A Fighter for Senior Rights : Alice Chang’s Life Mission Has Been Helping the Chinese Elderly, and She Doesn’t Take : Kindly to Those Trying to Stand in Her Way

How fitting that Alice Chang was born in 1914, a year of the tiger.

Chang has been a fighter all her life. In China, she challenged the traditional role of women by seeking higher education. Coming to the United States 40 years ago, she overcame extreme difficulty with the English language to earn a master’s degree.

She then went to work for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, as an adoption worker and later a supervisor. While still employed by the county, she began a crusade as a counselor and advocate for the poor elderly Chinese of Los Angeles.

Now 78, afflicted with arthritis and in need of a cane to walk, Chang is still battling. Her current dream, to build a housing complex for the elderly on one acre near Elysian Park, has brought Chang head to head with a group of young and savvy hillside homeowners.

Opponents say the 86-unit complex she originally proposed would overburden the neighborhood of rustic hillside homes. They have organized a lobbying campaign against the project, which they say should be reduced by half. After a compromise decision by the Los Angeles Planning Commission in August, allowing 63 units, the case went to the Los Angeles City Council, which will review the case early this year.

With a state-mandated density bonus for low-income housing, Chang could build at least 25 units without a variance, but she said she needs more to make the project economically feasible. The homeowners said that they support senior housing but that any more than 42 units would be too bulky visually and cause too much traffic and demand for parking on the area’s narrow streets.

Chang doesn’t take kindly to people who stand in the way of what she sees as her life’s mission. She has accused the neighborhood group of racism and insensitivity to the plight of elderly people “who cannot fight with anyone.”

“They have a sense of superiority,” Chang said in emotional and broken English after a Planning Commission hearing last July when more than a dozen residents spoke out against her plan. “If they are prejudice like this, there will be more riot.”

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Neighborhood activists call her charges unfounded. “Racism has nothing to do with this project, as far as we’re concerned. What everyone is objecting to is basically the density,” said Gordon Kam, a Chinese-American resident of the neighborhood. In fact, if Chang secures the federal funding she is seeking, the project would be prohibited from serving only Chinese.

In turn, opponents have raised questions about Chang’s financial interest in the project, which would be built on land she owns and would sell to the developer, the Chinese Community Service Center Inc.

“We didn’t come to Echo Park as (a) business proposition, a political steppingstone, or to cloak the profitable sale of property in a good deed,” said William Nettles in a Nov. 23 letter to the planning and land use management committee of the Los Angeles City Council.

At the heart of the conflict is an imposing, energetic woman whose personal life over the last 20 years has become almost inseparable from the cause she promotes.

Chang is the acknowledged dynamo behind the Chinese Community Service Center, a nonprofit agency which she helped found in 1970. As the developer of the senior housing project, the Service Center would use federal grants to buy the one-acre parcel from Chang at its appraised value, estimated by her attorney at as much as $900,000.

Chang dismisses questions of gain for herself. She said she has pledged to donate all the proceeds from the sale of her land to a foundation she is creating to provide educational opportunities for Chinese youth.

Chang’s quest to develop her property represents just one component of her work for the Chinese Community Service Center. Those who know her say she brings enormous energy to her volunteer job as an administrator for its Central Adult Day Health Care Center, which provides daytime care and therapy for the elderly.

“All I can tell you is that she is one dynamo. She is a ball of fire,” said Sam Berman, a retired social agency executive, who worked as a consultant for the Central Adult Day Health Care Center. “She is a backbone of that organization, and just keeps everybody hopping.”

But Chang’s single-minded determination may occasionally rub people the wrong way, according to David Friesen, a social worker who has also consulted for the Central Adult Day Health Care Center. “She’s a strong leader, which gets her into trouble sometimes with some other people,” Friesen said.

Friesen sees her success in getting the Planning Commission to approve a density increase for the project as an illustration of her “adroit maneuvering” and persistence.

“She doesn’t give up very easily,” Friesen said. “I like that about her. But then, she’s never crossed my path, you see.”

Chang’s office at the Central Adult Day Health Care Center, 1157 Lemoyne St., is adorned with commendations from elected officials. On a recent morning there, Chang spoke emotionally about society’s obligation to care for the elderly. She said the elderly need more than nursing care, they need love and warmth. “We want them to sing,” she said.

Later, an instructor led the group of about 25 older people in stretching exercises and songs, including a Mandarin rendition of “It’s a Small World.” Chang beamed and clapped her hands when a woman with a severe case of Alzheimer’s disease joined the rest of the group in a clapping exercise.

Chang said her life has been strongly influenced by her father, a revolutionary who fought to establish the Chinese Republic early in the century and rejected the notion that women should play a subservient role in society. He wanted something different for his daughter than bound feet and the life of a typical Chinese housewife.

With his encouragement, Chang entered a premedical program at the age of 16, but dropped out after her father died and she could no longer concentrate on her studies.

Chang later returned to school and earned a degree in education administration. She married a classmate, Peter Tsou. The couple fled to Taiwan after the Communists gained ascendancy on the mainland. There, she became vice principal of a girl’s school, but the couple moved to the United States in 1952 when Taiwan was threatened by Communists.

After earning a master’s degree from Worden School of Social Service of Our Lady of the lake University in San Antonio, Tex., Chang went to work for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, where she remained for 20 years.

Chang’s plan to build an institution for the elderly Chinese dates to 1975, when she paid about $110,000 for two adjacent parcels of land on Morton Avenue, in a canyon of narrow streets and 1920s houses.

Chang’s current conflict with community members is just one of many obstacles she has encountered in her 10-year battle to develop her land. She originally set out to build a nursing home but gave the idea up after running into barriers. Chang said state health officials told her that there were too many nursing homes in the area for her to obtain a certificate of need, which was necessary at the time to build a home. Chang said she won the necessary certification by describing to state officials the plight of non-English-speaking Chinese elderly.

Next, the Los Angeles fire marshal told Chang that the parcel on Morton Avenue was too small to accommodate a fire alley. She and her late husband bought an adjacent plot for $126,500 in 1980.

Despite her personal investment in the project, Chang finally gave up on the nursing home, which began to seem too costly to build. “My husband didn’t want me to build a nursing home,” she said. “He said I was foolish. Maybe I was.”

She decided to build a senior housing complex about two years ago after hearing complaints of inadequate housing from clients at the adult day-care center. Chang said a housing project is “not as hard as a nursing home.”

Yet, success is not guaranteed. The planning and land use management committee has scheduled a second hearing on the project Jan. 26, and the council is expected to make a final decision soon after.

Even if Chang prevails in the political arena, the project has one more hurdle ahead: funding. The proposal was recently rejected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD spokesman Scott Reed said that of 12 proposals for senior housing projects in Southern California last year, the agency approved only four. He said the Chinese Service Center made the first cut but declined to say why it was ultimately eliminated. The center plans to reapply for HUD funding this year.

Today, Chang doesn’t seem inclined to slow down, despite pleading from Edward Genshock, president of the board of the Chinese Community Service Center. “I told her many a time to take it easy, and she won’t. She just goes on working,” Genshock said.

For 12 years, she has been a member of the California Senior Legislature, active on issues such as health care and protecting the elderly from abuse. She is also a member of the City of Los Angeles Council on Aging and recently wrote a book about her life. She translates the title as “Transplanted Plum Flower.”

Chang said that although she is in good health, her doctor advises her to take it easy. Once the senior housing project gets off the ground, “then I will retire,” she said. Reminded about her plans for developing a foundation for Chinese youth, she sighs in acknowledgment that perhaps she could rise to one more challenge.

“You know my characteristic,” she said.