Put on a Neighborly Face to Unite Dollars and Need : Housing: Low-income homeowners shouldn’t lose out to scam artists or city bulldozers, especially when public money exists to fund repairs.

Over the past year, almost 900 homes in South-Central Los Angeles were lost to unscrupulous door-to-door “home improvement contractors.” Almost all of these homes belonged to long-time, elderly homeowners. Many had paid off their mortgages and merely wanted to make some badly needed repairs. However, the fine print of the contracts obligated the unknowing owners to pay huge sums on short notice or lose their homes.

During the same year, in the same area, almost 200 more homes were demolished as part of the city’s Operation Knockdown and related housing-code enforcement programs. While some were abandoned by absentee landlords or drug dealers, many were empty and in disrepair only because of personal tragedies such as the death or illness of an aging owner.

It would be sad to lose habitable low-income units at any time. To lose more than a thousand homes in the midst of the present housing crisis is unforgivable.

Low-cost, government-sponsored rehabilitation loans could have been used to fix up both kinds of homes. In fact, the swindled homeowners signed rip-off contracts while the city of Los Angeles was offering low-interest loans for the same repairs in the same neighborhood--with no payments at all until the property was sold. And yet the homeowners did not seek the city loans. Nor did the owners of the dilapidated buildings demolished by Operation Knockdown. Why?

Unlike the city, the swindlers aggressively market their loans. They go door-to-door, send mail solicitations and are persistent. The city employees, by and large, sit in their offices and wait. As a result, there are millions of dollars citywide in unspent rehabilitation loan funds.

Other cities have realized that planning works at the regional level, but program implementation must take place at the neighborhood level. They have worked through community-based nonprofit groups that actually work door-to-door.

Such groups often grow as economic development offshoots of churches and other established community organizations. They know the residents, know the neighborhood’s needs and can bring the city’s often distant or abstract programs directly to bear. If a homeowner needs repairs, the nonprofit group beats the crooks to the door and offers a low-cost city loan. If the home is abandoned, the agency is much more likely to know if there are relatives about and if repairs are possible.

In some cities, nonprofit groups will buy a truly abandoned house, repair it and sell it to a new low-income homeowner. Thus the neighborhood is insulated from absentee speculation. If housing must be demolished, these same groups often build new, affordable housing on the vacant lots.

The city is helped by this approach because programs are made available to the intended beneficiaries, housing is stabilized and upgraded and residents are protected from crooks and speculators.

Chicago, Boston, Cleveland and many other cities have found that nonprofit, neighborhood-based rehabilitation and revitalization efforts work. But Los Angeles’ present single-family rehab program utilizes only two such groups, which executed a few more than 100 rehab loans last year.

There are now a dozen or more local nonprofits with the expertise to administer these programs, and with true community roots. It is time for the city re-examine its reluctance to work through these agencies.

Mayor Tom Bradley recently renewed his pledge to revitalize and redirect the city’s housing programs. A first step is integrating those programs with community resources, involving existing neighborhood organizations in their planning and implementation.

A new statewide housing rehabilitation program, specifically designed to be marketed by neighborhood-based nonprofit groups, could supplement the city’s effort. This program was funded by Proposition 84, which the voters passed two years ago. It permits these groups to make deferred rehab loans of up to $20,000 to low-income senior citizens. By combining these newly available state funds with a restructured city program, a true neighborhood-based revitalization effort could begin.

It is only when city programs have a human face, a neighborly face that they become real to the elderly homeowner trying to find a loan or to the neighbors trying to clean up empty houses.