Church, Developers Team Up to Make Apartments Safer : Housing: One-time Southeast San Diego drug haven is cleaned up and renovated by the partnership.
Three weeks after Michael and Shawn McCowan moved into their ground-floor unit in an Imperial Avenue apartment complex, they moved out. They thought it was too dangerous.
The couple had lived there only two weeks in January when Shawn, 25, opened her door for a young man with a small child and gave him a quarter he said he needed to catch the bus.
“The next night he knocked on the door when my husband was home and asked us if we wanted to buy drugs,” she said.
The McCowans moved out the next week.
“It was dangerous,” said Jerry L. Harris, an attorney and real estate developer whose company, Towne Centre Investments Inc., was one of three partners that bought the four-building, 47-unit apartment complex at 5492 Imperial Avenue in January.
“We still have bullet holes in different parts of the complex,” he said.
Now, with the help of a local church, things appear to be changing for the better.
TCI formed a partnership with St. Stephen’s Church of God in Christ Ministries and Mark Johnson, a fitness therapist and real estate investor. The new union was called Genesis ‘91, the same as the renamed complex. Harris hopes the name also signifies a “new beginning” for the apartment house and its tenants.
The general partnership purchased the complex from the International Savings Bank, which had foreclosed on the property and evicted tenants who dealt drugs, Harris said.
Pepper Evans, Genesis’ new on-site manager, used to manage one of the blighted properties that share the same block on Imperial Avenue.
“There’s been more than an improvement here,” said Evans, who added that she knew seven of the former tenants of the property. “Three were drug dealers who I evicted from past properties I managed.”
Genesis ’91 is an ambitious joint venture in which TCI provides much of the funding and manages the property, while St. Stephen’s, a Pentecostal church one block east of the complex on Imperial Avenue, provides many of the social services needed by the tenants.
Headed by Bishop George D. McKinney, who founded the church with his wife Jean in 1962, St. Stephen’s has long provided those services to the Southeast community and its congregation of about 2,000 families.
The church now rents an apartment in the complex and staffs it with employees during the day and volunteers at night to discuss tenants’ needs and problems, McKinney said.
The workers then refer the tenants to professional educational, vocational and social counselors who work at St. Stephen’s extensive church, school and counseling complex a block east of Genesis on Imperial Avenue.
In addition, McKinney and staff are forming an on-site day care center for parents who, without such a service, would not be able to get jobs or go back to school.
“We believe that in order for the project to succeed, we must give tenants access to services like child care that will encourage them to cope,” McKinney said.
Harris and McKinney have known each other since Harris attended kindergarten with McKinney’s son George 27 years ago.
Both men said they hoped the Genesis deal--which combines the favorable financing often found in foreclosures with strong support from a community organization--will become a model for other investors and groups wishing to provide affordable housing for inner city residents without the long wait for public funding.
Rents at Genesis will be kept affordable--$425 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, $535 for two bedrooms and $635 for three bedrooms--and the firm will continue to screen all applicants in order to prevent drug dealers from moving back on to the grounds, Harris said.
Since the initial purchase of the property for nearly $1.8 million, TCI, which is headed by Harris, 32, and his father, Howard R. Harris, an attorney for 40 years, has already sunk about $100,000 in the property, Harris said.
The firm has replaced carpeting in many apartments, repaired broken windows, replaced stolen cabinets, relandscaped the property, repaved the parking lot and installed a security gate which requires that pedestrian tenants use a key and tenants with cars use a remote control device to enter.
In addition, TCI has installed a sandbox with an adjacent play area cushioned by five inches of chipped bark, some sparse barbecue and patio equipment and repainted the exterior of the property.
With the turquoise and burnt-orange trim added to the already pink structure and the security gates painted bright blue, the complex is a bright spot on an block dominated by dismal gray apartment buildings with broken windows.
Not all of Genesis’ tenants are happy with the additional security, improvements or strict house rules, however.
“I feel jailed in,” said Annie Pearson, 28, adding that she has to walk a long distance from the entrance gate to her apartment at the end of the complex.
Another tenant said that the play area was was sufficient only for small children. A tether-ball set that had been installed for older children had already been vandalized and removed, she said.
On Thursday, a man who apparently did not have a remote control device to open the driveway gate, forced it open by hand, breaking the gate’s automatic opening mechanism in the process.
Another woman, angry that she is no longer allowed to drink beer outside of her apartment, has given 30-days notice of her intention to vacate, Harris said.
“The whole battle is not won,” Harris acknowledged. “We have constant challenges but certainly have the resolve to get through them.”
Harris also acknowledged that some tenants would probably be unhappy during the renovation period and added that he would soon build another facility for the older kids on the complex, possibly a basketball court, to replace the old tether-ball game.
He also said that he hoped to get tenants involved in some of the decisions concerning facilities to be added to the complex.
The bishop, as well, said that the church was in the project for “the long haul” and that the effort was well worth the result.
“I’m just grateful to be a partner in reclaiming that portion of our neighborhood . . . and to see black and white children playing together and no one selling drugs,” he said.
A number of tenants said they were grateful for the changes as well.
“It had gotten to the point that the people who controlled the drugs (in the complex) controlled the apartments,” said Wanda Gilliam, 38, as her daughters, Kiara and Kiona Johnson, played in the sandbox.
“I feel a lot safer now,” she added.
Even the McCowans, now expecting their first child in September, have seen enough changes in Genesis’ tenancy and security to warrant moving back to the building in early May, Shawn said.
In fact, “when I went over there to pay my security deposit, I couldn’t get in,” said Shawn, referring to the new, iron gates that surround the front of the property. A passing maintenance worker finally let her in so she could sign up.
