Public Housing Demand Explodes; Waits Hit 5 Years : Urban life: L.A.’s list of applicants grows from 12,000 to 20,000 in a year. Slumping economy is partly blamed.

A waiting list of families wanting to live in Los Angeles’ public housing projects nearly doubled over the past year to 20,000 applicants in line for 100 vacancies each month, city housing officials said.

The demand so greatly outstrips supply that many families will have to wait five years before they can move into the city’s 18 housing projects, according to Los Angeles Housing Authority officials.

“People talked about a housing crisis in the 1980s,” said Michael Bodaken, Mayor Tom Bradley’s housing coordinator. “If it was a crisis then, what do we call it now?”

With hundreds of families trooping to the Housing Authority’s applications center each week, housing officials are considering seeking federal approval for a temporary cap on the list that included only 12,000 names a year ago.

The cap, said Housing Authority spokesman Marshall Kandell, would help reduce a backlog that grew by 1,600 applications last month.

“What sense is there in having a five-year wait?” Kandell said. “It’s discouraging to keep (applications) open if some people have practically no chance of getting to the top of the list.”

Duane Walker, manager of the application center’s beleaguered 22-member staff, blamed the recession, shrinking job markets, rising rents, expensive housing and the continuing stream of immigrants to Southern California for placing “an extremely large burden on our ability to provide service to the community.”

“This is gut-wrenching stuff I’m having to deal with every day,” Walker said. “It takes a special person to relate the harsh realities of our time frames to people in immediate need of housing.”

Among the applicants are Silviano Jimenez, his wife and their nine children, who waited a year in their cramped one-bedroom apartment for word of action on their request for public housing.

Jimenez was prepared for good news when he was finally summoned to the center at Avalon Boulevard and Slauson Avenue for an interview last Thursday.

Instead, the 42-year-old former flyweight boxer, who now scavenges bottles and cans for a living, was told it could take years before the five-bedroom apartment he needs becomes available.

Jimenez immediately offered to split up his family if something smaller would be available sooner.

Walker shook his head sadly and said, “If you split up your family it could still take a year or more.”

Fighting back tears, Jimenez said, “It’s going to be hard to tell my wife that it will take a miracle to get the apartment we need.”

A few minutes earlier, Walker had to give bad news to Maria Luisa Jaimes, 33, who applied for public housing three years ago. She had been bumped to the bottom of the waiting list for recently moving to an apartment a few blocks outside of the city limits--only city residents are eligible to get public housing in Los Angeles.

“I’ll move back to the city--my children need a playground,” said Jaimes, who spends more than half of her welfare payments on the $300-a-month one-bedroom apartment she shares with two young children.

“If you move back,” Walker explained, “you’ll still have a considerable wait until we can have you in for an interview.”

“I can wait,” Jaimes said, daubing her eyes with a tissue. “I’ve waited this long.”

While the number of requests for public housing is dwarfed by the 50,000 low-income people on an already-closed waiting list for Section 8 federal rent-assistance programs, housing officials said they were unprepared for the onslaught of applications for so-called “last-resort housing” in city projects.

The two-year recession, coupled with a lack of affordable housing, seems to be driving more poor, elderly and disabled people than ever to seek public housing units, where residents are required to pay only 30% of their income on rent, officials said.

Housing officials said the vacancy rate of rentable public housing units has dropped from about 3% in June to about 1%. The total number of units citywide is 8,800.

City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, whose 15th District in the southern part of Los Angeles includes one-third of the city’s public housing units, said, “I would not like to put a cap on the waiting list.”

“I’d rather see more scrutiny of those filing applications,” Flores said, “and move up to the top of the list those who are most needy.”

Under HUD regulations governing public housing nationwide, people get preferential status if they are being forced out of their residences, live in substandard housing, pay more than 50% of their income for rent, are veterans or live and work in Los Angeles.

The city’s shortage of public housing is so acute, however, that even preferred applicants who once waited a few months for available units are facing delays of a year or more, officials said.

The public housing shortage is not unique to Los Angeles. Housing authority officials in New York and Chicago, for example, said applicants in those cities are having to wait from two to five years for units.

“It’s an all-out war of need,” said Juanita Tate, executive director of Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles, a group that is building low-income apartments in a part of town where the need is acute.

“Everybody wants to talk about the problem, but nobody wants to do anything about it,” Tate said. “Right now, public housing is concentrated mostly in East and South-Central Los Angeles, and homeowners groups will fight any plan to increase affordable housing in their back yards.”

When Bradley in August proposed a levy on commercial construction as a way of injecting up to $30 million a year into much-needed affordable housing and apartment construction, critics immediately objected on grounds the plan would further dampen the economy and reduce property values in the vicinity.

Many people who have obtained housing in the projects consider themselves fortunate, although the complexes have problems of their own.

“Crime here is tough, living conditions here are tough, too,” acknowledged Howard Wasserman, manager of the sprawling Jordan Downs project in South-Central Los Angeles. “But people still want to come here because we have a residents’ council, a maintenance staff on site and rent is 30% of their income.”

Those were reasons enough for Jorge Bernal, his wife, Maria, and their three young children, who were living on a bed in a relative’s garage when they applied for a unit at Jordan Downs two years ago.

They moved into the complex in November, and since then Bernal, 31, has been telling his friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Mexico to apply for a unit.

“It was worth the wait,” said Bernal, sitting on a couch with his family in their freshly painted living room. “Here we’re paying $180 a month for a three-bedroom apartment, which is great considering I earn minimum wage.”

“We’re very comfortable here,” added his wife. “We’re going to stay as long as possible.”