Church in Tenant Dispute : First AME Says Evictions Will Lead to More Housing for the Needy

More than two dozen tenants of one of the city’s most well-known black churches--most of them poor and elderly--have been given two months to leave their rent-controlled apartments so the church can offer the units to other needy families.

The Rev. Cecil (Chip) Murray of First African Methodist Church said the evictions are necessary to make way for an $8-million renovation and expansion of the stately Brookins Manor Apartments on West Adams Boulevard.

“I understand they are emotionally attached to where they are, and who wouldn’t be? It’s a garden,” Murray said. “But that’s life. Life is trade-offs. There is no ideal situation.”

The move, Murray said, is part of a complicated, multi-part financial package that will create scores of new homes for needy families by converting the gated complex from market rentals to federally subsidized low-income housing.

Murray also said the church has offered the tenants two months warning, relocation money and the option to move to another apartment house next door to the church.

But the 31 people living at Brookins Manor say the move has pitted one needy group against another.

“They want us to make way for poor people. But poor people live here already,” said Augusta Lewis, 67, who has lived off and on at Brookins Manor for 30 years.

Nor are Lewis’ neighbors any less pleased.

“I’m 90 years old, I have a heart condition and asthma and I take six different kinds of medication,” said Maude Duvall, a six-year tenant who has tithed to First AME for so long that the church has named a set of chimes after her.

“Reverend (Murray) told me this would be my home as long as I could pay my rent,” Duvall added.

As she spoke Monday, movers carried her peach striped davenport out the door.

Meg Sheehan, who at 38 is the complex’s youngest renter, charged that the church could have cut a fairer deal for tenants when negotiating financing for the project. She noted that, under the current plans, the church will gain because the rents--which range from $400 to $700 a month--will rise, and the church will take on a potentially lucrative role as a landlord to the subsidized poor.

But Murray said Sheehan and her neighbors are trying to hold onto what one church official called “a Beverly Hills view at Watts prices.”

“The city is in crucial need of housing for poor people, and we cannot in good conscience not use that land,” Murray said. “There are poor people in this city with no place to stay. Good heavens! Where is their conscience?”

According to the church, the expansion hinges on the church’s ability to obtain a federal tax credit, which it could then sell to a corporation needing a tax break. The money from that sale would pay for the renovation of 27 apartments and construction of 30 units on the two-acre property.

But to get the tax break, church officials said, the units have to be converted to low-income housing and rented under state and federal low-income housing rules. Even though most of the current tenants are widowed, elderly and subsisting on Social Security, they would be ineligible for the apartments because most of them live alone.

All but a handful of apartments are two-bedroom units. Under federal guidelines, the tenants have been told, a two-bedroom unit cannot be rented to a single person, no matter how low their income.

Murray, whose visibility after the riots has made First AME a nationally known institution, said that because of this problem, the church “has done every bit of hand-holding possible.”

“One, we gave them two months warning. Two, we offered to physically move all persons to be moved. Three, we gave them $5,000 relocation money,” Murray said.

Moreover, he said, the church offered to relocate the displaced tenants to another apartment house next door to the church.

Brookins Manor, which dates to the early 1930s, is nestled on two acres between two churches and surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. The alabaster mansion-like buildings sit far back from the street, overlooking a rose garden and lawn.

But the tenants say the alternative apartments are not nearly as homey or safe. A white stucco building, the new housing being offered by First AME has been freshly painted and renovated and is patrolled nightly by male members of the church, but has no security fence and sits in a neighborhood known for problems with drugs and gangs.