complexes and monthly as a group to keep crime-watch movements strong, seek ways to provide youth activities and exchange information so that evictees from one complex do not end up in a neighboring one.

The low-income tenants of the projects receive federal rent subsidies. After meeting tight HUD income requirements, they pay 30% of their monthly income toward rent. The rest is paid by the government.

Police said such a housing-project coalition will go a long way toward improving police contacts in the areas. Without organization and tenant leadership in crime-watch groups, resident witnesses to crime and drug dealings are reluctant to divulge information to police.

Sgt. Cary Krebs, who has supervised the narcotics and foot patrol units in the Foothill Division for eight years, said that, in the past year, more crime watch groups have surfaced in projects where tenants have generally been without leaders.

“I think it’s reached a point where parents are sick of seeing little children, 9- and 11-year-olds, selling drugs for other dealers,” Krebs said. “The more organization there is, the more it intimidates criminals.”

Coalition leaders said another important function of their group will be to share information on evicted tenants. Often, managers said, a tenant who has been evicted from one complex because of troubles from non-payment of rent to continual drug dealing arrests, will falsify applications and be accepted in a nearby project.

HUD spokesman Scott Reed said apartment managers are able to deny an application if a prospective tenant has a history of trouble at HUD-subsidized projects.

‘Keep Out Problems’

“If all the managers know who the troublemakers and drug dealers are, we can keep out problem tenants,” said Armando Medina, manager of the La Cannon apartments.

Leaders feel that simply offering each other support and discussing common problems will give them a boost in keeping their organization intact.

At a coalition meeting last week, Ana Alvarez, manager at Astoria Gardens, told of her frustration at the unwillingness of other tenants to cooperate with police in investigating two tenants arrested on drug-related problems.

“It’s going to be an uphill battle,” said Sam McClain, a tenant at the Lake View Terrace Apartments. “But I think, sooner or later, the adverse conditions are going to pull everyone together.”