Panel Urges Run-Down Housing Be Renovated

A City Council committee Monday recommended approval of a program designed to help Los Angeles property owners renovate rather than demolish buildings that have been taken over by drug dealers and gang members.

Under the program--described as a marriage between an earlier plan proposed by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and Mayor Tom Bradley’s “Operation Knockdown”-- the city would buy vacant, deteriorated buildings and turn the properties over to nonprofit corporations. The corporations would repair the buildings and rent or sell them to moderate- and low-income tenants.

Also under the program, homeowners who have been given an order to “repair or demolish” would get more information on available city loans and other options that could help them hang on to their property.

The plan must still be approved by the full City Council, which is expected to review the matter within two weeks.

“The purpose of the program is to try to address unnecessary demolition and at the same time reduce the blight of neighborhoods,” said Michael Bodaken, the mayor’s housing coordinator.

Bodaken heads a task force formed by the mayor to review Operation Knockdown, a program started in 1989 in which abandoned homes that had become havens for drug dealers and gang members were demolished.

Operation Knockdown came under attack earlier this year after a Times article revealed that more than 200 deteriorating, low-income homes had been demolished in the city last year. Many of the buildings that were destroyed were not occupied by drug dealers but were salvageable housing located in poor areas with a shortages of housing, critics charged.

After the article, Yaroslavsky called for a moratorium on demolitions and later proposed “Operation Rebuild” as an alternative.

“It’s much cheaper to rehabilitate a house than to tear it down and start all over,” said Katharine Macdonald, spokeswoman for Yaroslavsky. “The goal is to not deplete the available stock of affordable housing in Los Angeles.”

Under the proposed program, which was approved Monday by the Community Redevelopment and Housing Committee, officials of the nonprofit corporations will work with homeowners facing “repair or demolish” orders.

Most of the demolition last year was carried out by homeowners following city orders, who simply did not know what else to do, Bodaken said.

“The city did not do a good job of informing them of their options,” he said.

Bodaken said that through the program, which includes some elements of both Operation Knockdown and Yaroslavsky’s Operation Rebuild, “we bring together the notion that you have to have enforcement and compassion.”

The enforcement end of the program will be conducted in part by volunteers from the County Bar Assn.

Those who are unwilling to work with the city will be targeted and located by the volunteers.

“They will bring the people in to court, where will they will once again be informed of the (assistance available). If that fails, we will ask for an injunction asking them to repair,” Bodaken said.

He said the city would first target people who live outside the area where the property is located.

The six-month pilot program approved by the housing committee is expected to cost $2.5 million, but the amount could be increased depending on the success of the program, said a spokesman for Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who heads the committee.

Funding would come through the Community Redevelopment Agency.