Tenants Deny Arson, Hostility Toward Homeless
Queen Covan said she remembers well a meeting this summer at which Los Angeles city officials told tenants of Hacienda Village in Watts that nine mobile homes would be put on the project grounds to shelter homeless families.
What Covan, a 61-year-old Hacienda Village tenant representative, said she remembers most about that meeting is that there was surprisingly little opposition.
“Some people thought (the mobile homes) would take up some of the space that the children in the project play in and a few people worried about how they looked,” Covan said. “But nobody was really protesting.”
Upset by News Accounts
That’s why she and other tenants--some of whom say they are only one welfare check removed from homelessness themselves--were surprised and offended by news accounts last week of an arson fire that destroyed one of two mobile homes that had been installed at the project.
The Herald-Examiner said “city lawmakers and project tenants” had resisted the trailers. The Times published a wire service account that said the structures were placed at the project “under heavy opposition from residents.”
More than two dozen tenants of the project said that as far as they are concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. They said they want to see the homeless housed as much as anyone and they did not mind the city’s plan to house them at Hacienda Village once it was explained to them.
“After all, in a sense, we’re homeless too,” said a 52-year-old woman who described her dimly lit two-bedroom, $133-a-month apartment as “falling apart.”
Tenants took special exception to statements by Mayor Tom Bradley the day after the fire that they said implied they somehow were responsible for the blaze.
“Why in the world would we set fire to something that’s sitting right next to our own houses?” asked a woman who lives with her two young sons in a project apartment about 15 feet from the burned trailer. “I think it’s ridiculous that someone would do something like that.”
Bradley’s statement said that “no act of violence, no matter how senseless or destructive, will deter my efforts to help house homeless families.”
Not Viewed as Threat
The homeless families scheduled to move into the trailers, the statement continued, “do not represent a threat in any way to the surrounding neighborhood.”
Bill Chandler, press secretary to Bradley, said the mayor’s remarks were directed only at the arsonist or arsonists, whoever that might be. They were intended, Chandler said, only to denounce the violence that the fire represented and were not aimed at Hacienda Village tenants.
The tenants, however, interpreted the remarks as an undeserved blow to a community that they believe is already much maligned.
Open Drug Dealing
They acknowledge that the 184-unit project, whose main entrance is off East 105th Street near Compton Avenue, is beset by open-air drug dealing, vandalism and the general deterioration associated with poverty.
But they insist that most of the people who live there are good people. They and their neighbors often open their doors to relatives or friends who do not have a place to stay and they do not deserve to be portrayed as hostile to homeless people, they said.
Tenants whose back doors are within 20 feet of where the trailers are set up said they do not feel resentful toward the families that will live in the two- and three-bedroom mobile homes.
“I think it was very good that (the city) would build some places for them,” said Bonnie Davis, 48, who spotted the fire through her rear window and called the Fire Department to the Oct. 18 blaze.
Fire officials said someone had doused the trailer with gasoline and set it afire. Investigators have labeled the blaze as arson, but they have no suspects. It is unlikely that the case will ever be solved, said Battalion Chief Dean Cathey, because “there were no witnesses.”
Round-the-Clock Guard
A 24-hour police guard has been placed near the mobile homes, police and city officials said, to prevent more damage to them and to protect workers as they continue bringing others to the site.
The 70-foot furnished trailers are among 102 that the city bought last year for $1.5 million. Half the structures are to be placed at housing projects, the remainder outside churches and at other sites.
As of Friday, 41 of the mobile homes had been set up for use. The rest have not been placed because of opposition from neighborhood groups and disagreements among city administrators and City Council members.
But Chandler said the mayor is determined to “move forward” with his plan to locate all 102 trailers at sites throughout the city.
