7-Year Effort Opens Door to Home for Latina Parents : Housing: Ground broken on project that women’s group sees as a haven for mothers and their children.
Plenty of dignitaries were there Friday--more than two dozen, including Mayor Tom Bradley and Gayle Wilson, wife of the governor.
They gathered on a street near downtown Los Angeles to celebrate the groundbreaking of Casa Loma, said to be the first housing project in the nation created by Latinas primarily for single Latina parents. The women responsible for the landmark project looked on with pride.
But when the struggle to build Casa Loma began seven years ago, the women were alone.
“It’s been an incredible political struggle,” said Beatriz Olvera Stotzer, head of New Economics for Women, which created the $18-million project.
Seeing the reality begin to take shape as high-ranking guests dug symbolic shovelsful of dirt made the effort worthwhile.
“Suddenly all of those years of work and all the stress and struggle washed away,” said Esther Valadez, head of the Casa Loma project.
Begun seven years ago as the brainchild of a determined group of women, the project represents the group’s resolve to create a safe, affordable oasis for working mothers and their children, allowing them to escape the conditions of substandard housing long enough to forge a better life.
The 110-unit complex, scheduled to open in December, 1992, will cover slightly more than one acre in a neighborhood of mostly Central-American immigrants. Within its walls will be day care, job-training courses and adult education classes that all residents will be expected to attend, organizers say.
“It’s not about four walls,” said Stotzer, who said she was reared by a single mother in substandard housing in Los Angeles. “It’s about the ability to govern your life. . . . It’s housing designed with dignity.”
Though other housing projects exist elsewhere that focus on single parents, Valadez said this is the first one created primarily for Latinas by Latinas. She added, “Most of these projects are designed to take women on government assistance. . . . What’s unique about Casa Loma is we’re dealing with working women who are underemployed, the true working poor.”
Rent at Casa Loma will range from $85 for the cheapest one-bedroom to $555 for the most expensive four-bedroom apartment. Although the development will primarily focus on assisting single Latina parents, men rearing children alone and members of all ethnic groups will also be welcome, said Valadez, an attorney who specializes in issues of affordable housing.
One-third of the units will be designated for senior citizens in an effort to create an extended-family atmosphere.
“How could you have families without your (grandmother) helping you?” Stotzer asked, laughing.
The group that began Casa Loma is Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional, a community-oriented Latina organization that in 20 years has created a group home for girls, two day-care centers for low-income parents and a job-training center for Latinas.
The spirit of helping one’s own had always existed within the organization, many of whose members are children of immigrants, said Valadez and Stotzer. But it was a magazine article in the January, 1984, issue of Ms. magazine that inspired the women to take economic development into their own hands and build housing aimed at helping women.
The article spoke of creating innovative developments that fit the needs of working women, said Stotzer, and “we realized we were going to have a lot of obstacles because we were women.”
Stotzer said she understood the importance of trying to help women working at low-paying jobs in their struggle to provide decent homes for their children. Stotzer, one of six children, said she did not have her own bed until she went away to college.
“The issue of housing was not an issue to (her mother) as long as it was clean,” said Stotzer, who spent three of her college years trying to find adequate housing for her family. “She didn’t have the knowledge of the services and institutions that could help her.”
The organization spent a year studying the issue of affordable housing, and concluded that the greatest unanswered need was decent housing for single mothers.
In 1985, the group formed New Economics for Women as a nonprofit development corporation, and in 1986 received $97,000 from United Way as seed money to help find a place for Casa Loma.
Then came the hard part.
For two years, the group searched for land.
In 1988, the group’s break came, but the battle was not over.
For years, a day-care center established by the Latina organization in a neighborhood of graffiti-scarred apartment buildings crowded into one of the most densely populated areas of Los Angeles on land owned by the nonprofit Cancer Prevention Corp.
The corporation decided in 1988 to sell the land. The women recognized that the property along Loma Drive would be ideal because they had planned to include a day-care center in the housing project, and the land lay in the heart of the community they wanted to serve.
“That’s why I think this project was blessed,” said Stotzer, about the land coming up for sale.
But eight large developers already had bids in on the property, she said.
“There was one particular developer who was extremely angry we’d even compete for the land,” said Stotzer. “There were (other) developers trying to discredit us because we were ‘a funky old nonprofit.’ ”
The corporation, however, sold the land to the women. Valadez said that the seller picked her group because it had the interest of the community at heart.
“It took another nonprofit to believe in us and allow us to buy a $2.5-million parcel of land with $10,000 down,” said Valadez.
Getting the land was the turning point, she said. After that, the group “became a different entity (in the eyes of) the world. We had an asset we could leverage into a development.”
Once they had the land, the women convinced the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency to contribute. With the CRA was involved, private firms and the state Department of Housing and Community Development were willing to jump in.
Once the project seemed to be moving toward reality, the group opened the doors to neighborhood residents so they could help design it.
Their advice: No large closets, to discourage thier use as extra bedrooms; large kitchens, to enable working mothers to spend time with their children while cooking dinner; a youth center for tutoring and job training; an evening food program for children whose parents get home too late to cook meals.
The housing will be transitional, Valadez said, with residents working with counselors on setting and achieving goals.
Long-term loans have been secured from the city and state to ensure rent stays low at Casa Loma and operating costs are paid, she said.
A selection process for tenants has not been completed, but there probably will be a lottery among applicants to guarantee all would-be residents a fair chance at the housing, Valadez said.
Gabriela Moreno, 32, said she will be one of the first on the list.
The young mother of four, who lives near the site, supports her family on food stamps and an income of $1,109 a month. She said her three daughters sleep in the one bedroom of the family’s small roach-infested apartment while she shares a sofa bed with her son.
If she gets into Casa Loma, Moreno said she will have her own bedroom for the first time in her life. “It’s one of my wishes,” she said through a translator.
But there is something else she wishes for more, she said--the security and comfort of her children. “Once in Casa Loma,” she said. “I’m going to be at peace.”
Valadez and Stotzer added that such feelings show that the residents and creators of Casa Loma will not allow it to become run-down and crime-ridden, as often happens in public housing projects.
“The residents are going to be part of the decision-making process. It’s not just going to be dictated from above,” said Stotzer, adding that a residents committee will participate in selecting tenants.
