Tenant Leaders Demand Voice in Project’s Fate

Tenant leaders at the Jordan Downs public housing project, bolstered by nearly 1,000 signatures of support sent by residents of other projects citywide, demanded on Thursday a year’s time and a city-paid consultant to explore the Housing Authority’s controversial plan to sell the tattered project in Watts.

Citing reports of other troubled housing projects in Washington and St. Louis being modernized under innovative tenant management programs, tenants assailed Los Angeles housing officials for “taking a backward step” by devising a plan without tenant involvement.

“The Housing Authority has been secretly working on this proposal for a year . . . and I can tell you the residents have not been consulted,” said Lillian Browning, a tenant leader at Jordan Downs. “Why can’t it be tenant-owned or nonprofit-owned, instead of sold to a private developer?

Housing Authority officials did not return a reporter’s telephone calls Thursday. They previously have acknowledged, however, that the plan to sell Jordan Downs to a private developer has been in the works for more than a year.

Tenants at the project, home to 3,150 people, were taken by surprise by the proposal and were told that they were being given only until late February to comment.

“We have people who have never lived in public housing making decisions that effect our lives,” said Claudia Moore, chairwoman of a tenant organization that represents all 21 projects in the city, who spoke at a press conference Thursday.

Although tenants of the city’s projects have had trouble organizing in the past because of their far-flung locations and cultural barriers, the announcement Thursday drew support from several leaders at projects with heavy Latino populations who fear that Jordan Downs, which primarily houses blacks, could be the first of many sites sold to private landlords.