Tenants Learn How to Own Public Housing

Kimi Gray has done in Washington what many public housing residents are trying to do in Los Angeles.

During the last two decades, Gray led tenants at the Kenilworth Parkside project in a successful fight to turn the complex from a drug-infested, unheated slum that had been forgotten by city authorities into a clean, safe development owned by a resident co-op and boasting its own employment training and day-care centers, grocery store and medical facility.

Now, a tenant-owned construction firm is working with a former Kenilworth resident who became an architect through Gray’s College Here We Come university preparation program to complete rehabilitation of the complex so residents may buy units starting in July.

“There’s nothing we’ve done here that can’t be replicated elsewhere,” Gray told an audience Wednesday at the first MacDougal Lecture at UCLA, designed to highlight innovative community-based programs.

Gray--once dependent on welfare to support herself and her five children--has become a media housing heroine, traveling across the country and overseas preaching the gospel of resident empowerment. With her close-cropped hair, massive figure and infectious laugh, she inspires people to “see (your life) as it could be, not as it is now.”

In Los Angeles, some public housing residents have started down the often rocky path toward self-management. Seven housing complexes, including Estrada Courts, Mar Vista Gardens, and Avalon Gardens, have received $1.7 million in grants under the federal Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere program.

HOPE distributes money to residents to get management training and learn how to run their own housing complexes, and set up job training programs and small businesses to increase their economic self-sufficiency.

Eventually, residents in some projects may decide to buy their housing units at affordable prices. Local housing authorities must then make other rental housing available to replace the units taken off the market.

Estrada Courts in Boyle Heights is one Los Angeles project that has made progress toward resident management. In 1991, 58 residents graduated from a management training program.

“The key idea was aiming at home ownership,” said Abraham Paez, a former resident who is project coordinator for the resident management corporation. Last summer, residents at the 413-unit development signed a contract to take over certain management duties, such as gardening, from Los Angeles’ housing authority.

The residents have also formed a joint venture with the East Los Angeles Community Union, a licensed contractor, to provide job training and the opportunity to bid for maintenance work on city housing projects. The joint venture’s first project, sewer repairs at Estrada Courts, is expected to start in a week or two, Paez said.

HOPE was championed by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp and other conservatives during the Bush Administration, and has been criticized by some activists. They argue that the privatization program is too expensive and has diverted attention from the severe cutbacks in spending on low-income housing under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush while it did little to create housing.

The congressionally approved program is expected to continue under new HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, although the emphasis may shift from transferring ownership rights to tenants toward economic development and job training programs, a change that some argue is a more efficient use of federal funds.

The first phase of the HOPE program “doesn’t work because it doesn’t allow enough time. Tenants need the proper tools to become good homeowners,” said Lori Gay, president of Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit developer and lender for low- and moderate-income buyers.

“People need to start at square one,” Gay said. “Until you get off welfare, home ownership is not a reality. Homeownership is a privilege, not a right.”

The difficulties in making the transition to resident management have been demonstrated at the Nickerson Gardens project in Watts, where disputes over whether to strive for tenant ownership have led to intense infighting.

In December, residents voted to oust Nora King, the tenant leader who had helped build several employment programs at the project and was in favor of resident ownership. Pamela Griffin was elected as president of the resident management corporation.

Bertha Gilkey, who like Gray is a nationally known tenant organizer, said the problems at Nickerson Gardens show that residents need more management training.

“You’ve got some real good, committed people at Nickerson Gardens,” Gilkey said. “But a baby organization is like a baby being born. What Nickerson is going through is a painful growing period.”

“Resident management works,” she said. “Tenant ownership works. But it’s not something you can give people like a magic wand. It takes time.”

Gray agrees that empowering residents is a slow process. But it is worth it, she said.

“I call residents of public housing sleeping giants,” she said. “They don’t realize the power they have in their hands.”