Problems Nag at Park Parthenia’s Success

For Guadalupe Aguilar, life in the Bryant-Vanalden area of Northridge has vastly improved since the city of Los Angeles began an unprecedented project three years ago to rid the mostly poor Latino neighborhood of crime and unsightly conditions.

“For us, this apartment is magnificent. It’s clean and beautiful,” she said from her comfortable, newly carpeted and freshly painted unit. “We are happy.”

But for her neighbor, Oscar Torres, and perhaps as many as 150 others, city promises of safe, decent housing are unfulfilled, interviews with city officials and more than 30 tenants has found.

Torres lives in an unheated, roach-infested unit. His carpet is tattered and severe bathroom plumbing problems have so rotted his floors that they squish like a wet sponge when he walks on them. His oven does not work.

“A lot was promised to us, but in reality there has been little for me,” said Torres, 45, a landscape worker. “Look at my apartment. For me it has been lies.”

City officials say the $25-million redevelopment project--the largest of it kind undertaken by the city--is nearly complete. They describe it, in general, as a success and see it as a model for crime-ridden, run-down areas in other parts of the city.

Crime is down. Streets are cleaner. A new coat of paint covers the exterior of the once graffiti-marred cluster of 60 apartment buildings, which has been renamed Park Parthenia. And hundreds of poor immigrant families live in decent housing--paying less rent to boot.

But when pressed, city officials concede that poor conditions remain in some units. Walter Clarke, rehabilitation manager for the Community Development Department, said all violations of health and safety codes will be corrected after the city does its final inspection of the project.

Disparities Remain

Clarke acknowledged that even if those violations are resolved, disparities will remain in living conditions because the city and developer underestimated the amount of work necessary and have nearly run out of rehabilitation money.

The project was approved by the City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley in November, 1986. Its purpose was to transform the blighted three-block stretch of apartment buildings into a well-groomed development that would be more in keeping with the fashionable Northridge community that surrounds it.

Originally, Councilman Hal Bernson, in whose district the project is located, had proposed cleaning up the area by making it easier to evict the predominantly low-income Latino tenants so that a “new class of tenants” could be brought in. He abandoned the proposal because of a threatened veto by Bradley and intense protests from civil rights groups.

A second plan, eventually approved, provided developer Devinder Vadehra with $20.6 million from tax-exempt bonds and a $4.8-million loan to buy and fix up 453 apartments in the neighborhood.

To date all but 19 of the 453 apartments have been renovated, according to a spokeswoman for the developer, and work is beginning on the remaining units.

“If we have ever done anything positive in the housing area in this city, this is it,” Bernson said. “We took an terrible situation, and we turned it around.”

In 1985, the area accounted for nearly one third of drug-related arrests in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division. In 1988, the area had only 57 of the 1,505 drug-related arrests in the division.

John McClure, principal of Napa Street Elementary School next to the project, said the redevelopment has “gotten rid of the drugs and the violence that used to take place out in front of our school. There is not the fear element that many residents dealt with previously.”

Jeri Jackola, who has lived in the area for 30 years agreed that Bryant-Vanalden “has been cleaned up considerably. But I still think there is more work that needs to be done. I’d like to see the greenbelt,” referring to a landscape plan that officials said was scrapped for lack of money.

A city official who worked closely on the project said he likes some of the results but believes “the price was disproportionately high, economically. I think the social price was, too. I don’t like the feeling that we took somebody’s neighborhood and destroyed it,” said the official, who requested anonymity.

Strict rules have been established for residents. For instance, children are prohibited from playing in public areas such as courtyards and hallways. Pushcart vendors are banned.

Also, the turnover among tenants ended many longtime friendships. “Most of my neighbors, my friends are gone,” said Angela Arragon, 54, a 10-year resident who is happy with the improvements to her apartment. “There is no more community here.”

There are now about 1,600 tenants in the 453 apartments, down from an estimated 4,000 in 1985, when city officials found families doubling and tripling up.

About two-thirds of the apartments are occupied by residents receiving federal Section 8 rent subsidies, under which they pay 30% of their income toward rent and the government picks up the remainder.

“Before we needed two other families to pay” the $650 monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment, said Carmen Chavez, 33. The mother of four who works as a housekeeper said she now pays $193 of her own money for a two-bedroom unit.

Opinions Differ

“It is a good feeling for me to be able to pay all my bills every month,” Chavez said. “And it is better for the children to sleep in their own room.”

But many tenants have a different view of the project. They complain that repeated requests for repairs and improvements have gone unanswered.

Those tenants are living in apartments without such basic necessities as working heaters and stoves. Besides walls and floors rotted by plumbing problems, some apartments have tattered carpets and kitchen floors that are worn to cement foundations.

The number of apartments with poor conditions could not be determined. A random check of 30 units by The Times found 17 with apparent code violations. In every case the tenant had not sought a rent subsidy, which meant the apartment did not have to pass strict inspections by federal housing officials.

The quality of work is poorer in many of the 150 units rented to unsubsidized tenants because those apartments were given lower priority in the redevelopment, Clarke said.

Top priority went to units the developer hoped would attract middle-class tenants or to units that would house tenants with rent subsidies, he said. Rent-subsidized tenants received apartments upgraded with such items as new appliances, carpet and kitchen floors because they had to pass “a higher standard of inspection by housing authorities,” he said.

A major contributing factor, city officials said, was that the city and developer had underestimated the amount of work required and did not have enough money to improve all units equally.

“We never intended to turn it into a Leisure World,” said Ralph Esparza, director of the Community Development Department’s housing division. “It’s basically safe, decent and affordable housing. That was our objective.”