Residents Get Involved, Guard Stake in Low-Income Harbor City Project

Time was, Tennie Sewell remembers, when the 2,000 or so residents of Normont Terrace didn’t pay much mind to what happened at their low-income housing development in a rugged pocket of Harbor City.

“It was fear and apathy,” she says. Fear of getting involved. Apathy borne from years of frustration that no one--even at City Hall--seemed to care what residents of the 37-acre complex had to say about where they live.

But things started to change several years ago, Sewell says, when a handful of residents began challenging the way the city and its Housing Authority managed the 397-unit development, built in 1942.

First, they raised a ruckus when the city came in and, without talking to residents, paved over their two-acre baseball field to make way for senior citizen housing. Then, the residents rose up in anger over the general neglect of Normont Terrace, demanding that its weathered, wood-frame units receive the same attention--and funding--as other low-income developments throughout Los Angeles.

Today, Sewell says, things are different at Normont Terrace. The people, she says, are involved.

“They have reached out past their front door,” said Sewell. “There’s a sense of excitement that the community is getting involved.”

That excitement, according to Sewell, residents and Housing Authority officials, has now paved the way for a property-management program at Normont Terrace, bordered by Normandie and Vermont avenues in the southeast corner of Harbor City.

Under the program, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Normont Terrace residents will begin property management training to give them a greater stake in the operation of the complex, one of 21 run by the city’s Housing Authority.

Specifically, Normont Terrace’s residents will learn skills to help them not only maintain where they live but have more say in how their surroundings are improved.

Already, for example, Normont Terrace has earmarked $40,000 of an $88,600 HUD grant to receive training for screening tenants, reviewing applications and other property management matters. The training will be provided by Linton E. Jackson and Associates, a West Los Angeles firm that specializes in property management. The instruction, available to any resident, is expected to begin next month.

Under the training program, which has already been launched at several other Housing Authority developments, Normont Terrace’s residents also will have a say in the priorities for their complex. Whereas some developments have made job-related programs a top priority, for example, Normont Terrace residents could focus their attention on upgrading and securing their facility with help from the city, officials said.

The new spirit of cooperation was evident during the recent riots, which damaged many neighborhoods in the city but was hardly felt at Normont Terrace.

During the first few nights of the upheaval, residents of Normont Terrace took responsibility for keeping the calm at their complex, said Olga Avalos, a 23-year resident who now serves as its representative to the Housing Authority’s advisory council.

Her sister, Delores, and Stella Jurado were among those who organized residents and even area gang members to protect Normont Terrace from violence and damage, Avalos said.

“They took it upon themselves to walk the development at 2, 3 in the morning . . . to make sure nothing happened,” she said.

Added Sewell, Normont Terrace’s grant coordinator: “You know how it happened? We got out and helped the police. . . . We went out and talked to gang members and said, ‘Don’t tear up your community. Don’t destroy what you have right here.’ And they made a pact . . . that they would not tear up what they had in Harbor City.”

Sewell said the experience during the riots, coupled with increasing attendance by residents at Normont Terrace strategy meetings, is proof enough that those who live at the development are determined to make it as safe and livable as possible.

“Their sense of self-esteem has been restored,” Sewell said. “They don’t feel so helpless anymore.”

The management program at Normont Terrace is significant both because it is the first of the three Harbor-area housing developments to launch such an effort and because plans now call for replacing Normont Terrace’s aged housing with 800 new units in the coming years. Half of the new units would be reserved for low-income families and the other half would be sold, at market rates, as condominiums.

The project, according to Housing Authority Executive Director Joseph Shuldiner, would be the largest of its kind in the nation. And the fact that it is nearing reality, he said, has already shaped much of the discussion about how Normont Terrace should be managed.

“The fact is they have been focusing on redevelopment issues” because the current complex is targeted for razing, Shuldiner said. And the residents’ commitment, he said, has been evident in their willingness to embrace the redevelopment project even though its construction would mean temporary displacement of residents.

“Let’s face it, with all due respect to the Housing Authority, it’s still a leap of faith for them (residents) to believe that if we take their development down, we will replace it,” Shuldiner said. “But they have been the ones who have responded with faith and have often been the ones who have pushed the (redevelopment) project along.”

That faith, while once in short supply at Normont Terrace, has been growing steadily the past year, Avalos said.

“Before, they (residents) felt that the city was going to do whatever it wanted” at Normont Terrace, Avalos said. “Now, residents feel like they are being listened to, they are being acknowledged.”

But after so many years of living at Normont Terrace, so many years of frustration among its residents, Avalos believes there is plenty of work ahead.

“It’s like a baby,” Avalos said. “We are born. We crawl. And now we are standing. The next step is to learn how to walk.”