Century Freeway Housing Funds Clear Hurdle

The long struggle to replace homes torn down for the planned Century Freeway in South-Central Los Angeles cleared an important hurdle Wednesday with an agreement to allow local nonprofit groups to develop and administer $55 million worth of low-cost housing.

The agreement, which required the consent of the federal judge overseeing the Century Freeway project, transfers some responsibility for the replacement housing from a state agency that has been criticized by tenants for moving too slowly and for putting up overly expensive and shoddy buildings.

“We felt strongly that the housing program was not being properly administered and we wanted to find a better way to do it,” said John Phillips, a lawyer who has represented tenant interests along the freeway corridor for the last 18 years.

In all, the state had planned to build about 4,000 apartments and houses along the freeway route. That is about half the number of structures destroyed to make way for the project that runs between Norwalk and the Los Angeles International Airport. Completion of the freeway, including a light rail line, is expected by 1995.

Allan Kingston, executive director of the Department of Housing and Community Development Century Freeway Housing office, said Wednesday that more than 2,000 housing units have been built and that another 500 are to be built under the court-sanctioned agreement that brings in several million dollars in private funding as well as the involvement of local nonprofit organizations.

This latest development in the Century Freeway saga is an outgrowth of a consent decree issued 11 years ago by federal Judge Harry Pregerson that laid out the original plan for building the replacement housing.

Under the arrangement approved by Pregerson this week, the state will commit $17.5 million of its remaining $126 million in Century Freeway housing funds. In addition, a nonprofit group called the Local Initiatives Support Corp., which has nationwide experience brokering funds for low-cost housing, will supply the rest of the financing needed to build the 500 housing units. Several local, community-based nonprofit groups, including Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles, will take responsibility for building the houses, selling some of them and managing others.

Up to now, the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development has been in charge of building the replacement housing.

“Instead of contracting with developers who walk away after the job is done,” Phillips said, “this approach puts the responsibility in the hands of community-based organizations who have a stake in what is built.”

Phillips said he hoped that the participation of the nonprofit groups, both in funding and building the houses, will serve as a model for building the rest of the homes mandated for the Century Freeway corridor.