$110-Million Plan Unveiled to Provide Affordable Housing : Development: The most ambitious package of its type in city history calls for 15 projects and 1,100 units.
With a last-minute splash celebrating the legacy of outgoing Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, city officials Monday unveiled the most ambitious plan to build affordable housing in the city’s history--15 separate projects that include more than 1,100 units for low-income Angelenos.
The $110-million package, put together by the city’s Housing Department, is being funded by $36 million in federal funds and $74 million from private banks, state agencies and federal tax credits for private investors.
The 15 apartment buildings, scattered throughout the city, target families who earn less than $28,000 a year as well as the elderly and the mentally ill. Most of the projects will be managed by nonprofit developers who will provide a range of social services, such as education, job training, counseling and recreation opportunities for residents.
The projects range from the 50-unit Hillview Village in Pacoima, which will allow mentally disabled adults to live independently, to the rehabilitation of the 525-unit Hayward Manor hotel downtown. Other Valley projects include a 50-unit family housing project on Blythe Street in Panorama City and a 25-unit apartment building for low-income families and the elderly on Parthenia Street in Van Nuys.
Monday’s ceremonial groundbreaking on a vacant lot in a dense Westlake neighborhood highlighted the increasingly vital role of nonprofit agencies in addressing the housing needs of the city’s poor.
As the federal government withdrew from producing affordable housing in the last decade and as Southern California’s housing crisis deepened, “the nonprofit sector stepped in,” noted Jacqueline Dupont-Walker, president of the city’s Affordable Housing Commission.
“It took some years to convince even public funders that the nonprofit sector could indeed produce housing,” said Dupont-Walker, whose agency, Ward Economic Development Corp., last year built a 120-unit apartment complex near USC for low-income seniors.
Now, she said, such agencies are involved in developing more than 80% of the city’s affordable housing.
Much of this nonprofit housing development is funded by federal tax credits allocated by the Community Redevelopment Agency and the city’s Housing Department. Today, the CRA finances between 1,500 and 2,000 housing units a year, the bulk of those for low- and moderate-income residents, according to a spokesman. The Housing Department, since its creation three years ago, has developed another 4,000 affordable housing units, said its director, Gary Squier.
Still, the city’s housing crisis remains among the worst in the nation, according to a study released last fall by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D. C. A typical poor household in the county--defined as a family of four with an income of $13,400 a year--spends 77% of its income on rent. A quarter of the county’s poor households live in overcrowded conditions--the highest such rate in the nation, according to the study.
Speaking to a crowd of more than 100 city employees and housing developers Monday, Mayor Bradley called the groundbreaking ceremony--complete with festive balloons and barbecue--”not just a one-day event, but a statement . . . of our commitment to the future.”
Construction on 12 new buildings--three others are being rehabilitated--begins as early as this week, according to city housing officials. The projects are expected to create 3,500 construction jobs, they noted.
Last week, officials celebrated the unveiling of a 15-unit complex in South Los Angeles--the first public housing built there since 1984--even as they acknowledged that it was a drop in the bucket in the city’s grave housing crisis.
About 14,000 Angelenos are on waiting lists for about 100 units that become available every month in the city’s 18 public housing projects, according to Housing Authority officials. Another 40,000 are on a waiting list for so-called Section 8 subsidies that subsidized the rental of private apartments. Los Angeles has a total of about 10,000 public housing units and about 31,000 Section 8 recipients. Both public housing and Section 8 waiting lists are now closed.
Carl McCraven, executive director of Hillview Mental Health Assn., said the $4.4-million project will break ground later this month and open a year later. Many of those who will live at the building, which is next to a residential treatment facility operated by Hillview, would be unable to live on their own except for the treatment and counseling services that will be available.
The $3.8-million Parthenia Court project will consist of 12 three-bedroom units, six two-bedroom units and seven efficiency units aimed at senior citizens. The project co-developer, the L. A. Family Housing Corp., will provide job training, placement programs, health care and on-site child care.
The $7-million Regency 50 represents the first new residences in decades to be built on a particularly crime-plagued stretch of Blythe Street west of the Van Nuys General Motors plant. The project’s partners include the Latin American Civic Assn. and the Nelson Network.
