Vacant Lot Rental Use Proposed : Housing: Bradley plan would help nonprofit builders erect affordable units. It would focus on demolition properties.

Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday proposed a new city program to help nonprofit developers build affordable rental housing on some of the vast supply of 20,000 private vacant lots in the city.

Still in the planning stages, the proposal came in response to criticism this week that the city ordered the demolition of 215 abandoned homes and other dwellings in 1989 after police or neighbors complained about crime, unsightliness and other problems.

City officials said the program will be aimed at the more than 200 lots made vacant by city demolitions as well as thousands of others left undeveloped by their owners. It is expected to offer as-yet undetermined financial or technical help to nonprofit developers to buy and build on the property.

Bradley’s announcement is his latest in a series of proposals to increase the city’s supply of affordable housing.

Bradley also proposed improvements in Operation Knockdown, the special demolition program begun by the city last January to destroy dilapidated crack houses frequented by drug users and other vacant structures that become magnets for crime.

The changes include review by Bradley’s office and by the Community Development Department to assure that homeowners who want to rehabilitate their property have a chance to do so instead of seeing it destroyed.

Deputy Mayor Ed Avila said the Community Development Department will take extra steps to inform wayward owners of low-interest city loans, and the Department of Building and Safety will hand out flyers about city loans whenever neglected homes are threatened by possible demolition.

A report in The Times on Tuesday said that an unknown number of rebuildable homes were torn down under city orders in 1989 because owners could not be located, could not find loans or were simply waiting for the land to appreciate and were not interested in making repairs.

One of the salvageable homes torn down by the city was being used by six homeless men who were put on the street two days after Christmas.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said the majority of homes torn down last year were not rebuildable and attracted crime, “and if there were mistakes made, they can be rectified and won’t be made in the future.”

Meanwhile, Fabiani assailed City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky for calling for a 60-day moratorium on Operation Knockdown.

Fabiani said that because the Westside councilman has very few crack houses or empty slum buildings in his generally well-to-do district, his involvement in the issue is “peculiar” and should be challenged by the City Council.

Fabiani claimed that Yaroslavsky’s district has lost far more affordable housing in the past decade--3,504 units--than any other council district. He said most demolitions in Yaroslavsky’s district were done by owners who replaced the dwellings with “expensive luxury housing.”

While not directly blaming Yaroslavsky for the dramatic gentrification of his district, Fabiani said, “He has done nothing to stand in the way of it.”

Yaroslavsky, whose motion to delay Operation Knockdown will be considered next week, called it “outrageous that the mayor would seek to put a muzzle on a councilman who doesn’t happen to represent the area (of the city) that’s in question.”

“We’re not talking about private property owners in South-Central Los Angeles choosing to demolish their homes,” Yaroslavsky said, referring to the high number of city-ordered tear-downs that occurred in poor areas. “We are talking about people who can’t afford . . . to bring them up to code, losing their homes to a bulldozer.”

City officials on Thursday also clarified the original intent of Operation Knockdown, which was billed last January as an assault on crack dens.

Avila said employees involved in the program in its first year publicly portrayed Operation Knockdown as encompassing all city-ordered demolitions of abandoned and troublesome housing.

However, Avila said, the mayor had intended Operation Knockdown to include only the nuisance homes identified by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Scores of other problem homes ordered demolished by the city in 1989--identified either by neighbors or City Council offices--will not be considered part of Operation Knockdown, he said. Aside from that technical distinction, he said, such city-ordered demolitions will continue whenever justified.

The city’s broad demolition policies set it apart from Oakland, Boston and several other areas where housing shortages have spurred aggressive policies to restore derelict housing.