Hugs and Applause Greet Kemp on Visit to Housing Projects

Hugs from poor moms and standing ovations from officials greeted HUD Secretary Jack Kemp in Los Angeles on Wednesday as the conservative Republican with a flair for innovation pushed his plans to turn housing projects over to tenants and bring entrepreneurial revival to poor areas.

Kemp’s whirlwind tour of the area began at the Estrada Courts housing project on the city’s Eastside and ended in a private session with former President Ronald Reagan in Century City.

Quoting Robert F. Kennedy and Mexican statesman Benito Juarez, Kemp said it is time for “a second war on poverty,” and called for joint private and public financing to revive “those areas that had once been redlined, and put a green line around them.”

In his now-trademark forays into ghettos and barrios nationwide, Kemp has hammered on his themes of tenant management and eventual ownership of housing projects, expanded affordable housing programs, tax incentives for business zones in poor neighborhoods and support for community-based anti-drug efforts.

At Estrada Courts, Kemp was surrounded by Latino residents who murmured in admiration, often touching his hand or kissing his cheek. He was welcomed by Mayor Tom Bradley, who pledged support in turning eventual control of the projects over to tenants.

“Jack Kemp is a great man,” said resident Alicia Rodriguez, who raised six children in the project and was chosen by Kemp for a personal visit. The bilingual Kemp chatted easily with many residents in Spanish and chuckled when several ran up and hugged him.

At the neatly-kept project, where rose gardens and petunia beds grow in many yards, Kemp announced three first-time grants of $83,000 to $90,000 each to train public housing tenants in Los Angeles to manage their projects.

The three grants--which will go to Estrada Courts and to Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs in Watts--were among 35 grants awarded nationwide. Potential tenant leaders will be trained in management, maintenance and community action, with a long-term goal of selling the units to tenants through cooperatives.

Claudia Moore, a newly appointed Los Angeles Housing Authority Commissioner, who was once the city agency’s biggest critic, said Kemp’s grant announcement “is a turning point for us, just like the weather, a beautiful day.”

Moore said the housing authority’s commitment to tenant management, supported by acting director Gary Squier, “is something that should have been attempted a long time ago. But I thank God we have somebody in office like Jack Kemp and Tom Bradley, in partnership with tenants of public housing, to make it work.”

Later, in a display of the growing bipartisan support for Kemp, top Democratic and Republican officials from 30 cities and 40 counties nationwide gave him two standing ovations during a luncheon address at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center.

Kemp’s speech, to a national conference on community and economic development, was attended by Democratic county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and his rivals, Republican Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Deane Dana, who all notably sat together at Kemp’s table.

Hahn, the longtime liberal voice of the conservative-dominated board, said the supervisors have hosted guests ranging from “the Queen of England (to the) Emperor of Japan, and I think you’re the best we’ve honored, and that’s true. He’s the best because he can do the most for us.”

Kemp has proposed reforms which, if approved by Congress, would overhaul financial management at scandal-plagued Department of Housing and Urban Development, end federal financing of vacation homes and eliminate what Kemp himself calls “a slush fund to reward developers”--a huge pot of housing rehabilitation money that was granted to many developers with Republican connections.

Under Kemp’s reforms, said Robert DeMonte, regional HUD director from San Francisco, “California will do far better because we did not benefit from those developer connections and much of that money went to East Coast cities.”

Kemp pledged to put an end to “pork barrel” use of Community Development Block Grant funds. The money is supposed to be used to revive commerce and housing in poor and moderate-income areas, but it has been diverted in some cities to build art museums and other amenities.

The only hint of criticism came from Dana, who asked that Kemp continue to allow counties and cities flexibility in spending their block grant funds.

Kemp responded that, “If the county of Los Angeles is spending 80% of its (block grant) money on revitalizing low- and middle-income communities and not on a rock ‘n’ roll museum like in Cleveland, Ohio . . . then the county has nothing to worry about” from reform.