Petition Forces New Hearing on Homeless Housing Plan

Responding to complaints from residents of a Harbor City public housing project and nearby homeowners, Los Angeles city officials said Thursday that they will hold a second hearing on a plan to place transitional housing for homeless families at the project.

At a hearing at the Normont Terrace housing project last month, 38 people voted in favor of placing 12 mobile homes on vacant land at the 37-acre project, while 12 voted against it.

At that time, city officials praised the vote, saying it reflected the generosity of some of the city’s poorest residents toward others in need. But several days later, opposition to the mobile homes began to grow.

Some Normont Terrace residents complained that leaders of the tenants association--who strongly endorsed the plan and urged its approval--had packed the hearing with supporters. They also complained that many residents who work or have other commitments during the day were unable to attend the session, which was held on the morning of Oct. 2.

The vote “was not a fair representation of all the Normont Terrace or Harbor City residents,” wrote Aurea Santiago, a project resident, and Jan Hughes, a nearby homeowner, in a letter to the Housing Authority. “Prepared maps indicating the location of the trailers were handed out prior to the vote, which indicates that the (residents) sponsoring the election were positive of its outcome.”

Santiago and Hughes collected the signatures of 71 Harbor City residents--including 56 at the 395-unit project--who are opposed to the transitional housing. Under the plan, 12 of the 68-foot mobile homes would be placed at the project. An additional 69 mobile homes are slated to be placed at other public housing projects, and the city is still searching for sites for 21 others. City officials, who hope to place the mobile homes as soon as possible, have said they will not be placed at projects where they are not wanted.

Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores said she asked the Housing Authority to hold another hearing at Normont Terrace after receiving a petition from Santiago and Hughes as well as several phone calls from residents opposed to the plan.

The session will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 17 in the project’s meeting room.

Flores said the hearing will give city officials a chance to allay fears about the transitional housing by better explaining its purpose. City officials will stress that the mobile homes are designed to provide short-term housing--probably 60 to 90 days--for families in need, she said. Counseling and other services for the families would be provided by Harbor Interfaith Shelter, a shelter for homeless families in San Pedro, city officials said.

List of Concerns

Residents “will feel better about it if they realize it is like somebody bringing a family into their home and helping them find jobs, day care centers and other assistance,” Flores said.

But in the letter accompanying their petition, Santiago and Hughes said opponents of the trailers believe that the housing will do more harm than good. The letter said:

Resources should be spent helping poor people already living at Normont Terrace, rather than homeless people that would be brought there from the outside.

Trailers would eliminate open space at the project that is used by children for play areas.

Plans to tear down Normont Terrace and replace it with a modern housing project--which residents support--could be adversely affected by the placement of trailers there.

The transitional housing would eventually become permanent.

The trailers and their inhabitants would “invite more drug business” and other crime.

“We already have many problems with drugs and crime,” Santiago said Thursday in an interview. “We don’t want any more.”

Hughes, who has lived across the street from the project for two years, complained in an interview that Flores and Housing Authority officials should have consulted homeowners near the project before deciding to place 12 mobile homes there. Only residents of Normont Terrace were invited to the October hearing.

“It is the homeowners who foot the bills for these low-income families,” Hughes said. “We should have a say on what happens in the community. We help pay for the Fire Department, the Police Department, the sewers, the street maintenance and the street lights.”

Ed Griffin, a spokesman for the Housing Authority, said Hughes and other Harbor City residents concerned about the transitional housing will be invited to the Nov. 17 hearing. Flores said she welcomes comments from the neighborhood.

“I don’t think the surrounding neighbors will be as impacted as they think they will,” Flores said. “This will give us a chance to explain this to them a little better.”

Janetta Dobbins, head of the Normont Terrace Coordinating Council and a proponent of the transitional housing, said most residents of the project favor the mobile homes despite the complaints.

“Those people are suffering out there, living in the street and it is getting cold,” Dobbins said. “They are human beings and they need a place to go. We have to put ourselves in their place. If it wasn’t for us living in low-income housing, we wouldn’t be able to pay the high price of rent either.”

Staff writer Sebastian Rotella contributed to this story.