WATTS : Jordan Downs Youth Program Funded

The view from Billy Childs’ second-floor office at Jordan Downs is a silent reminder of the problems at the housing development.

Childs, a member of the Unity Committee at Jordan Downs, points to the row of blue apartments where five members of a family were killed in a 1991 arson blaze.

The fire raised questions about tensions between Latino and African American residents at the 700-unit development on 103rd Street, and prompted residents to form the ad hoc Unity Committee.

Two years after the deadly fire, Childs and members of the Jordan Downs Resident Management Corp. have been awarded a $25,000 grant from the California Community Foundation to help develop a bicultural youth program.

“What we’re trying to do is pull everybody together, because with the changes in the community some of the changes that will come about are not pleasant,” said Childs.

The award comes just in time for Christmas, when the committee will kick off its program with a children’s party featuring pinatas, dances and poetry, according to Glenda Howry, the recreation director at Jordan Downs. “This will be the starting point. Instead of just having Hispanics doing something on Cinco de Mayo, we’ll be trying to bring the two cultures together,” Howry said as she decorated the gym at the development.

More than half the money will be used to hire two coordinators and part-time cultural trainers, who will run a youth center that will offer educational, recreational and community programs.

“Our grant was for the children, but the way to get the parents to participate is through the kids,” Childs said.

The group was selected by a 15-member panel from among 375 applicants, said Jack Shakely, president of the California Community Foundation, a nonprofit group that administers individual funds and grants. “The panel really thought that in the area of neighborhood empowerment you couldn’t do much better than Jordan Downs,” he said. “This is one of the few public housing projects that has a history, and they were impressed by the outreach they’d done in the community.”

For Childs, the grant will provide a chance to battle the misperceptions some may have about racial tensions at the development.

“The media came right in after the fire and blew everything way out of proportion,” Childs said. “They were here for days asking: ‘Do blacks hate Latinos?’ But what you have here is poor people living together. It doesn’t matter what color you are. What is missing is the green stuff.”