REAL ESTATE : Little Plaza Savings Shows a Big Heart in Financing Low-Cost Housing Project

Home builders have been complaining bitterly that the federal government’s crackdown on the savings and loan industry is drying up financing for their projects.

But the feds also are requiring S&Ls--many; of which got into rather unorthodox investments in the 1980s--to start showing a social conscience by participating in redevelopment projects.

One that seems to have taken the message to heart is tiny Plaza Savings in Santa Ana. The 5-year-old thrift recently financed a $1-million construction loan for a 20-unit, low-cost apartment complex, La Esperanza III, at Buena Street and Westminster Boulevard in Garden Grove’s Buena Clinton district.

The apartments are a project of the Orange County Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit developer of affordable housing.

In a interview less than a year ago, Alan Baldwin, OCCHC executive director, complained that S&Ls;, once the nation’s premier housing lenders, were staying away from programs like his in droves.