Poor Win Housing Fight : Hawthorne: Complex eyed for military use belongs to poor and Century Freeway refugees, judge rules.

When plans for the Century Freeway uprooted Cynthia Jackson from her home in 1983, Caltrans promised to find her a new residence of equal size to replace the one she lost.

It took the agency eight years to fulfill its promise.

But on July 16, the day she was supposed to pick up the keys to a three-bedroom apartment in a brand-new complex known as Hawthorne Terrace, she was told she would not be able to move in after all.

She and more than two dozen other people promised apartments there were put on hold because the city of Hawthorne had proposed buying the complex from the state and turning it over to military personnel from Los Angeles Air Force Base.

It didn’t matter that Jackson and others like her had already given notice at their residences and would be stranded without a place to live at the end of the month. Or that the complex, which was built for displaced people and the poor as a result of a costly legal battle that had ended six years earlier, was already occupied by 28 needy families.

What state and Hawthorne officials were most concerned about was finding a cheap way to house Air Force personnel, whose base was threatened with closure because of the high cost of housing in the South Bay.

“You’ve got two competing issues here,” said G. Allan Kingston, executive director of the state’s Century Freeway Housing Program. “There’s the economic development and well-being of the entire South Bay versus the housing program’s rather constrained objectives to provide affordable housing (for the poor). . . . Nobody I know would want to see a job generator as big as Los Angeles Air Force Base leave the South Bay area.”

Judge Harry Pregerson of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sympathized with the state’s wish to help the military, but he refused to give Air Force personnel priority over the people for whom the complex was built.

After a hearing Aug. 13, he told the state to finish processing the applications of families who had been promised a home in Hawthorne Terrace. He also said the remaining units were to be filled with low- to moderate-income tenants. People displaced by the freeway would have priority.

From the beginning, Hawthorne Terrace was unpopular with city officials.

In 1984, the City Council tried to block construction of the subsidized housing complex, arguing that the site was not zoned for apartments and that its residents would overcrowd nearby schools.

Several attorneys for the tenants fought the city in court, arguing that Hawthorne officials simply wanted to keep out minorities and the poor.

The dispute was resolved in 1985 when Pregerson--who as a District Court judge in 1972 heard the first Century Freeway case and has retained jurisdiction ever since--agreed that the effect of the city’s refusal to issue construction permits for the project was racially discriminatory. He ordered city officials to let the low- and moderate-income project be built.

Although a change in contractors delayed construction, the project’s completion Oct. 24, 1990, was celebrated by Caltrans, attorneys who fought for the complex and even city officials.

The celebration came as the Defense Department debated closing Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo because of problems in finding affordable housing for 250 military families. The closure could mean the loss of thousands of South Bay aerospace jobs, which are directly linked to the base, and more than $1 billion in goods and services. The base is a key facility in satellite and rocket research and development for the Air Force.

Because it has one of the area’s largest supplies of affordable housing and is home to other defense industries and workers, Hawthorne was in the vanguard of those trying to keep the Air Force base in the South Bay.

“To have a project that was all finished right then was sort of like a godsend,” former Hawthorne City Manager Kenneth Jue said. “We were all enraptured with the idea” of making Hawthorne Terrace available to Air Force personnel, he said.

At that point, some state officials began working at cross purposes.

While one group began negotiations to sell the complex to Hawthorne, other state officials--under pressure by federal highway authorities to rent the property--proceeded with plans to move in tenants.

By the time state housing officials stopped processing applications, 28 tenants had moved into the 100-unit complex, and 28 others had been promised apartments.

Several families who had already given notice at their current residences were forced in July to sleep on the floor at the homes of relatives and friends. One family had to choose between living on the streets or accepting housing at a less desirable apartment complex in Compton.

At the same time, residents who only recently had moved into the complex began receiving calls from state housing officials inquiring whether they would be willing to leave.

“It was really hard for my children,” said Gloria Perez, who moved into Hawthorne Terrace with her five children in June. “They didn’t know what we were going to do. You could see the fear in their faces.”

Tenant Nancie Reynosa, who was displaced by the freeway in 1985, said she cried during the entire August hearing in Pregerson’s court in Pasadena.

“It seemed like they had so much power, they could just come in and take (our homes) away,” she said. “They were, like, robbing me of my rights.”

Pregerson’s ruling in August was a victory for Reynosa, Perez and other tenants, all of whom were allowed to keep their new homes. And families promised apartments in the complex, including the one forced to move to Compton, will receive assistance to move into Hawthorne Terrace.

“There are thousands of needy families out there, single parents working, who need child care, who have been waiting a long time for these housing units,” said attorney John Phillips, who represented the tenants and people displaced by the freeway. “You can’t redirect them at the eleventh hour. . . . What (city and state officials) should be doing is increasing the stock of housing for the Air Force, not taking away other units that were intended for other segments of the community.”

Pregerson’s ruling, however, disappointed the Air Force, as well as some state and city officials. The city of Hawthorne, which had agreed in preliminary talks to pay $4.8 million for the property, is likely to drop its purchase plans.

“I’m going to have to revisit that with the council,” said City Manager James Mitsch. “But obviously the advantage or impetus for purchasing the housing is diminished because we can’t use it to satisfy the Air Force’s housing needs anymore.”

It has been three months since the modern, pink-and-gray housing complex on both sides of Kornblum Avenue just south of El Segundo Boulevard accepted its first tenants. Because of the city’s and state’s flirtation with the Air Force, only one-third of the units are occupied, but the complex is slowly beginning to fill with families.

Locked security gates surround the east and west sides of the complex, which is generously landscaped with manicured grass and yellow daisies. Visitors are admitted through an intercom system that rings tenants’ telephones.

Both sets of buildings are grouped around large sandboxes equipped with a jungle gym, where groups of young children play. Older children are discouraged from riding bicycles through the landscaping by neat strips of yellow tape strung through the trees.

During the past few weeks, resident manager Choisette Frost has organized reading hours, barbecues, exercise classes and movie nights for her fellow tenants. In an attempt to win the cooperation of children, she promises to pay them 25 cents for sweeping steps, or 50 cents for picking up trash.

She said it would have been unfair to move the residents out to make room for the military. Her crusade for cleanliness is a way of ensuring that her tenants stay in the city’s good graces.

“I had people coming here with attitudes, wanting to know what kind of people are going to be moving in here,” Frost explained. “That’s why it’s important for my tenants to prove just the opposite. Just because we’re low income, that doesn’t mean we can’t enhance the area. . . . This is one family. That’s what I try to promote over here.”

Cynthia Jackson, the mother of four who waited eight years for a three-bedroom apartment and is now a grandmother, is among Hawthorne Terrace’s newest additions. Although she was able to remain at her old apartment until she could move in Aug. 8, she was stuck paying rent at both apartments last month.

Despite the struggle to pay her bills, Jackson said she is happy with her new home and neighbors, and is determined to stay.

“I think they would have to drag me out of here at this point,” Jackson said, “because I’ve been shifted and shifted and lied to, and I’m just tired. I have struggled so hard just to get a place, period. I think I would make my last stand here.”

BACKGROUND

The Century Freeway Housing Program, run by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, was created in 1979 by a landmark consent decree to replace affordable housing that was lost to the freeway. Funded by the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, the program has financed the construction of 1,237 rental units and 688 houses and condominiums since 1982. Another 2,500 housing units are planned. Caltrans says 12,000 people were displaced by the freeway. Today, some of them live in 540 of the nearly 2,000 units of replenishment housing built under the program. About 60% of the units are occupied by low-income families.