Someplace Like Home : Low-Income Family Is 1st in State to Benefit From Program

Jose Guevara figured his chances of ever owning a house were about zero. “The down payment alone was insurmountable,” said the Mexican-born assembly line supervisor, who lived in the Maravilla Public Housing Development in East Los Angeles for 15 years.

But as of today, Guevara and his wife, Maria Elena, are the proud owners of a four-bedroom home in an unincorporated San Gabriel Valley community near La Puente. They are the first beneficiaries in California of a federal home ownership program for public housing tenants.

In a ceremony at the tidy $91,000 house today, federal and county officials will transfer the property from the county Community Development Commission to the Guevaras. Nine other public housing families will soon acquire homes in the La Puente area and in South-Central Los Angeles.

“This was our dream as young people,” said the 48-year-old Guevara, who has been renting the single-family home from the county for the last six months, after transferring from the 504-unit housing project. The rental period has given him a first taste of suburban life, complete with the hassle of fighting freeway rush-hour traffic to and from his job at an electronics plant in Hawthorne.

Subtle Changes

The square, beige stucco home with the dark-brown trim--which will house the Guevaras, their two teen-age sons and Mrs. Guevara’s mother--is also bringing subtle changes in the way Guevara feels about his role in society.

“I guess it brings a feeling of security,” said the factory foreman, a husky man with an infectious laugh. “It’s hard to explain, but I feel more responsible.”

The Public Housing Homeownership Program is one answer from the Reagan Administration to the policies of previous administrations on building public housing. The pilot program, begun two years ago, has provided the means for about 160 public housing tenants in 17 metropolitan areas around the country to buy government-owned housing--usually “scatter-site” single family homes, but also apartment-type units in some cases.

“It allows families to accomplish the symbol and dream of every American family--to own their own homes,” said Kenneth J. Beirne, assistant secretary of policy development and research for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But some critics of the housing policies of the Reagan Administration, which has reduced the annual federal housing assistance budget by $18 billion since 1981, worry that the program could be a prelude to the wholesale selling off of the nation’s public housing.

“They’re taking a resource that’s part of a very rare housing stock and turning it over to a very different market,” said Ann Sewill, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Design Center, a nonprofit housing development corporation.

Beirne noted that there is a commitment from the White House to “create a situation where government does not play a large part in people’s private lives.” But he denied that the program is taking government out of the business of maintaining public housing for low-income people.

“There’s no noticeable diminution of federal involvement in public housing,” he said.

The financing of the Guevaras’ house, which had been used as public housing, calls for the Guevaras to chip in a down payment of $4,000 and receive a 30-year Federal Housing Administration mortgage of $47,900. The balance of the value is being subsidized by the county.

The Guevaras’ mortgage and down payment were set based on what the county figures the family can pay “based on their limited income,” said David Lund, executive director of the Community Development Commission, which is the county’s public housing authority.

The Guevaras were paying $670 a month for their public housing, and county officials estimate that their mortgage and maintenance costs will be about the same for their 10-year-old home.

Strings Attached

But there are strings attached to the Guevaras’ deed. They have to live in the house for five years and, if they do eventually sell, the new buyers will have to be, like themselves, of limited income. In addition, the maximum sales price will be limited by a formula tied to increases in county income levels and the Guevaras “cannot walk away with” the approximately $40,000 the county is subsidizing, Lund said.

“At most, we’ll make about 10%,” Guevara said.

Even critics of the program, who are concerned about its potential for disposing of multi-unit project apartments, don’t fault the sale of houses to families such as the Guevaras.

“They’re providing an opportunity for low-income people to own their own homes and for the housing authority to get out of managing single-family houses,” said Gilda Haas, coordinator of economic development for the Legal Aid Foundation, which provides legal assistance for low-income people. “That’s very different from the kind of collective responsibility that tenants would have to assume if they took over, say, a 1,000-unit development.”

While the program is selling only single-family houses so far in California, there are plans to dispose of county-owned multi-unit projects as well, as was done with 40 units of a garden apartment complex in Denver.

County officials said they surveyed public housing tenants two years ago and found “tremendous” interest in the home ownership program. But because of income requirements, only 35 families were invited to apply last year, said Edna Bruce, manager for intergovernmental relations for the county agency. Twenty did so.

The Guevaras have had to make some adjustments in their new home. Sons Art, 19, and Rudy, 17, shake their heads at the serenity of the neighborhood into which they have been thrust. “I still visit the old neighborhood in East L.A.,” said Rudy Guevara.

Guevara shrugs when asked about commuting, which often takes an hour and a half when he drives home in the afternoon. The trip to his apartment in East Los Angeles usually took half an hour.

“You have to give up something,” he said. “You sacrifice for your family.”