L.A. Officials Announce Plan for 15 Apartment Buildings for the Poor
With a last-minute splash celebrating the legacy of retiring Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, city officials Monday announced plans to build the largest affordable-housing development in the city’s history--15 projects in all, with 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, which will be scattered throughout the city and built primarily by nonprofit housing developers, will be available to families who earn less than $28,000 a year.
Monday’s ceremonial groundbreaking on a lot in a densely populated 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, said 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 nonprofit agency, Ward Economic Development Corp., last year built a 120-unit apartment complex near USC for low-income senior citizens. “Today, clearly over 80% of the housing (in Los Angeles) is done by nonprofits.”
That fact was underscored last week as federal officials unveiled a 15-unit apartment complex in South-Central Los Angeles--the first public housing project to be built in Los Angeles in nearly a decade.
During that period, much of the nonprofit housing development has been funded by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and the Housing Department. The department was created three years ago to package private and federal monies for affordable housing.
Today, the CRA finances 1,500 to 2,000 housing units a year, most of which are for low- and moderate-income residents, according to an agency spokesman. The Housing Department has developed 4,000 additional affordable-housing units, said Gary Squier, the department’s general manager.
Still, the area’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. 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. One-quarter of the county’s poor households live in overcrowded conditions--the highest rate in the nation, according to the study.
Speaking to more than 100 city employees and housing developers as they fanned themselves under a makeshift tent Monday, Bradley called the groundbreaking ceremony--complete with festive balloons and a barbecue--”not just a one-day event, but a statement . . . of our commitment to the future.”
Construction of 12 buildings begins this week, according to city housing officials. Three others are being rehabilitated. The projects are expected to create 3,500 construction jobs, officials added.
Last week, federal officials unveiled a $1.18-million, 15-unit complex in South-Central that is the first public housing built in the city since 1984.
“It doesn’t begin to address the need, but it’s better than nothing,” said Joseph Shuldiner, executive director of the Housing Authority, standing in front of the apartment building.
Shuldiner, President Clinton’s nominee for assistant secretary of public and Indian housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said 30 more public housing units are under construction in the city and an additional 250 have been funded.
“It’s been so long since we’ve had public housing in Los Angeles,” said Michael Bodaken, the mayor’s housing and reinvestment coordinator. “It’s important that we’ve broken through that barrier, even if it’s just 15 units.”
About 14,000 Angelenos are on waiting lists for the approximately 100 units that become available each month in the city’s 18 public housing projects, according to Housing Authority officials. An additional 40,000 people are on a waiting list for Section 8 federal subsidies to help them rent private apartments.
Los Angeles has about 10,000 public housing units and about 31,000 Section 8 recipients, Shuldiner said. Public housing and Section 8 waiting lists are now closed.
