Plan Put Forward to Place Homeless in Vacant Houses : Programs: A City Council committee backs an experiment in which developers would offer the temporary use of dwellings they plan to tear down.

Los Angeles housing officials are proposing an experiment to aid the homeless by placing them in vacant houses in North Hollywood owned by developers awaiting the appropriate time to tear down and rebuild.

Under a plan approved by a City Council committee Monday, housing officials would recruit the owners of five unused single-family houses in a seven-square-mile area, said Robert Vilmur, the city’s homeless coordinator. “We’ll start with five and hopefully the number of bloody noses will be outweighed by the successes and we’ll go on to a bigger project,” Vilmur said.

Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Richard Alatorre, members of the Community Redevelopment and Housing Committee, voted 2 to 0 to recommend the plan to the City Council for approval. No North Hollywood residents rose to speak on the issue during the meeting Monday.

Council President John Ferraro, who supports the program, represents the area. It is bounded by Victory Boulevard on the north, Ventura Boulevard on the south, the city of Burbank on the east and Tujunga Avenue on the west.

The homes targeted generally would be “tear-downs” owned by developers waiting to proceed with plans to redevelop their properties with apartments or condominiums, said Mary Presby, a Ferraro aide.

Developers would have various incentives to participate, including the avoidance of potential city violations, city officials said. Under city law, vacant properties must be secured to prevent vandalism. If they are not and become nuisances, the city can intervene to have them boarded up and fenced--at a cost of more than $2,000 to the owners.

“It can be cost-effective to the owner to avoid these costs,” Presby said.

The city also would reward participating owners by expediting their applications for building permits when they seek to redevelop their properties, she said.

City officials said preliminary discussions with property owners revealed concerns that “the developer won’t be able to get the tenant out when they want to begin building,” Presby said. To deal with this, the city has agreed to pay the legal costs of evicting recalcitrant tenants.

The tenants would pay enough rent to cover the costs of liability insurance for the owners.

The only property owners who could participate would be ones who pledged to make their properties available for six months and who did any repairs needed to bring their structures up to health codes and building and safety standards.

If the homeless families who participate are screened properly, the program should not be objectionable to the neighbors, Vilmur said.

Priority will be given to drug-free families with no history of mental health problems who have good prior credit and a history of paying their rent unless they fell victim to circumstances beyond their control.

The screening would be done under a $10,000 contract by Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., a nonprofit agency that now operates the city’s temporary shelter for the homeless in the Valley.