PICO-UNION : Agency Creates Jobs, Not Just Housing

At a recent community meeting, a speaker praised the work of the Pico-Union Housing Corp. but inadvertently referred to the apartment “projects” the organization has completed.

“They are projects only when they are on paper,” corrected Gloria L. Farias, president of the nonprofit housing corporation. “Once they are built, they become someone’s home.”

Established in 1971 to develop housing for low- and moderate-income families, the Pico-Union Housing Corp. has completed about 620 units at nearly 30 sites clustered largely in Pico-Union, but also in South-Central, Koreatown and Temple-Beaudry. Another 111 units are under construction in Westlake.

After the organization experienced some growing pains in its first decade, getting bogged down in paperwork and internal bickering, the energetic Farias took the reins in 1984 following a stint on PUHC’s board and shook things up.

One of her first moves was to get rid of the maintenance company that had been the source of complaints and a drain on the organization’s budget. She replaced the company by hiring and training youths ages 14 to 23 from the community to handle the daily chores of keeping the apartment buildings clean and in working order.

“It’s more like a family now,” Farias said. “We explain to the kids that it’s their world and they have to start taking care of it.”

In addition to a full-time staff of 60, PUHC employs more than a dozen youths who start off sweeping apartment buildings and painting out graffiti and then learn maintenance and other skills.

At a special Community Redevelopment Agency meeting last month, three of PUHC’s young employees told how their jobs have turned their lives around.

“Before I started working I’d be in the street, not going to school, causing trouble,” said Larry Tamayo, 20. “Now I’m working, going back to school and helping my family.”

Farias said that when she met Tamayo, his parents and their seven children were living in a one-room apartment. They have since moved into a larger PUHC unit.

“My biggest satisfaction is seeing someone being transformed from a life of trouble and not caring and going on to something better,” Farias said. “We have kids from four or five different gangs who are now learning to work together. It’s amazing to see a gang member holding a ladder for someone from another gang.”

But Farias worries that too little attention is paid to the human elements that go into making a housing project into a home.

That’s why PUHC will provide educational, job training and anti-gang services for tenants of the two buildings under construction in Westlake in a joint venture with Showplace Development Inc. Those services are standard in all PUHC buildings, Farias said.

Nonprofit developers must choose carefully when they work with private-sector developers, Farias said.

“You have to make sure you have the same goals and mission,” she said. “Some people aren’t aware how hard the development process is. If you’re new, the system will eat you. It can take two years of hard work just to get a developer and the City Council to look at a proposal.”

Building a community center in Pico-Union tops the organization’s list of goals, Farias said. And with little land left for new development in Pico-Union, rehabilitation of existing units and projects in other parts of town are also on the list.

“I like to go where there’s trouble,” said Farias, who drives by all of PUHC’s buildings and projects every day and stops to check on any problems.

She recently had to close the waiting lists for the organization’s buildings because they are already too long. A seven-year wait for a vacancy is not uncommon, Farias said. But families living in particularly deplorable conditions are generally given priority when an appropriate unit is available.

Information: (213) 749-8047.