When a House Is a Home
When Frieda Marlin gets on the phone, she displays none of the whispery, hesitant qualities associated with 70-year-olds. She can be tough, angry and awesomely determined, like one of those people from the movie “Network” who is madder than hell and not going to take it anymore.
She telephoned three times last week, and each time I imagined her leaning out a window, shaking her fist and bellowing at anyone who passed by, same as the folks in the movie.
What she’s shouting is that no one is going to tear down her home and shovel her off to some old people’s ghetto. If that’s what they think they’re going to do, they’ve got another think coming. Frieda Marlin is not about to move.
So what’s this all about? It’s about change, I guess, and the victims of change, and a city that can’t wear the same clothes two days in a row.
Nothing is permanent in L.A. anymore. Old buildings disappear overnight to be replaced by new buildings that also disappear. Mini-malls and gas stations are gone in a twinkling, and old restaurants become new restaurants just as you’re getting used to their coq au vin.
And now the forces of change want to bulldoze Lincoln Place, where Frieda lives, and turn those comfortable old buildings into gleaming new apartments and condos, upsetting the lives of the 1,500 people who live there.
The builders, Transaction Companies Ltd., like to think of it as “property enhancement,” but a bulldozer by any other name is just as destructive.
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Lincoln Place is a sprawling complex of one- and two-story apartment buildings on 40 acres of what used to be Venice bean fields. It was built in 1950 and looks like the kind of housing that went up during the Second World War in towns where liberty ships and fighter planes were being turned out.
About 60% of those who live there are low income people. They either work at menial jobs or live off pensions and Social Security. Lincoln Place represents affordable housing, of which there is damned little in L.A. They’re afraid it’s going to be ripped right out from under them.
The tenants association, utilizing bonds and government subsidies, has twice offered to buy the complex for $40 million and $47 million, but has been turned down by Transaction, which found their offers “not commercially viable.” There are bigger profits down the road in building anew. The company, acknowledging the needs of some of the tenants, has offered to include units for the elderly, the handicapped and single parents. It would also pay up to $5,000 in relocation fees to those forced from their homes.
But moving out or being “ghettoized” with other old people isn’t what Frieda Marlin wants. She loves the mix of young adults and infants that comprise the corner of the village she’s occupied for a dozen years. Her last apartment was torn down for the same reason this one faces demolition, and she’s not about to let it happen again. “I’m going to fight it like hell,” Frieda said. “It’ll be great.”
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I’m not one who thinks everything old is beautiful and everything new is as ugly as a pimple on the nose. I’m also not one who believes every builder is out to smash your wheelchair and rape your turtle.
A Transaction spokesman, Jim Merlino, promises that anyone who wants to stay at Lincoln Place will be allowed to do so, without an increase in rent. Attrition will make it possible over a 10-year period of construction.
He calls the existing buildings functionally obsolete and says even if they renovated them they’d still be functionally obsolete. It’s just good business to tear them down and start over.
Rose Chapman, who is 80ish, and equally as tough as Frieda, agrees. She’s lived at Lincoln for 22 years and dreams about moving into one of those new units. “The place is too damned old,” she says. “Nothing works. If the toaster blows a fuse, the whole apartment goes dark. The plumbing is always clogging up, too. They keep fixing it, but how much patching up can you do?”
Both Frieda and Rose will be at a city Planning Department meeting next week, where the future of Lincoln Place will be up for grabs. Frieda’s home versus Rose’s dream. Old comforts and new efficiencies.
I’ve been writing a column long enough to realize that a point of view is required here, but I’m at a loss. I understand the warmth of familiarity, but also realize that nothing lasts forever. Call it a draw.
I hope that however it turns out, both Frieda and Rose will realize they’ve fought the good fight and can sit down together and have a cup of coffee someday. Even old adversaries can be new friends when the war is done.
