Compton Groups Urge Support for Housing

Hundreds of angry Compton residents assailed their City Council on Sunday for courting business interests while ignoring a community proposal to build a low-cost housing development on public land.

After being denied a City Hall hearing on the proposal, members of the South Central Organizing Committee and the United Neighborhoods Organization convened in the gymnasium at Compton Community College to discuss how to get the council’s approval for the housing development, dubbed Nehemiah West after a prototype project in New York.

The groups want to build 600 townhouses on a city-owned lot on Alameda Street just north of the Artesia Freeway.

The City Council said last month it would not hear the proposal, because a truck sales and service franchise had already been granted exclusive negotiating rights to the 12-acre site.

“It is a chicken-or-egg issue,” Eugene Grigsby, UCLA professor of architecture and urban planning, told the hearing. “Which comes first? Housing, or increasing employment opportunities through commercial development?”

Nehemiah West advocates contend that if the community’s housing needs are addressed first, area businesses will have a better chance to succeed.

The Rev. William Johnson, who presided at Sunday’s meeting, questioned whether customers would come to the major retail businesses that the city is courting.

“Compton needs all the industry we can get,” Johnson said. “But who does the City Council think they are fooling? We have the highest per capita murder rate in the country. Nobody is going to come shop in a murder capital.”

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who said he has supported the two community groups for about 10 years, brought the audience to its feet when he berated the City Council for being “shortsighted.”

“They prefer to use the land for business,” he said. “The reason? More taxes.”

Reiner said the housing project could affect how people live, as well as where.

“Affordable homes will bring stability to Compton,” he said. “When people have more of a stake in the community, there will be a lot less drugs and a lot less crime.”