Salvage Whatever We Can : Broken-Down Houses Should Be Built Up Again; the City Has a Plan
Abandoned houses are becoming a nuisance in Los Angeles. Homeless men break into the empty houses and turn them into dirty havens for squatters. Street gangs misuse the dilapidated houses as headquarters for crime. Crack dealers and dope users make themselves at home in these eyesores. But while these houses are typically in very bad shape, many are worth salvaging.
A new city program aims to save the houses, and also help some low-income families become homeowners. Under the Distressed Properties Rehabilitation Program, nonprofit housing developers will locate negligent homeowners who live in the area and help them obtain low-interest loans to make renovations.
If the owners aren’t interested in repairing their property, the nonprofit developers will try to buy the houses and fix them up. To finance the purchase and repair work, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has set aside $2 million. After the renovation, the community groups will sell the house to low-income families, and repay the fund.
Low-income families will qualify for help from the state’s first-time homeowners’ fund. That help would be in the form of silent second mortgages, which would be repaid only when the house is resold. As much as $7 million is targeted for buys on the Eastside and in South-Central Los Angeles--where housing prices average more than $100,000.
A companion enforcement program targets absentee owners, who are often speculators. These owners would be required to attend hearings with the city attorney’s office and agree to a timetable for the repairs in order to avoid prosecution.
The new program replaces a controversial policy, Operation Knockdown, which led last year to the bulldozing of 135 abandoned houses. News reports about those demolitions prompted Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to push for a moratorium on the bulldozing.
City bulldozers today only take aim at unsalvageable houses. That is an improvement. Given the critical shortage of affordable housing, saving houses makes much more sense.
