SANTA FE SPRINGS : New Homes to Replace Florence Apartments
Demolition crews have begun to tear down apartments with conditions so deplorable they prompted a law requiring the annual inspection of all apartment units--one of the strictest such ordinances in the state.
The Florence Fountain Apartments, a nine-building complex on a 2.78-acre lot on Florence Avenue, will be replaced by a tract of 19 new houses built for first-time home-buyers. The new development will reportedly be the city’s first affordable-housing complex.
City officials said the apartments were the worst-maintained in Santa Fe Springs. The 80-unit complex was declared unsafe and evacuated in 1992 after rain leaking through roof caused structural damage, and some ceilings fell in first- and second-floor units, said Jim Turba, assistant director of planning for Santa Fe Springs.
Complaints from residents and neighbors of the complex prompted the city to pass an ordinance requiring a yearly inspection of all 4,000 apartments in the city to check for compliance with city regulations, Turba said.
He said that if there are problems, the city inspector notifies the tenant and owner, who usually has 35 to 40 days to fix problems, which are usually minor, such as a torn rug or broken toilet. Health hazards, however, must be corrected immediately.
The city purchased the deteriorated Florence Fountain complex for $1.9 million in 1993. Demolition was approved March 24 by the Community Development Commission, which at that time also approved designs for 19 houses on the lot.
Homes in the new development would be available only to Santa Fe Springs residents who are first-time buyers with low to moderate incomes. A family of four, for example, could not earn more than $60,000 a year. The three-bedroom homes are expected to sell for about $165,000 and should be completed by 1995.
The city is financing the development, expected to cost slightly less than $5 million, through a 30-year housing bond.
The apartment complex had been abandoned for more than a year, said Turba, who toured the complex this winter. “It looked like you were in a futuristic science-fiction movie where people were coming back to Earth, and they found all these old buildings with weeds growing in them,” he said. “It was pretty scary.”
