WATTS : Door Repair Project Hinges on Red Tape

A program designed to replace doors in the Nickerson Gardens housing project while training residents to become carpenters’ apprentices is snarled in the red tape of the city’s housing authority, residents say.

Members of the Nickerson Gardens Residents Management Corp., a nonprofit tenant organization, have been working since July to get Los Angles Housing Authority approval to start the project, which would replace exterior doors to 363 apartments in the 1,057-unit complex on 114th Street.

The residents’ organization has had to file several construction proposals and work contracts with the housing authority as well as getting building and engineering licenses, payment bonds for the construction and other documents, all of which had to have the housing authority’s approval before work could begin.

“The housing authority has made it almost impossible for Nickerson Gardens folks to go forward,” said Mel Butler, a project manager of CRSS Constructors Inc., a Los Angeles design and construction company that has been helping tenants put together the paperwork for the federally funded project.

Los Angeles Housing Authority officials said they have been moving the project along as quickly as possible.

“We’re trying something that’s never been done before,” said Marshall Kandell, spokesman for the housing authority. “We’re working with residents who have no experience, no resources and no hope without a lot of help. We’re also dealing with federal regulations, bonds (and) private contractors.”

Kandell said he expects final approval by January.

The door-replacement project was conceived in 1990, in part by Pierre Sain, business representative of the Southern California District Council of Carpenters local. The project would use residents of the housing complex who have some construction skills and can be integrated into the carpenters union, Sain said.

Butler and Pamela Griffin, president of the Nickerson Gardens Residents Management Corp., said that the housing authority has set the project back with repeated requests for documentation.

“We’ve been very frustrated because everything that we’ve done to try to comply with housing regulations, (the housing authority has) thrown another stumbling block,” said Griffin, who is also president of the Nickerson Gardens Corp., the construction arm of the residents’ management corporation.

The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is putting up $500,000 toward the new doors. HUD recently enacted regulations allowing housing authorities to give contracts to resident corporations without seeking bids from outside contractors. The goal is to give residents an opportunity to invest in their own housing, Kandell said.

But residents said they are still waiting for that opportunity.

“People are getting to the point where they’re not sure if the housing authority really wants to help us at all,” Griffin said.

Kandell said the project also requires approval from HUD, which slows the process.

Griffin said the delays have left the Nickerson Gardens Corp. on financially shaky ground. The corporation has spent more than $40,000 on legal fees, licenses and other paperwork, she said. That money had been earmarked for administrative costs once the project--estimated to cost just under $500,000--went through.