Projected for Demolition : U.S. Tentatively Approves Proposal to Raze, Rebuild Eastside Housing Projects

The federal government has given preliminary approval to a drastic proposal that would demolish and rebuild the Pico Gardens and Aliso Apartments, adjacent gang-ridden and decayed public housing projects with an estimated 3,000 residents in Boyle Heights.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a $3.7-million grant Thursday for the plan’s architectural and engineering fees and said the $50-million construction job stands a good chance of getting full federal funding in the next few years. Delighted officials at the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles described their proposal as “one of the most ambitious and socially significant urban redevelopment efforts in the city’s history.”

Many questions remain about tenant relocation and the style of housing to replace the 574 barracks-like units built in the 1940s and ‘50s. But the general goal is a gated and secure community of suburban-like townhouses. It would remove the sprawling layout that provides open turf for gangs in the Eastside neighborhood squeezed between the Golden State Freeway and aging factories, from 1st to 6th streets.

The rebuilding sounds like a fine idea to Breavon McDuffie, who grew up there and is president of the Pico-Aliso residents council. He is sort of the local mayor, a man who seems to know every child in the projects by name and who recognizes each new smear of graffiti on the buildings’ pastel blue and salmon walls.

“We’ve come to a crossroads here. We need a complete 360-degree turn,” said McDuffie, 39, who lives with his wife and their two younger children in Pico Gardens. An older daughter and her children also live in the projects.

“The mystique of being here in Pico Gardens, the negative reputation that the buildings, the property, the area carry supersede what personality you have,” he said. “When people find out you’re from this project, they step back. They don’t see that you’re in a three-piece suit, that you’re dressed nice, how you got a college degree. It’s: ‘Oh, you’re from down there.’ ”

During the daytime, many children play tag on the well-maintained lawns of Pico-Aliso while their mothers chat and hang laundry on outdoor lines. Older residents prune their small, lush gardens in front of the two- and three-story buildings. The only overt signs of trouble are the gang graffiti around playgrounds and the sight of a few wrecked and apparently stolen cars abandoned nearby.

Night, however, is different. Of the 17 large apartment projects supervised by the city’s housing authority, Pico-Aliso is the most troubled by gangs now that an uneasy truce has calmed projects in the South-Central area, according to authority spokesman Marshall Kandell. “It is a war zone. There’s no question about that,” Kandell said of Pico-Aliso. “The number of gangs in that small area and the firepower are pretty horrendous.”

In addition, the buildings badly need renovation, said Joseph Gelletich, the housing authority’s deputy executive director. “All of them are 40 or 50 years old. So we have to abate the lead base paint, upgrade the infrastructure--the water and sewer system--and fix the kitchens and bathrooms to 20th-Century standards,” he said.

Gelletich estimated that such work would cost $61,000 per unit, only $12,000 less than the price of relocating tenants, demolishing the buildings and constructing new townhouses. “We think it makes more sense to clear the site and redevelop it with tenant input,” he said.

In the past, the housing authority demolished projects built as temporary housing for defense workers during World War II. The Pico-Aliso plan would be the first major destruction of permanent public housing in Los Angeles, following a growing national trend to deal with troubled projects, officials said. (The demolition will not affect the nearby but separate Aliso Village, 683 apartments north of 1st Street that are slated for their own repairs.)

On Thursday, Bernardina Leyva gave a visitor a tour of her cramped but well-tended two-bedroom apartment, her home in the Pico-Aliso complex for a decade. She and her five children share the tiny rooms, and the youngsters’ many athletic trophies fill the shelves. Their rent is $223 a month, based on 30% of income, mainly welfare checks in Leyva’s case.

She pointed out the crumbling kitchen cabinets, the unshielded water heater tank that stands in a hallway where the children play, the bathtub that has no shower facilities, the cinder-block walls that cracked from leaky plumbing.

“I like the idea,” Leyva, 35, said of the rebuilding plan. “We really need it.”

Joseph Shuldiner, HUD’s assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, said the Los Angeles plan was not given a full $50 million this year because several other projects nationwide were considered more urgent. Shuldiner, who previously was executive director of the Los Angeles Housing Authority, said future money is not guaranteed but that Pico-Aliso will be high on a list for more funds next year.

To minimize relocation hassles, demolition and rebuilding are planned to be phased over four years or so on the 23.3 acres, which are divided by a patch of private houses along 4th Street. Tenants would be given relocation assistance, including federal vouchers to help rent private apartments. They would have first dibs on new units at Pico-Aliso. Still, Gelletich conceded that relocation “will be one of our larger problems.”