Complex Opens Doors to Elderly Koreans : Housing: Sangnok Villa is Los Angeles’ first subsidized apartment house for the area’s growing Korean community.

More than 120 Korean-American senior citizens joined Los Angeles housing development officials Friday to celebrate the completion of Sangnok Villa, the city’s first subsidized housing project for the region’s burgeoning Korean community.

Between benedictions by a Korean minister and the singing of the U.S. and Korean national anthems, developers and supporters of the new 60-unit apartment house for low-income, elderly tenants marked the official opening of Sangnok, which means “evergreen” in Korean.

Managers of the three-story, peach-colored complex at 732 S. Bonnie Brae St. said they have received about 600 applications for the 60 apartment units. Tenants will be chosen based on their income level, the cost of their current housing and the order in which their applications were received, building supervisor Lois Reed said.

One applicant, Kyung Woon Choi, 82, said that although he has lived in the Crenshaw area for 29 years and would have to pay more rent if he moves into Sangnok, he wants to live in the new project because he likes the house rules.

“The managers are looking closely at the people who have applied,” he said in Korean. “The ones who get to move in won’t be the kind who smoke and drink too much. I’d really like that,” he said, pointing to a “no smoking” sign in the lobby.

Although most of the prospective tenants are Korean, Choi said he appreciated the apartment complex policy of taking all applications regardless of race. “I like living in a place that has an open door,” he said.

The one-bedroom units measure 580 square feet and are designed for the handicapped and elderly. They have an emergency signaling system and grab rails on bathroom walls and the shower. The complex also has wheelchair access.

To finance the building, Sangnok organizers received $3.9 million from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Retirement Housing Foundation, a national nonprofit private developer specializing in housing for the elderly.

Tenants, who are required to be 62 or older, will be able to move in by the end of January, Reed said. Rents will range from $291 to $394, about 30% to 40% below the cost for new apartments in the area, developers said.

More than 40,000 Korean senior citizens live in Los Angeles County, said Dr. Eung Soo Han, director of a Pacific Palisades medical consultant group and a board member of the senior citizen organization, the Christian Evergreen Assn. About 10% of those elderly residents are in dire need of affordable housing, Han said.

“Although it’s just 60 rooms,” Han said of the development, “it’s a start.”

During planning of the project, Han said, organizers learned how to get around language limitations and difficulties in understanding how mainstream funding sources operate.

“These are things that many people have to get through,” he said. “The success Koreans have had with the project shows us that there is a way.”