Nehemiah West Backers Face First Key Test : Housing: Developers of project for South-Central community go before a council committee today in bid to buy 12-acre LANCER site from the city.

Three years ago, the hated LANCER project, an ill-fated plan by engineers and elected officials to build a Gargantuan municipal trash incinerator in a downtrodden South-Central community, was abandoned by Mayor Tom Bradley in the face of citywide environmental and neighborhood protest.

Today, another dramatic vision is beckoning city planners to the bleak city-owned LANCER site--but not for the reasons that once attracted teams of garbage technocrats.

A high-powered collection of politicians, church leaders and nationally known community organizers is backing Nehemiah West, a plan to build a neighborhood of 316 affordable homes that would represent only the second major home ownership development in South-Central in a generation.

The townhouse-style homes would be priced at $62,000, one-third the cost of comparable homes in Southern California, and $40,000 below home prices elsewhere in the tattered, graffiti-riddled neighborhood along 41st Street and the new light rail line on Long Beach Avenue.

In sharp contrast to most “affordable” homes in Los Angeles, which are priced for households earning $50,000 a year or more, the nonprofit Nehemiah West Housing Corp. would seek first-time buyers who make $18,000 to $26,000--the janitors, bank tellers and waitresses of the city who now only dream of home ownership.

Today, the $35-million project faces its first hurdle before a City Council committee when the developers propose to buy the 12-acre LANCER site from the city for $6.6 million, a below-market price. The developer is negotiating with private owners to buy another 6.7 acres to the north that now house a metal salvage yard.

The LANCER purchase plan, expected to go to the full council in late June, has in recent months received strong backing from Mayor Bradley, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and state Sen. President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles).

Mahony, an advocate of the plan since it was proposed last year, said: “During the 1950s, 70% of all American families could afford to purchase a home, (and) today that percentage stands at less than 15%. In the midst of this crisis . . . we must build new, affordable homes.”

Bradley said he “can see no better use” for the land, which was bought by the city for $7 million in 1982, cleared of its aging industrial buildings to make way for LANCER, and has lain fallow ever since.

The developers also hope to build a Nehemiah West community in Compton. Longstanding negotiations in that community involve a site that some local officials have argued is badly needed for industry. If no agreement can be reached, a second Compton site will be explored, said the Rev. Reuben P. Anderson, a Nehemiah board member.

Modeled on the successful Nehemiah Homes of East Brooklyn, N.Y., Nehemiah West relies upon church and government loans, high-density construction and the purchase of government land at bargain prices to hold down costs.

The New York and Los Angeles projects are the brainchild of church-based affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation, the community activist network founded by the late Saul Alinsky.

The local affiliates--United Neighborhoods Organization and the Southern California Organizing Committee--represent 180,000 church families in East, Southeast and South-Central Los Angeles. Leaders of the two organizations make up the board of the Nehemiah West Housing Corp.

The two groups are relying on the housing expertise of the IAF’s East Brooklyn Congregations, which built 1,700 attractive homes in an area once so crime-ridden and burned-out that few people lived there. Former New York City Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward calls the proudly maintained Nehemiah community “the best anti-drug program” in the city.

Because the working-class owners paid $50,000 for their homes, resulting in monthly mortgages of $400 to $450, there have been no defaults in the six years since the first home was sold. In fact, the payment record in East Brooklyn betters that of the nation’s wealthiest neighborhoods, according to mortgage lenders.

In Los Angeles, as in East Brooklyn, there will be no shortage of buyers for homes whose monthly mortgages are expected to average $570.

The crushing demand was apparent last year during a 4,000-person “housing and prayer” rally at which Mahony spoke to families from United Neighborhoods Organization and the Southern California Organizing Committee about the proposed housing project.

“Nehemiah was still in its rudimentary stages, but people came prepared that night to make a down payment on a house,” said Lou Negrete, a Nehemiah board member. “We literally had busloads of people ready to buy homes that did not yet exist.”

If South-Central’s Nehemiah is completed as hoped in the early 1990s, a public announcement will be made one month before the homes are to be sold, and a waiting list will be created. Purchasers must be first-time buyers of low to moderate income who qualify for a government-backed loan.

Buyers will be asked to make a 5% down payment on a typical three-bedroom, 1,250-square-foot home with a private back yard and garage. Under special zoning, the two-story townhouse-style homes will be attached on two sides. However, families will own the land outright.

Much of the financing for the unusual development has been arranged. Mahony has pledged $3 million in interest-free loans from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, prompting the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and Episcopal Archdiocese to pledge a total of nearly $1 million. Mahony is seeking $5 million more from churches.

Nehemiah also will receive an $11-million grant from the Century Freeway Housing Program, a state fund for replacing homes demolished for the nearby freeway. Another $4.1 million is expected to be issued through government bonds. Mortgage financing will come from Great Western Bank and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Even with the groundswell of financial support, however, Nehemiah faces some challenges, such as buying the land to the north. The owner of the salvage yard has resisted purchase offers thus far.

Also, the developers must grapple with the busy industrial environment that surrounds the project on the north, south and east. The Nehemiah site is zoned for manufacturing, so zoning changes must be sought from the city.

“There will have to be some real work to get amenities for the residents who live there,” said Juanita Tate, an activist with Concerned Citizens of South-Central.

Tate is also concerned that there are no pedestrian bridges “for kids to cross the light rail line on their way to school.” Similar problems face neighborhoods throughout South-Central that are now bisected by the new Blue Line.

Larry Fondation, a Nehemiah organizer, conceded that the site “is not Beverly Hills,” and does not, at first glance, look like an attractive place for housing. But neither was burned-out East Brooklyn, he pointed out, before Nehemiah arrived in the early 1980s.

Developers said the new neighborhood will probably be oriented westward, toward the residential and commercial sector a few hundred feet across Long Beach Avenue. Freeway-style sound walls and landscaped borders will separate Nehemiah from warehouses on three other sides.

Father Bill Jansen, pastor of the Holy Cross Catholic Church on nearby Main Street, and an official of the South-Central Organizing Committee, said that since the Watts riots in 1965, “there has been virtually no change for the better here.”

“Now, we are talking about putting together a critical mass of homeowners who can maintain a community and demand improvements,” Jansen said.

PROPOSED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Map shows site for the proposed Nehemiah West housing development. The 18.7-acre project--much of which would be built on land now owned by the city and intended for the canceled LANCER trash-burning plant--would contain 316 townhouse-style homes affordable to families making $18,000 to $26,000 per year. The homes, to be designed by award-winning architect Gale Fields, would include two and three bedrooms, one and three-quarters bathrooms, and about 1,250 square feet. Qualifying families would be required to make a 5% down payment.