Ex-Protesters Build Future for AIDS Victims
Seven years ago, before the city of West Hollywood was born, senior citizens and low-income residents were being driven out of their spacious, old apartment buildings by skyrocketing rents and condominium conversions.
The area, part of unincorporated Los Angeles County, had relatively weak rent-control protections and, because of its proximity to the Westside, housing was at a premium. In fact, a coalition of senior citizens and gay-rights activists, formed to protest the housing crunch, was one of the driving forces behind the city’s incorporation.
So when the city of 36,000 was formed, one of its first agenda items was the establishment of a community housing corporation, some of whose 11 members had been part of that original coalition.
West Hollywood’s Community Housing Corp., formed in 1986, has gone far beyond protest and theory since the city was born. Its board members have overseen the opening of three buildings, currently have a unique fourth project in construction and are now planning their fifth low-income housing complex.
“I’m very, very proud of the work the corporation has done,” said David Etezadi, a past president and one of the original members of the corporation’s board. “It makes you realize that you can have a huge impact--beyond the ballot box--on the way your community deals with social needs.”
Paul Zimmerman’s background is in political action and fine arts design. As director of the corporation, he said he is thrilled he’s gotten the opportunity to provide affordable housing and community services to his mostly senior citizen tenants.
“It’s really exciting to feel we are forging a new link between a building’s environment and social services,” he said.
Zimmerman’s degree in fine arts design from UC Berkeley has contributed to the West Hollywood housing projects’ sleek, sophisticated look, which defies the stereotype of affordable housing as ugly, depressing buildings crammed around concrete courtyards.
The city of West Hollywood is very much behind its housing corporation, funding it through an operating subsidy and loans from the city’s affordable housing trust fund. Zimmerman, who has been the director of the corporation for three years, has three people on his staff.
Currently, the corporation is working on a project that board members believe will break new ground in the affordable housing arena. The corporation is building an apartment complex specifically geared toward people with AIDS.
The 22-unit apartment building under construction on Harper Avenue is scheduled to open in June.
“It’s a tremendously exciting project because this is a group (AIDS patients) whose housing needs are not being met by anybody,” Etezadi said.
Around the Los Angeles area and in other parts of the country there have been buildings remodeled specifically for AIDS patients, Zimmerman said, but West Hollywood’s is one of the first new-construction projects in the country that will be designed from the ground up as affordable housing for people with AIDS.
“We did interviews with people and social service groups and found that they don’t need more hospices or licensed medical facilities,” Zimmerman said.
“With AIDS being diagnosed earlier and earlier and the life expectancy for those who have it increasing, what we found a need for was a building very much like an ordinary apartment building.”
AIDS patients whose disease has become symptomatic generally battle a series of infections until they can no longer keep regular jobs, Zimmerman said, then they live off their savings until they are forced to move in with friends or relatives, who may be ill-equipped or unwilling to house them on a long-term basis.
The West Hollywood community developers hope that their new building will afford a solution to the problem.
“What this building will have is oversized bedrooms for in-home nursing care, an emergency call system where help can be summoned at any time of the day or night, wheelchair access, an elevator, lots of private open space and balconies, a large patio and a sun deck for people who spend much of their time at home,” Zimmerman said.
Inside will be a multipurpose room with an office and kitchen where various social service providers can bring programs and referrals into the building.
The AIDS building, unlike the other projects the housing corporation has completed, will be entirely publicly funded. The $3 million to build it has come from the state rental housing construction program, the city of West Hollywood, private-placement tax credits from 39 individual investors and funds from the Century Freeway Housing Program.
The rents in the complex will run about $260 a month for the 18 one-bedroom units and $450 for the four two-bedroom units.
Zimmerman is working with AIDS Project Los Angeles to come up with suitable criteria for admission to the building. The demand for AIDS housing is so great, he said, that he anticipates potential tenants will not only have to show they have tested HIV positive, but they will have to be in a stage of the disease that actually results in physical symptoms.
Along with the AIDS building, the corporation has completed an impressive group of projects for low-income residents over the past five years.
In 1987, it bought a 28-unit building on Fountain Avenue and rehabilitated it for $1.7 million. A second rehabilitation was done on an eight-unit bungalow court at a cost of $500,000.
A $2-million, 17-unit complex at 1276-1280 N. Harper Ave. is the corporation’s third project, funded by loans from the city’s trust fund and through tax credits from the California Equity Fund and a conventional mortgage.
The building has 11 new, low-income units for senior citizens and six rehabilitated low-income units for families with children. It caters to West Hollywood’s large Russian immigrant population, with about 50% of its tenants of Russian background, Zimmerman said.
The handsome project is made up of restored, side-by-side 1923 California triplexes and a new, three-story Mediterranean building that was added onto the back of the lot. With the addition of a security gateway entrance kiosk in front, the project is a cohesive-looking complex that fits in beautifully with the older apartment buildings and duplexes on the street.
A hand-painted mural on the entrance kiosk is the result of an art-in-public-buildings program, done by the winner of a design competition.
The housing corporation has purchased the land for its fifth project at the corner of Laurel and Norton avenues, where it plans an intergenerational complex consisting of 29 one-bedroom senior units and 13 three-bedroom family units.
“We want to design it so the two groups can stay out of each other’s way and also give them opportunities to meet up, like in a child care/play area and a senior lounge,” Zimmerman said.
For five years, Zimmerman worked in a field called “participatory design,” in which he got members of a community involved in the design of local public projects. When government funding for such participation dried up, Zimmerman learned the process of nonprofit development.
“I love the work,” he said. “I’m able to combine community organizing, design, public policy-making and social services. Having struggled for years to have an impact in movements that tended to be on the losing end, this is very gratifying for me to be able to see a concrete--literally--impact that will be here for 100 years to come.”
