U.S. Gives Seized Drug Houses to City

A onetime South-Central Los Angeles PCP lab that has sat vacant and unsold since being confiscated by the federal government in 1988 has been turned over to the city of Los Angeles in what authorities described Tuesday as an innovative effort to return properties seized in drug raids to community use.

The property consists of two boarded-up houses near 81st Street and Vermont Avenue. They are riddled with graffiti and littered with garbage and old mattresses. Neighbors say they are still used as crash pads and drug havens by the homeless and narcotics addicts.

Yet at a news conference Tuesday morning in the office of U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers, three Los Angeles City Council members sounded as if Santa Claus had just arrived.

“This can be interpreted as a gift during this holiday season,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. “This is one example of how we can move from what was a bad situation and now provide relief for the community.”

Bowers, who handed the deed to the 10,000-square-foot property to Ridley-Thomas, said the transfer was made possible under a new provision of the federal asset forfeiture law that allows seized properties to be transferred to cities or nonprofit agencies for positive social uses.

Since 1985, federal authorities in the Los Angeles area have seized $264 million in land, vehicles and currency under the forfeiture program. Until now, proceeds from the sale of confiscated property have been targeted exclusively for federal and local law enforcement agencies.

No use has yet been determined for the dilapidated South-Central property, at a corner on which one entrepreneur was peddling used copies of X-rated men’s magazines from a makeshift stand Tuesday morning.

Ridley-Thomas said he hopes the city will sell the land or give it away for use as a day-care center or community center run by an anti-drug community group.

“The good news is not simply that this property was seized but that in fact it will be put to use in ways that can be viewed as constructive for the community and socially redeeming,” said Ridley-Thomas, who appeared at the news conference with fellow council members Rita Walters and Mike Hernandez. “We see this as an opportunity to do child care, as a possibility. . . . There’s a dearth of child-care centers in (South-Central).”

Federal authorities seized the site, which includes two boarded-up houses and a vacant lot, after the arrest in the mid-1980s of property owner Isaac Paige and two accomplices on drug charges.

Paige was convicted in 1987 of conspiracy to possess PCP with the intent to distribute it, Bowers said. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison and has since died, the federal prosecutor said.

Paige’s house, which was identified as a PCP lab by authorities, was seized at the time of his arrest and was forfeited to the federal government in 1988.

Since then, federal authorities have sought unsuccessfully to sell the land, which Bowers’ office said is worth $200,000 to $400,000.

Bowers said that the transfer of the property to the city is the first of many anticipated as a component of the federal Community Projects for Restoration plan, a law enforcement and social welfare program begun under the Bush Administration. In the last year, $18 million in federal funds has been targeted for community policing, public housing assistance and gang prevention efforts under the initiative, which had been called the “weed and seed” program until city officials objected to the name.

Bowers and the other officials did not reveal until questioned by reporters that the property had been owned by the federal government for five years.

An hour after the news conference, a few miles south at 81st and Vermont, a middle-aged man lounged on a fraying couch on the porch of one of the two houses.

“This makes the area look bad,” said the man, speaking in a slurred voice, as he pointed to the boarded-up windows and garbage, cigarette lighters, foam food containers and broken car speakers strewn around the property.

Other residents noted that across Vermont Avenue lie block after block of well-kept houses and a grocery store that opened after last year’s riots.

The Paige property has remained an eyesore since the federal government took it over, said retired paper mill worker Walter Griffin, who lives across the street.

“I’d like to see it decent again,” Griffin, 69, said. “To tell the truth, anything is better than just a junk house.”