Ground Broken for Homes for Single Latina Parents : Housing: Women’s seven-year dream is to provide a temporary haven for young mothers and children.

It began as the dream of a few women determined to help others help themselves.

But Friday it became a budding reality when ground was broken near downtown Los Angeles for Casa Loma, believed to be the first housing project in the nation created by Latinas primarily for single Latina parents.

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.

On Friday, a crowd that included Mayor Tom Bradley and Gayle Wilson, wife of Gov. Pete Wilson, gathered at the site to listen to speeches and applaud the songs and dances of children.

But when the struggle began, 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.

“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.”

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, say organizers.

Though other housing projects exist elsewhere that focus on single parents, project head Esther Valadez said “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 is concentrating on assisting single Latina parents, men rearing children alone and members of all ethnic groups also will be welcome, said Valadez, an attorney who specializes in issues of affordable housing.

A third of the units will be designated for senior citizens, creating an extended family atmosphere between the elderly and young families living in the project, said Valadez.

The group that began Casa Loma is Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional, a community-oriented Latina organization that during the last 20 years has created a juvenile 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.”

But Stotzer said she understood the importance of trying to help women struggling on low wages to provide decent homes for their children. One of six children, Stotzer 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 biggest 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 created by the Comision Femenil Mexicana Nacional had been on land owned by the nonprofit Cancer Prevention Corp.

The cancer corporation decided in 1988 to put the land up for sale. The women immediately recognized what an ideal location this would be--they wanted to have a day care center in the housing project, and the land lay right in the heart of the community they wanted to serve. It sits in a neighborhood along Loma Drive full of graffiti-scarred apartment buildings housing poor women and their families.

“It was blessed,” said Stotzer, about the land coming up for sale.

But eight large developers already had bids in on the land, 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.’ ”

In the end, the nonprofit corporation sold the land to the women. Valadez said that the seller was convinced that her group was the right one to sell to because its members 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 their land, the women convinced the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency to contribute. Once the CRA was involved, private firms and the state Department of Housing and Community Development were willing to jump in. Among the firms that have contributed are Chevron USA and American Savings Bank.

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, in order to discourage using them as extra bedrooms; large kitchens, to encourage working mothers to spend time with their children while cooking dinner; a youth center, where young people could be tutored and trained for jobs; 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 get a fair chance, Valadez said.

Valadez and Stotzer added that the residents and creators of Casa Loma will not allow it to become run-down, and crime-ridden, often the reality of time-worn 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, explaining that a residents committee will participate in selecting tenants.

Just as important, said Valadez, anyone who tries to disrupt the new community will be stopped.

Projects, she said are “are 10% dreams, and 90% work. You’re looking at a group that recognizes that, and is willing to put in that 90% work to make sure the project lasts.”