Old Bungalows to House Homeless AIDS Patients

A prostitute had the nerve to bring one of her clients to a long-deserted bungalow court in Hollywood last Friday. She was too late.

Workers for the Hollywood Community Housing Corp. were fencing off the 14 little houses and one duplex and painting out the gang graffiti that marred the St. Andrew’s Bungalow Court.

“We’re claiming this for the community,” said Jack Gardner, executive director of the housing corporation, which arranged for $960,000 in city funding to acquire the property.

Instead of a hangout for transients and drug dealers, plans call for the complex to be restored, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and turned into housing for homeless people with AIDS, he said.

Built in 1919, the bungalow court was a typical feature of Hollywood’s boom years, with plank-sided units facing on a shady common area.

But as the area near Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue evolved into a densely populated low-rent district, the bungalows lost their economic appeal.

The previous owners evicted the remaining tenants about four years ago. They apparently hoped to build an apartment house on the half-acre property, but the project never got under way.

Instead, the bungalow court became a refuge for homeless people and emissaries of the Eastside’s White Fence Gang, Los Angeles Police Officer Carlos Lopez said.

“One of them moved in here and decided this would be their turf,” said Lopez, who worked with the Fire Department to have the property boarded up four years ago. “They sat around and dealt drugs in there. They broke into houses and hid their loot there.”

Other suitors, including the owners of a nearby building supply store, have sought the site. But Gardner’s nonprofit group finally bought it with a grant from the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.

With federal tax credits already in hand, the housing corporation plans to finance the renovation--estimated at $45,000 a unit--by selling the credits to local corporations and through a subsidized mortgage and a grant from Citibank Federal Savings Bank.

Work will not begin until May or June, when all of the money is in hand, project Manager Sally Shea said.

Plans call for moving the sleeping areas into the front rooms and converting the back bedrooms into large bathrooms needed by people in the later stages of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Gardner said. Twelve units will be wheelchair-accessible.

Public health officials estimate that 150,000 low-income people in Los Angeles experience at least brief intervals of homelessness each year, and that as many as 20,000 of them are infected with the AIDS virus. Five hundred new units of long-term, low-cost housing will be needed for homeless AIDS patients by next year, according to a county strategic plan for dealing with the disease.

The project will be run by a private management company hired by the housing corporation. Services are to be provided by the Gay and Lesbian Center Services Center, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and AIDS Project Los Angeles. The services will include case management, medical care and referrals, counseling, employment training and food deliveries.